Avoid the Matusow blow up

[rocflight]

I am a newbie looking to strengthen my game and would appreciate any advice from you veterans out there.

I really wish to be a top notch player, and I believe I'm steadily getting better at the game. However, working against me is that fact that I am a very impatient person, which definitely doesn't mesh well with poker. I have to say that many a time I've blown my chances late in tournaments, whether holding a big stack with high placing aspirations or a low stack with the intention to sneak into the money. Somehow I'm just prone to the infamous Matusow blow up where I just blitzkrieg either all or most of my chips on bluffs or very weak hands.

It's frustrating when I kind of lose my mind for the span of a hand and waste all my hard fought efforts on a hand I should never have been involved in in the first place.

Just wondering if any one of you out there have had this type of problem in your poker playing career and if you had any advice to fight this type of behavior.

[zaxx19]

Your impatient?? Quit poker right now. Go into sales or something, poker and impatience just is a horrible combo. Lets put it this way I sat @ 2-4 NLH in Mandalay Bay my 2 month of playing and never got a hand bigger than AQs / 99 made my 200 bucks last 7 hours till I was bad beated on the river. Point being you need absolute patience in poker.

[JJH3984]

He knows this. He is asking how he can make himself more patient. My advice is to take stock of when in a tournament this happens, and try to simplify your game at this point. If you play on the computer, post a sign. After you become more disciplined you can always add more creativity to your game. I'm not that experienced in tournament play; however, I know that when I go on tilt, I try fancy plays that I would never use normally. If you eliminate these from your game for now, you will avoid blowing up more often than not

[rocflight]

Thanks for the encouraging advice /images/graemlins/smirk.gif, but I was hoping for something more constructive.

Not to say that I'm totally impatient. I am capable of staying out of trouble most of the time during dead card runs (my first trip to Vegas, I had a simliar experience at a 2/5 NL table as yours) and have even been able to fold solid hands when sensing danger.

I'm just saying that sometimes I get crazy with my play either due to temporary loss of interest or otherwise and do outlandish things that I would never do during my periods of concentration. Just wondering if anyone had any suggestions to remedy this.

[rocflight]

Thanks for the suggestion. I think that's good advice. Although often times with me, the moment that I realize I'm in that crazy state of mind is usually the moment that the opponent is raking all or most of my chips into his stack.

I have always had the mind set late in tournaments to win the tourney, which means I plan to be aggressive to secure chips. This could constitute some of the "reasoning" behind my crazy plays. I guess I shouldb't be concerned to always play for the win given the little problem that I have described, but rather during bubble time to simply tighten up with the goal to at least make the money.

[hurlyburly]

The things I do is count how far back from the nuts I am and how many outs I have to beat the draw I have my opponent on if he gets there. Calculating his outs to my draw and how likely a semibluff is going to win a pot if I have a draw is good too. If I do this before acting on a read with a marginal holding it usually keeps me from making an "emotional" play.

Sometimes I make a "last longer" mental bet with myself where I promise not to go out from the blinds or without a pocket pair to keep myself in check. Look at winning a small pot from the blinds as a "free hand". An unexpected win can really boost your spirits, but you can steam if you berate yourself for not pushing hard enough.

And don't beat yourself up if you really think you have the best of it and get surprised by an extremely unlikely event or get outdrawn. Surefire ticket to tiltsville. After a bad beat, I always reverse the cards and see what I would have done (internet hand histories are great for this) before I play another pot. If you can finger the reason why he decided to call with a worse hand, it'll keep you from getting involved while you are steaming or feeling "owed".

Before calling or raising, I ask the following (in order, everytime): What do I have? What does he have? If I don't like either answer, I'm done with the hand.

Hope you find something useful there.

[DVC Calif]

If your are playing online and can manage multi-tabling, you might try playing a MTT at the same time as a low limit ring game. I find this to be a great diversion from the tediousness of waiting for premium hands early in a tourney. If you ever get involved in a real hand, simply "sit out" of the ring game and focus on the tourney.

HTH, Steve

[kuro]

Some pros really get into Budhism because of the meditation aspects. You can try to find a therapist that specializes in biofeedback / relaxation therapy and learn techniques for handling the pressure of waiting. You can get checked out for adult ADHD and take medication if that's your problem. Then again, you ccould just play more poker and keep losing money until you finally get it.

If it's just the boredom of waiting for a good hand you can try listening to music like alot of people do. More valuable is probably just working at trying to put people on hands when you're not involved in the pot.

[mntbikr15]

I have something of the same problem, I feel I can play the game at an above avg level(and have the results to back it up) when I am in the right state of mind. But I often find myself blowing good oppurtunities due to frustration/impatience/tilt from a bad play or bad beat. Just something I think you have to work through, Im maybe only halfway through it though.

I like the suggestion of playing low limit ring games while ur playing the tourneys and I find myself doing that more and more these days. Another thing that I remember someone posting is how they have started playing .5/1 when on tilt to burn off some steam(logic being its cheap to lose 100BB, at least if ur normal game is 5/10 or 10/20 or the sort). Ive yet to try this but I really like the idea, assuming u can keep ur bad "tilt" play from becoming ur "normal good play" in ur mind.

Hope this helps, its the best I could come up with.

-Evan