Note to mods: Maybe this belongs in the "psychology" section of the forum, but personally I don't frequent there, I don't know who does, and I'm mostly interested in responses from people who play live cash games, so I'm putting it here.
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Personally what I have in mind has nothing to do with tilting specifically, but more generally times where you realize that you're no longer playing your A-game (not necessarily even playing badly), and should call it quits.

Tilting however is the most obvious example; you're tilting for whatever reason, you even realize it, you tell yourself that you're tilting and should just get up and leave right now, but still you don't. Why not? Because you're in denial. Even if you have a stop-loss, if you're already tilting you should just stop before you get there and save yourself however many BB's/buy-ins. A stop-loss is basically just a crude, but tactile and therefore effective way of dealing with denial.

The same kind of thing can also happen when you're having a really good session, and are up for a "significant" amount of money, though this really varies from person to person. In any case, it can result in sub-optimal play of various kinds, and the element of denial is still there and should be addressed.

The question is, what do you do to recognize and overcome denial? And I don't necessarily mean just forcing yourself to get up and leave, but to actually be able to logically consider whether or not you should continue playing, how to get yourself back in the fresh mindset you had when you arrived, or simply to decide it's best to leave and come back tomorrow.

The "easiest" solution would be, once you see your in denial, you just get up and leave. But the nature of denial makes it difficult to do that.

Lastly, for what it's worth, I don't have in mind (at all) problems that are severe, like your classic tilting spew session steamer. I'm interested in the subtle change of your state of mind that causes you to lose 20BB here, another 20 there.

For me, as a starting point, once I start to feel like my emotional state (whether good or bad) is effecting my game, I get up, wash my face, have a cigarette, just anything to refresh myself and come back to the table with a clean outlook. Around 70% of the time it works, and actually is very effective. Around 30% of the time it doesn't work, I end up in a very subtle state of denial about where my head is at, and it ends up costing be a bit here, a bit there.

So, for those who are familiar with the difficulty of the paradox that is denial, what solutions have you found?

Pretty much the definition of tilt is not being able to logically consider things through denial. In the widest sense of the word, well over half the players at any table are on tilt as soon as they sit down because they believe they can win money or break even when the reality is most won't.

I'll leave the thread open a bit, but I expect a bunch of posts basically saying to force yourself to cool down either at the table or by leaving the table.

Focus more on the other players at the table and less on your state of mind. You can take a break while you are at the table for 15 or 20 min by tightening up preflop substantially and just watching the action. When you start making decisions based on reads and tangible info, then you can get back in the game.

I start playing like a loose/passive fish when I'm on tilt so I've made it a point to be super tight for a while after I lose a big hand.

This is awesome.

It's important to realize where your tilt is coming from and have remedies in place that specifically address that issue.

For example, most of my tilt comes from the classic card dead/boredom/watching people make terrible decisions when I don't have the opportunity to capitalize. Watching people play terribly against other players while I muck for 2 hours is way more frustrating than taking a beat.

I keep a doc on my phone and my tablet with some of my favorite poker thinking, I read 2+2, sometimes I watch poker on my phone. I do this because if the game in front of me is boring/doesn't make sense, at least I can engage it in an interesting way.

Whenever you are me posting constantly on 2+2 at night, I'm probably card dead.

However, this remedy doesn't work if I am tilting for other reasons, and I have to recognize that and have another solution in place. For example, reading about good poker or watching good poker doesn't help if I'm trying to play good poker and nothing is working out.

Fair enough, I expected more or less the same, though was hoping a few may have actually had some actually clever insight.

Maybe I should have at least tried to specify very cleary at the beginning of the post:

THIS THREAD HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TILTING OR DEALING WITH TILT.

IT IS CONCERNED ONLY WITH THE PARADOX THAT IS DENIAL, and particularly how to escape it, with reference to poker, since this is obviously why we are here.

e.g.; if you say you "force" yourself to, for example, get up and leave, that is not helpful, since the very nature of denial effectively negates your power of will to follow through on what you, on a certain level, know you probably SHOULD do.


A more helpful idea might be something like: "set a timer to go off every hour or so, perhaps it will be enough to bring you back a step and let you reassess yourself."

Personally I think this is a pretty mediocre idea, but at least it's specific.

The point is to get ideas for ways to introduce that OUTSIDE ELEMENT, an objective and tactile thing, that will allow one to escape the state of denial in its most basic form.

