The True Origin of TILT

[digdeep]

Tilt: it’s true Origin?

For the purpose of this essay, I will define tilt as the loss of emotional composure and self-control such that it causes irrational and incorrect decision making that negatively affects one’s poker game. While all players struggle with some form of tilt at some point in their poker career, this emotional hiccup can be debilitating and severely destructive to one’s game. The question that many therefore ask is: How can I overcome tilt and prevent it from interfering with my game?

Tilt can only be overcome if one truly understands its origin. Many wrongfully assume that experiencing bad beats and incurring a long run of bad cards are the causes of tilt. This is a fallacy that must be recognized and dismissed. Incurring bad beats and long runs of bad cards are triggers of tilt, but not causes. On tilt, players feel frustrated, disappointed, angry, exasperated, helpless, etc. all because they have LOST one or many hands. Losing can therefore be identified as the primary TRIGGER of tilt, whether in the form of bad beats or bad cards.

The question one must therefore ask is why does one go on tilt from losing? Losing is a natural part of any game, and most players realize and accept losing as a natural part of poker. Consequently the cause is not losing, but losing when one has EXPECTED to win. It is a player’s EXPECTATIONS that ultimately cause tilt. Unfulfilled expectations that arise when one loses are the basic cause of the disappointment, frustration, exasperation, anger, etc. that take form in what we know as tilt.

Ultimately, one must address his/her expectations to fully understand, accept, and overcome tilt. Most players’ expectations are based on limited and incomplete information. Not realizing and accepting the possibility of loss when one looks down at AA, is a dangerous thing, and this is where one must correct his/her thinking if he/she wants to maintain self-control and emotional composure. Lack of complete understanding causes players to expect to win with strong hands like AA, while ignoring the possibility of loss. Even the strongest hands under the most advantageous of conditions are susceptible to loss. For example, AA heads up is an 85.3% favorite, but against nine opponents it is only a 31.1% favorite. Flopping trips and losing to a straight, filling a straight and losing to a flush, completing a full house and losing to quads, are all tough beats, but they happen.

Knowing that hands have only relative strengths is important to understanding that the best hand pre-flop will not always be the best hand at the river. Knowing and accepting the concept of relative strength can be critical to eliminating unrealistic expectations of one’s hand, and therefore eliminate the severe unexpected disapointment that sends one on tilt. This is why most of the successful veteran poker players know and adhere to the probabilities of hands, and the concept of relative strength. Every possible hand outcome has a probability, and understanding, knowing, and accepting these probabilities is vital to maintaining one’s poise and consistent solid play. In the long run however, the stronger hands win, and the weaker hands lose. Maximize the value of your strong hands under favorable circumstances, and minimize your losses of strong hands under unfavorable conditions. Because tilt and the relative losses are experienced from losing with strong hands not weak hands.

[Malarky]

That was awesome.

[BBill]

Very thought provoking post, my readings on this four letter word also brought to light Dr Al's article on Cardplayer Tilt Article <<< which explains how to cope with, create and even exploit it.

Although as the title of your post is the "Origin of tilt" (I did not capitalize this word as you did because this word should not be given that kind of respect, as it is the nemisis of poker players) I think I "dug-deeper" in my post called "Musings of a deranged mind" which is a few pages down in this forum.

bbill

[Helland]

Good post.

[dsm]

[ QUOTE ]
most players realize and accept losing as a natural part of poker.

[/ QUOTE ]

When they're away from the table maybe, but not necessarily during the heat of battle (this especially applies to rookies, as well as recreational players, and even longtime recreational players).

[ QUOTE ]
It is a player’s EXPECTATIONS that ultimately cause tilt.

[/ QUOTE ]

This sounds like another type of trigger to me, as opposed to "thee origin."

By the way, I've never met a lowball player who "expected" to win a hand. Quite the opposite. I wish a had a buck for every time I heard something like this:

"I knew I was gonna lose. I just f___king knew it."

-dsm

[digdeep]

BBill,

I appreciate your response, and I thought your series on tilt was extremely interesting. One common theme that we both touched on was the concept of winning, and players' need and desire to win. The articles by Dr. Schoonmaker were excellent as well, thank you for the link.

