What should you focus on?

[Al Schoonmaker]

As a psychologist, I was naturally delighted that Greg's data say that improving focus/avoiding tilt was the best way to improve results. I've had that belief for years, but did not have solid data to back it up. In fact, there are hardly any data on any psychological issue in poker.

I also agree with his recommendation that his friend should spend some time on our psychology forum. We discuss emotional control all the time. Ed Miller will also address this issue in Part III of his series on going pro. I urge all wannabe pros to take that article as seriously as you take the first two.

By chance, I just finished reading "One of a kind," a biography of Stu Ungar. He had incredible focus at the table, and he rarely went on tilt while playing. However, he had no focus at all away from the poker table. He would bet on anything, and he would often have a bet on every baseball game and every horse race. In fact, his LIFE was on tilt. If he could have focused on poker and controlled his destructive urges, he would be alive and rich today.

I'm currently working with a small number of players who have a tilt problem. My procedures are based on solid research that was conducted in other settings, but we are still experimenting. I frankly admit that some of my procedures will have to be revised. But that's the nature of all forms of treatment. All an honorable professional can do is tell his clients that results are not guaranteed and keep his mind open to improving his procedures.

In addition, Greg’s data may not have that much impact on his friend’s actions. All coaches and other advisors are constantly frustrated by the fact that clients ignore, minimize, or modify their recommendations. A forthcoming article, “The Coach’s Dilemma,” points out that any competent advisor – including traditional professionals such as doctors and lawyers – can see what his clients should do, but they rarely do exactly what their advisor recommends.

Advisors therefore essentially negotiate compromises between three factors.
1. What should the client do?
2. What is the client able to understand and implement?
3. What is the client willing to implement?

I hope Greg follows up his excellent article with a report on how well his friend implements his recommendations. Greg has done an outstanding diagnosis, but it is just the first step in solving a problem. The important questions are:
1. What does Del DO differently?
2. How do these changes affect his results?

Regards,

Al

[StellarWind]

[ QUOTE ]
As a psychologist, I was naturally delighted that Greg's data say that improving focus/avoiding tilt was the best way to improve results.

[/ QUOTE ]
Greg didn't present any data in his article. He started with a specific player and then presented some assumptions (exact word from the article) about the potential benefits of proposed improvements.

The value of Greg's article is it 1) highlights the value of prioritizing potential changes, 2) raises potential changes for consideration, and 3) walks you through the analysis process. The reader should now be able to make up his own list and do the analysis for himself.

[gergery]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
As a psychologist, I was naturally delighted that Greg's data say that improving focus/avoiding tilt was the best way to improve results.

[/ QUOTE ]
Greg didn't present any data in his article. He started with a specific player and then presented some assumptions (exact word from the article) about the potential benefits of proposed improvements.

The value of Greg's article is it 1) highlights the value of prioritizing potential changes, 2) raises potential changes for consideration, and 3) walks you through the analysis process. The reader should now be able to make up his own list and do the analysis for himself.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is correct -- they were just assumptions and not based on specific data. However, I did spend signficant time thinking about realistic ranges for each variable, and so I feel the conclusions are in the right order of magnitude for the majority of players.

Al, thanks for your kind words!

--Greg

[Al Schoonmaker]

You're correct, and I'm embarrassed to admit it. I certainly should be able to distinguish between data and assumptions.

Thanks for correcting me.

Regards,

Al

[Alex/Mugaaz]

I have a problem with how much tilt is stressed. How can you even be a decent journeyman player if tilt is any form of a problem. Maybe I just don't understand other people, but how can any competent player who normally makes good decisions suddenly make poor ones becuase he is angry?

The only way that tilt is a burden to journeyman / semi-pro+ players is when it causes them to get discouraged from playing and put in less hours than usual. Then the tilt really is costing them money. The only time tilt ever swings a decision from one end to the other is when the situation is completely borderline. Be definition if a situation is borderline that means the gain or loss has to be minute.

I really have never seen a good player who can pull a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. The only time tilt has cost me money is when it has caused me to leave good tables. Mostly this is something cured with experience. No one I know of takes loss in the same way they take gain. It takes experience to get desensitized to it. IMHO if anyone who is a winning player suffers from "movie tilt" it's probably due to personal problems in their life. Not some general philisophy.

[StellarWind]

Your conception of tilt is much too narrow. Irrational play resulting from anger is only a small piece of the tilt spectrum.

Any strong emotion, including depression, disappointment, frustration, irritation, and even elation can seriously interfere with play.

These emotions may directly influence your decisions, but more commonly they simply interfere with the thought process. You fail to notice important details. You overlook options, don't think clearly, or have mental lapses.