Another sufficiently specific idea would be: smoke some weed. Personally I don't smoke weed, and it probably has it's own pitfalls, but for the right kind of person it could definitely serve as the perfect "wake up call", and is definitely, IMO, an excellent way of dealing with denial generally.

I've been playing full time for 3 weeks now, usually 3-4 10+ hour sessions per week, but I've managed to cut a few sessions after 3-5 hours when I realized I wasn't playing well.

What's been working for me is taking a short 5-10 minute walk every 2 hours or so. Assess what you've been doing that is working, what isn't working, make sure you can articulate a plan for the next hour. If you find yourself struggling to summarize the session and unable to verbalize a plan, then rack up and leave. Granted, it's a lot easier to book a small loss when you know you'll be back the next day.

Edit: The purpose of getting up and walking isn't necessarily to assess mental state, I primarily do it because sitting for 8+hours is really terrible for you. The chance to unpack mentally is just an added bonus.

This gave me a pretty decent idea, which is to actually get up and go write down whatever I'm thinking about at the moment. I somewhat regularly will take some notes or something before or after a session, so I know what my thinking looks like on paper when I'm in a good state, and clearly assessing my game.

Writing things out often helps me to reach conclusions (I would say of about half the 'hand review' threads I start to post here, I end up figuring out what I should or shouldn't have done by the time I've finished, so they don't get posted); I should be clearly able to assess myself either during or after writing. The very process of writing will likely be enough to either correct my mental state or make me realize that it's time to go.

That's actually perfect, I think it should work brilliantly, I'm very pleased, thanks for sparking that for me.

It is also really important to know that the "denial" of tilt is based in cognitive dissonance, where your expectation of a situation is out of whack with the reality of the situation.

There is book called "The Zen of Poker" that is absolutely terrible for actual poker strategy but as cheesy as it is, I still find maxims like "sometimes it's someone else's turn to win" and "nobody says 'tonight I am going go fold cards for hours' but you should anyway" helpful when things are just dire.

Good job. You are already well ahead of 95% of winning players, note winning players.

FYP.

If you have the discipline to do this at fixed periods of time, it will definitely help. Many diet plans have a similar concept where you write everything you eat, no matter how bad or much. Just about everyone fails because people don't lose discipline in one area and keep it up in everything else. If they lose discipline, they lose it in many areas simultaneously. Compared to eating those 4 donuts, failing to write them down is mentally not as bad.

For me, when it gets late and the play slows to a crawl, that tilts the hell out of me and if I don't catch myself I start playing too loose too aggressive as if I have to wrench everything out of every hand because it feels like we are playing 2 hands an hour.

Bad beats, jerks, other things don't tilt me, but slow play does. I'm getting better at catching myself and taking a walk or just going home, but it's still a challenge.

I would highly recommend against taking a 'break' at the table. Poker is a game where 1 bad decision leads to others frequently. This can go for any facet of a bad decision... Calling when you should fold, raising when you should call and even calling or folding when you should be raising. If you sense that you're off your game I would highly recommend not playing until you feel like you've made it back to a good solid place. It doesn't take that much to have a bad decision have a 100+BB plus swing on your overall results just because you made a tiny mistake that you couldn't recognize at the time. Just my two cents.

Just know that walking away doesn't solve anything.

Another form of "walking away" is called running away.

Run Forrest, Run!

Lol donkatruck for whatever reason people like playing games with $2 chips here...watching dbags struggle to count out $20 for a raise makes me want to chop someone in half.

A drop in serotonin levels is associated with tilt. Walking and running are associated with increasing serotonin levels. Just sayin.

There's a definite problem in poker (and life!) of self-assessment.

How do you know when you're not at your best?? It's not like you have a gauge you can check: Right now I'm operating at 75% capacity.

At the poker table I've been trying to formulate ways to self-diagnose; concrete tells that indicate I need to get up and walk around.

I really like the post earlier about having a plan for the next hour. If you can't figure out a strategy, you need to go home. For me I've been trying things like, always know the exact amount in the pot. If I can keep on track of it, I have adequate focus. If I look down and am spazed out about the exact action (even if I'm out of the hand!) it might be time to take a walk.

The other problem is that it's perfectly normal for focus to wane and wax. I think it would be perfectly fine to create a system that takes this into account: Play hyper focused for one hour; then let your mind wander for 30 minutes and play super tight; then get up and walk around; then repeat the cycle. Or it might be something like, play super focused for 30 minutes, then listen to a song on your headphones and check out for 5 minutes, then repeat.

