An epiphony of sorts regarding tilt (Cross Post)

[JrJordan]

The varinace bug has hit me pretty hard this month, and along with that has come a few emotional outbursts that certainly show I'm not playing optimal poker at that point. I recognize tilt, I stop playing... I've learned that much. The bigger problem I've had through these recent downswings is figuring out what triggers it in the first place? At first I thought it must just be the bad beat and some stupid comments the moron makes after the hand, but after more thought I realize that doesn't really bother me. I was unsure for quite awhile, until it hit me last night...

Poker Tracker is putting me on tilt!

Sounding sketchy? Lemme explain a bit more. After a horrendous 2-3 outer takes me out 10BB... I always, ALWAYS look at my general stats screen to see how much I've won/lost for the day. Until now I never thought that it could amount to anything. Last night though, after taking a beat and feeling okay about it, I decided to look up my results for the day while playing and my jaw dropped when I was down $300 after 35 hands. Needless to say it hit me pretty hard, and induced the tilt I was trying to avoid.

So, where to go from here? I, along with anyone who wants to join me... will do all in my power to not look at my daily results while I'm playing. If I ever feel like I'm in the hole so much that I must look at those results, then my session is over...period! It makes common sense in retrospect. It doesn't matter what my results are if I'm making the right plays.

Anyone else care to join in my new found enlightenment?

[jskills]

$300 after 35 hands is not a big loss if you're playing at a high limit or NL - just to keep things in perspective. Not sure what you're playing ...

I don't look at results until I'm done playing. Worrying about a given session's up or down is something I've only recently stopped doing. It's not easy, but very important to do.

You've got to make sure you're playing your A game at all times. If that 2 outer takes out, yes it sucks ass, but was there anything you could have done to stop it from happening? Obviously not. You played correctly and the fish who plays the game as if it were slot machine finally made it go ding-ding-ding.

We actually are supposed to be thankful when this happens once in a while, since if it didn't, there'd be no reason for this type of player to continue playing (and donating [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] )

PT is great for post game analysis, but during the game, just let it run and update the game time window with things like VPIP,PFR, and PFA stats.