The mistakes caused by these low grade forms of tilt often do not seem to have any thematic connection to the emotions you are experiencing. They are simply random-looking mistakes made by a brain that is not functioning at 100%.

The percentage of players who are naturally completely tilt free is very small. Most players have to work at self control of their emotions.

All little children "tilt". It is normal and expected. As they get older we expect them to learn to manage their emotions but it is never a perfect process unless you are a Vulcan. It's naive to expect a very high stress activity like poker to somehow be exempt from this.

[ QUOTE ]
It takes experience to get desensitized to it.

[/ QUOTE ]
Definitely. The more times you have experienced something the less emotional impact it will have. It is also important to recognize that emotional reaction is largely a matter of habit. We choose whether or not to indulge our emotions and once formed bad habits are hard to unlearn.

[Alex/Mugaaz]

I disagree with the negative aspects of tilt that you are posting because of a different thread about people not paying attention.

Almost all the hands here start with "no reads'. People here seem to be horribly lazy in being focused while playing and paying attention to the details. So if they are now slightly mad they aren't missing out on anything new. The players who do notice are probably much less likely to be affected by tilt.

I have a problem with people saying just general moods has a dramatic impact on gameplay unless your mood is extreme. I really don't think me being mildly happy, elated, upset, depressed, or annoyed results in any meaningful changes to my winrate.

I think edges that small become important at higher limit games where its one of the few edges you can still have. I just don't think it's nearly important to most people as it's made out to be.

[gergery]

Barry Greenstein has a ‘Steam Control’ rating for top professional players at his website, so apparently he thinks virtually all the top pro’s have at least occasions of tilting behavior.

My own biggest leak is playing long sessions late at night where I start to get bored or unfocused at the table, then start either playing just a few hands more or miss a bet or two here and there because I misread an opponent or the board. It doesn’t take much of that to hurt your winrate, and I definitely consider that tilting behavior. The times where I get frustrated from taking multiple bad beats also happens and can hurt my win rate, but its triggers are much more obvious and thus the solution is more easily acted upon.

There have been posts recently from both David Ross and Dynasty who both noted that sustained bad runs affected their self-confidence at minimum, and presumably their aggression/willingness to push small edges. And both of them are professional winning players.

--Greg

[Al Schoonmaker]

I am baffled by your position. I have seen people blow rack after rack of chips, move to larger games, and then go to the crap tables, all because of tilt.

I have seen friends who were playing abysmally, told them to go home, and been told, "I know what I'm doing. I can beat these idiots."

I have seen world-famous pros act like petulant children.

You must have seen equally irrational behavior. I'm sure that most players have seen it. How can you deny the evidence?

You wrote: "how can any competent player who normally makes good decisions suddenly make poor ones because he is angry?"

That statement is extraordinarily silly. Just watch the news tonight. You will almost certainly see that normally intelligent people become angry and make far worse decisions than just playing poker badly. They kill themselves and other people.

I just did a google search for "anger management" and got over 1,000,000 hits. It appears that you are in denial about how much impact emotions have on human behavior.

Regards,

Al


Regards,

Al

[srm80]

Here is a meaningless example, and not at all poker related: Last week, pro ballplayer Kenny Rogers assaults 2 cameramen as he is walking out onto the field for pre-game stretches. This is a professional in the media-spotlight, an All-Star pitcher, also a guy having some anger issues to go along with a contract dispute and an ongoing spat with the media in general. He didn't think the 2 cameramen were bad people, he didn't have a direct problem with them, but he chose to act irrationaly and push the guys around and throw his camera down to the ground. All because of things going on in his own life, he acted out his aggression on these 2 cameramen and caused himself a big problem, as the event was shown all over the news. He didn't think of the repercussions of his actions, what it would cost him in the future, how he will be perceived in the future. He is being portrayed as a bully and is blastyed in the press. He was selected to the All-Star game by the players, which means extra money for major league players in their contract. However, he now is faced with the difficult decision, having been selected to the All Star game, of either dropping out and letting some other worthy pitcher go to the game, or going to the game, taking the extra money and the prestige, but also facing the media frenzy and the scrutiny that will be put on him as a result of him accepting his All-Star selection. Kenny Rogers went on "tilt" for a minute, didn't think about what he was doing, and now it has cost him a lot of credibility as a professional athlete in the eyes of the public.

The event is not poker related, but still shows how letting your emotions get the better of you for even an instant can affect your life greatly.

[Al Schoonmaker]

You wrote: "The event is not poker related, but still shows how letting your emotions get the better of you for even an instant can affect your life greatly."

