HOW DO YOU PREVENT TILTING

[lil feller]

To cure the disease, you have identify the cause.

Tilt is caused by losing, simple as that. Letting losing put you on Tilt means that you EXPECT to win. Thats just stupid. No player is entitled to win, ever, throughout their entire life. You need to emotionally seperate yourself from everything around you, including your cards, your bankroll, your results, and your opponents.

Being tilt proof is about being on an emotional freeroll everytime you play. You can't care whether you win or lose a particular hand, or over 10k of them. You can't care if your opponent plays well and outdraws you, or if they play horribly and outdraw you. You can't be excited when you flop a set, and you can't be discouarged when you don't. Tilt is about expectations, and when you enter a poker game with ANY expectation of success or of winning, you are going to be disappointed more often then not.

Free yourself from entitlement and high expectations, and you'll free yourself from tilt.

lf

[josh3336]

I mean that was really proffettic don't get me wrong but how does one truly do that? DO I have to read "Zen and the Art of Archery" that Howard Lederer is always talking about or what.......

[MicroBob]

some people liked Zen and the Art of Poker and maybe it could provide you with soime help

(I'm not as big a fan because there are MANY parts where the author indicates that you have to leave BEFORE the cards turn badly on you...somehow yo're supposed to know when this is I suppose).


But you really seem to have some crazy anger-management stuff going on.

Everyone loses individual hands whether they played them well or not.
Everyone loses long stretches of hands whether they were playing well or not.
You are going to be no different.


you are partly frustrated because you think you are smarter than everybody there and not winning all the time (perhaps...it's just an idea).


There is some other stuff over in the psych-forum on this topic all the time.
And Al Schoonmaker wrote a pretty decent article about tilt in the July 2+2 internet magazine (the upper-left corner on the green bar) that may give you some ideas.


I do know one thing though...it is pretty unlikely that you will be a successful, winning player if you continue to behave this way and if the occasional lost hand upsets you this badly.
I mean...Hellmuth and Matusow go pretty ape-[censored] yet seem to win some of the time. But they are the exceptions imo...and you sound like you might even be more anger-prone than them anyway.


I don't have an=y specific advice on how you should get your anger under control. I can just say that if you don't find a way to do it then you are extremely unlikely to find long-term success in poker.

[bobbyi]

[ QUOTE ]
some people liked Zen and the Art of Poker and maybe it could provide you with soime help


[/ QUOTE ]
I [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] this book. Bought it in 2000 or 2001 and have read it many times since.

[lil feller]

[ QUOTE ]
I mean that was really proffettic don't get me wrong but how does one truly do that? DO I have to read "Zen and the Art of Archery" that Howard Lederer is always talking about or what.......

[/ QUOTE ]

Zen and Art of Poker is great.

Unfortunately we can only give you the "what". The how is the hard part and it can't really be explained. I know its easy to say "stop expecting", and thats probably frustrating for you. It is, however, impossible to say "how to stop expecting". Its like a switch that flicks in your head, and one day, you just get it.

lf

[nuclear500]

[ QUOTE ]
Tilt means that you EXPECT to win

[/ QUOTE ]

I need to get this through my thick skull and I might become a better player.

[Snoopy76]

Excellent description of what causes tilting. I find that I am more apt to tilt after winning alot and then begging to lose as oppose to losing immediately upon joining a game. A person trully has to be a blank page when playing and not expect a win or a loss.

I think the best way to gain this state of mind (at least for me) is to play for something other than yourself. I learned a while back that poker is not going to make me rich. It's a very good way to supplement my income and I now play to pay bills, go on vacations, etc. Not only do I benefit from this, but so do my parents, my girlfriend, etc. I have a sticky note on my computer that says 'play for Rebecca' (my girlfriend). It reminds me that I'm not playing for glory or millions, just a steady income. With good play over time I'll make money, over the short run things happen...oh well.

[EasilyFound]

Funny, bad beats usually don't send me on tilt. I am more prone to tilt when fold in a marginal call/fold situation and it turns out that I would have won a monster pot. For example, I was playing a STT, and I folded a small pocket pair in a raised pot. Turned out that I would've flopped quads, and the person who evenntually won the hand had flopped a full house. That kind of siutation is more likely to send me on tilt than if I had flopped a full house and lost to quads.

I am new to poker, and after doing a lot of studying through reading TOP, ITH, the forums etc I had an 80% ROI from playing $2.50 SNG's. Then I had a really bad run, all through lack of discipline, I was acting impulsively, chasing hands etc. I went 7 SNG's without winning.

I decided to let the bar run down to the end every time I had to make a decision, or else count to ten, essentially taking as much time to make a decision as possible, thus eliminating any rash moves. I made 2nd in my last 2 SNG's and the bad run seems to be over. I also found my confidence being affected also had a big effect.

Trev

[SmileyEH]

TYPING IN ALL CAPS USUALLY CALMS ME DOWN