Does playing poker relieve stress or increase it?

Both. Low stakes and for fun, poker can relieve stress. High stakes or poor bankroll control, it usually increases it.

It can do both, depending on how and why you play. For some people, poker relieves stress by offering focus, challenge, and a mental escape, especially when played casually with good bankroll control. For others, it increases stress due to variance, bad beats, financial pressure, or emotional attachment to results. Poker tends to amplify your mindset—if you’re calm and disciplined, it can be enjoyable and engaging; if you’re anxious or chasing outcomes, it quickly becomes stressful. Managing expectations and knowing when to stop are key to keeping poker on the healthy side.

Ideally poker should decrease the stress, but after a few bad beats it will increase it anyway.
It's more the adrenaline, which will definitely increase whether you play or not, but I don't think anyone has ever become less stressed because of poker.

Poker doesn't stress me, on the contrary, it can sometimes be irritating and 😥 or extremely wonderful and fun 🤑. The most important thing is not to fall into the badbeat trap.

...playing poker helps me pass the time and even earn some dollars, but when I make a mistake myself, I get annoyed, especially with myself...

I think that before starting to play poker, we should look for ways to solve our personal problems, because the game forces us to concentrate, to make the right decisions. It actually relieves our stress.

If you just look at it as a form of relaxation, the stress is very minimal, at most one unlucky hand will pull you up a little! If you look at it as a source of income, it can be much more stressful and frustrating, even if every single game 🤔

Definitely increases stress if you’re chasing losses, multi tabling too much, or letting variance and bad beats get to you.

It depends how I have played haha. Sometimes after big wins its hard to get sleep. I think stress causes that...