The penitentiaries are full of people who "lost it" for a minute, and some of them are on death row.

There is even a form of defense called "temporary insanity."

I find it astonishing that people can pretend that anger and other emotions do not affect behavior.

Thanks for your comments.

Regards,

Al

[StellarWind]

[ QUOTE ]
I have a problem with people saying just general moods has a dramatic impact on gameplay unless your mood is extreme. I really don't think me being mildly happy, elated, upset, depressed, or annoyed results in any meaningful changes to my winrate.

[/ QUOTE ]
It's not dramatic, just important.

Everyone is different. So let me begin by saying that I'm not talking about you or your play because I don't know you.

I am reminded of studies that show that alcohol impairs many abilities long before a person is noticeably drunk. These same studies show that most people were not aware of their impairments even as they underperformed on various tests.

There have been sessions of poker where even the next day I still believed that I had been "fine". Needless to say when I examined all the hands carefully I wasn't fine at all. Misreading boards, failure to see the point of my opponent's play, fuzzy thinking, etc. Usually not me acting out my frustration and discouragement with my results, just random poor play below my normal standards.

Many years of duplicate bridge experience have taught me the same thing. Very few players play their best when things are going poorly. Anger and loss of control is only the tip of the tilt iceberg. People's play deteriorates long before there are any visible losses of control or outbursts of anger.

On the happy side of the emotional spectrum, chess players are acutely aware of how difficult it is to play well when you have a large advantage and should win easily. People are fully aware this is a problem, tell themselves 'I need to focus and keep finding the absolute best moves' and it doesn't help anyway. Almost no one with an easily won game continues to function at the same high level that created the good position in the first place.

[MicroBob]

Just because it happens fairly regularly in the news and what-not does not mean that this is the type of 'tilt' that I need to be immediately concerned about.

I have played who-knows how many thousands of hands in the past 2+ years since learning how to play and have yet to throw anything at a wall or go absolutely wacko over a few bad-beats or anything to that extent.


I'm not denying this exists.
But, in my case, it's not something I need to be immediately concerned about.


The types of 'tilt' that I actually DO need to be concerned about have already been addressed in this thread.

Greg's comments about playing without enough focus late at night is a good one. guilty as charged.

The other thoughts about playing too tentatively and without confidence after/during a tough losing streak is up there too.

And, for me, I need to do a MUCH better job at staying focused and tight after I go on a nice winning rush.
I tend to get an over-confidence issue in me and play a bit more loosely and justify it to myself with garbled logic like 'isolate the loose raiser' or something like that.

My logic typically isn't too far off....but it can still be quite costly.
So to counteract that I'm making a couple of just slightly tighter plays than what my instincts are telling me to do if my wins have been adding up and I'm getting the hunch that this whole bit of 'pushing my advantage' is getting a bit carried away in my head (also experimenting with just taking time-outs every once in awhile for re-focusing purposes).

It also works from a meta-game perspective in that my aggressive play is going to get punished by observant players eventually anyway so after a few aggressive wins it is usually time to switch gears and slow-down a little bit.

I'm referring to players starting to get a read on me and letting me bet away at it FOR them since they now can see that I'm playing aggressively....smarter players eventually learn to check-raise the crap out of me because I'm just staying on the gas and not changing-gears enough on them.

That's really what I'm talking about here....staying too heavily on-the-gas if I've been up 30-50BB's or so for the session.

It's a problem I have of increased hyper-aggression when I've been running hot and it's something I'm aware of so, at least, I'm part-way home.


Anyway, regardless of how many other people go out of their skulls and blow all their money on the craps table or just play 80% of their hands because they 'have to win a pot eventually' I fail to see why I should be worried about that type of mega-tilt happening to me.

I do admit to playing too loosely at times when i'm "tilting"....but it would certainly not be to the point where my whole bankroll is at risk because I just 'lost it' and decided to sit down at a 300/600 game.


Other than my disagreement about this issue in this thread I do think the article was a good one.
I am amazed at the number of people on this forum who blow-off other things in life for something as silly as poker.
I enjoy the game....but it's not the end-all, be-all.


The story of the kid losing his GF to poker really breaks my heart...and the guy who was too tense from playing too high is pretty frightening too.


There was a recent thread I believe in NVG forum where some guy asked how he can get his GF to stop asking him how much he was won on a given day. He mentions as an aside that she is always complaining that all he thinks about during the day is poker.
I was the only one in the thread (I think) who commented that this little aside that he threw in there should be a warning to him.
Ummm....hello??? You're GF is telling you that you think about nothing but poker during the day.
I bet she's right.