What should you focus on?

[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.