Tilt is capitalized in this post because it IS the nemesis of poker players, and because it must be given a tremendous amount of respect if one hopes to overcome and prevent TILT. It is imperative that one acknowledge and respect tilt as the destructive force that it is in order to realistically and honestly work to prevent its occurrence, and cope with its destructive nature. It draws a parallel to your concept of addiction; if one is unable to recognize and come to terms with the power of an addiction, whether it be drugs, alcohol, poker, sex, etc. that person will remain in denial, and unrealistically assume that he/she can CONTROL the addiction. Only when a person has realized that he/she has lost control, which is the very nature of an addiction, can one begin to work to rid him/herself from this controlling force that dictates one's actions and choices, the addiction itself.

Thus, this is the reason that I do not believe that tilt is a function of addiction. Addictions have their own origins, most often people are seeking to cope with some psychological ailment, or simply trying to fill the eternal void that few ever comprehend. Whatever the cause of addiction, it is much more complex than what I have sought to discuss: Tilt, which is caused by unrealistic expectations based on limited and incomplete information.

Addiction and tilt do however share many similar elements, the primary element being a player's denial of reality, and the loss of control and perspective. Denial of reality with respect to tilt, specifically applies to the relative strength of hands, and the probability of winning, which is ignored by many players and thus creates one's unrealistic expectations based on incorrect or incomplete information and understanding. The loss of control that begins to dictate decision making is similar to addiction, but occurs in poker from prolonged stress created by unfulfilled expectations, unrealistic expectations.

[kgrad5]

i suppose this thread is as good a place as any to make this post to stop me from going on tilt..
AAAQAAARRRGHHH today has been bad beat day of the year, QQ going down to 77 when he backdoors a straight, board double pairing when i have trips, aasdfl;kajsd;flkajf every possible suckout has happened today and im ready to tilt bigtime hehe, hopefully this helps

[Danenania]

Winning can also cause tilt. Sometimes when I've been crushing at a table I start to play too aggressively. Overconfidence is a form of tilt.

[digdeep]

I agree, as I have encountered the same thing. The question that I have had to ask myself is: Is this a form of tilt? Are you making decisions based on emotions: an emotional high? Or have you just lost focus, concentration, and discipline because you are winning? If it is an emotional aspect, I would argue, for the sake of my expectation theory, that your expectations have become unrealistic, and you now expect to win with any hand? The winning was the trigger, but your unrealistic expectations, based on nothing, no sound information, is the basic cause of this tilt.

[StellarWind]

The root of most tilt is ego. We are emotionally invested in out self-image as good poker players. We tend to tilt when that image is threatened. The very individual nature of self-image causes the variety of personal tilt triggers.

Weak players lack a sense of "the long run". They are very vulnerable to overreacting to the results of a single hand, group of hands, or session because they do not evaluate success using long-term results. This is the poker equivalent of a small child who lives only in the present, ignoring past experience and future consequences.

As a player improves he uses larger blocks of time to evaluate his play. Unfortunately, intellectual understanding of the long run does not easily equate with emotional understanding. Reading about variance in a book does not fully negate the emotional impact of running bad for a sustained period of time. Players learn about negative variance through experience. Inexperienced players suffer doubly during a bad run: 1) they do not really understand how bad short-term variance can be and 2) they lack a long track record of winning results and wonder whether they are actually unlucky or just not a winning player. Frustration builds during a bad run and can erupt over any "last-straw" trigger.

The mature player eventually breaks the connection between results and self-image (so I'm told [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]). This might seem like the end of tilt but it is not. We measure the quality of our play through our own analysis and the praise, criticism, and ridicule of others. The ultimate conclusion of separating play and results is the ability to tilt over a pot that was luckily won because of poor play. My experience at the bridge table is that this easily happens. A player that would never get upset over unlucky card placement will often crumble when a partner or opponent points out a glaring error in a successful play.

Personally I have to be very careful when I badly misplay a poker hand and realize it. That is a moment of great danger for me. Several times I have had to end sessions because I couldn't let go of my errors.

It does go back to managing expectations. Good players should expect to:

1. Lose pots, sessions, and torunaments where they were the favorite.

2. Endure long runs of unfavorable results.

3. Make terrible errors from time to time.

4. Be publicly humiliated by real or perceived errors.

Point #4 goes back to the original topic of ego. Those who are completely self-assured do not care what others think about them as players, but most people are extremely vulnerable to the opinions of others. Many players exploit this by creating tilt with their tongues.