Assuming you are aware when something is not right it is a solvable problem, sometimes quickly sometimes slowly. There are many forms of denial and I am usually on some level of tilt if I am in denial. Much of tilt is denial of the truth such as entitlement tilt, and raging against variance which in reality is our best friend. Here are a couple of things I do regularly:

1) I keep a c-game profile in a note on my phone. If I feel like I am getting tilty I pull it out even though I may still think I am not on tilt (Denial). Looking at the notes is overcoming the denial. I recognize the signs of when I am off emotionally quicker due to working on that skill. My notes have a list of what I think such as "idiots should not win", "That bluff was good and should not have been called", "I was an 80% favorite", etc. Next I list how my play is affected "play too many hands", "limp and then call raises hoping to hit a monster with the wrong hands", "Call with improper odds", "Get stubborn and don't lay down", etc.

Just looking at the above list often makes me laugh when I do it. It breaks the denial. It usually puts me in a great state of mind when I see how absurd my thinking is.

2) Writing. I do a written cool down after every session in my poker journal. I do it in my car before I leave the casino parking lot. Much of these problems are emotions that accumulate. Writing it down clears it out. I also do a written warm up before each session where I write out my session goals. Part of this warm up is to go back and read the cool down of my last few sessions. If I am having a tilt problem then a goal would be "Look at c-game profile as soon as I suspect something is off mentally".

Everyone tilts and everyone has denial. I think if you take poker seriously it is very important to learn how to change at the table. It may be that you just push yourself to play better for another 30 minutes before leaving. However, the root of the problem has to be solved and for me a non acceptance of variance as the poker engine is often there.

This will likely sound like mumbo jumbo to some but I can't imagine playing without a written warm up and cool down. Putting things in writing eliminates denial.

When tilting hard in the past, I was aware and not in denial, if I continued to play its because my emotions had overtaken my reasoning. In other words I would say **** it and not care about the consequences.

Being present is in my opinion the ultimate slayer of tilt.

me too. slow play and a lengthy run of dead ( 2+ hours of not one playable hand ) cards tilts me. After a while, K9off under the gun looks pretty good. If it does, then it would probably be a good time to leave.

+1 to this. I get up and walk around at every 55th minute of the hour (unless I'm surging obv) in order to increase blood flow, get fresh air, think about what's been happening at my table, and most importantly to assess whether or not to keep playing. It's a lot easier to make the decision to leave when you're physically away from the table because you can think about things a bit more objectively.

As for denial: Since we are refusing to accept the hard truth that we are not playing our A game, the best way (I have found) to combat this requires you to think about WHY you are in denial (drove an hour to casino and just want to play, trying to get unstuck, ego-driven decision making, etc). What is it that is forcing us to ignore all the signals that we are not playing our A game?

As a casual player with a wife and newborn, I get so few opportunities to play long poker sessions that when I do have the ability to play long hours, I will usually play long hours just because I can and won't get another chance for a while (regardless of how well I'm playing). Now I know this eats into my overall winrate but as a casual player I'm not to stressed about it, I just try to enjoy myself while I play.

Actual title is "Zen and the Art of Poker" and it's one of my favorite old school poker books. I still occasionally think about the analogy where you're on a sport's team, all dressed and ready to play, but have to sit on the bench and watch, because "sometime's it's just somebody else's turn to play". I also really love the phrase "use folding as a weapon" where you "bludgeon your opponents over the head with inaction". So zen...

Again not the best strategy book, but for mental game fundamentals it's A+.

I do two things to 'keep it real' and avoid lying to myself. One is to verbalize the evil thoughts in my head. Just say that the dealer sucks and is th cause of all your problems. We know that this is absurd but if you think it you may believe it a little. If you say it out loud it sounds like crazy talk from the fish and it makes me laugh at myself and laughing reduces stress and washes away the annoyance of being card dead or getting rivered. I always say nice hand after getting rivered and then announce that I am the only person who has ever been rivered and that the entire table should feel sorry for me based on this seminal moment in poker history. Again. It usually gets a laugh and helps me to refocus.

THe second thing is to have a support group. Buddies who don't mind hearing you vent. Other players who you can review lines and hand histories with who you trust and respect. Only deal with the ones who will tell you that 'betting three streets with as5d on a tja79hhh board is probably not a good idea.' The problem with this system is you have to entertain their stories which can get boring and even tilting...........

Like this part.

Don't like this part.

Poker buddy is like a drinking buddy, sooner or later, one of you will drink too much or quit drinking.

That's why I drink with strangers .

Um.. Who has ever played too much poker? Or quit? What crazyland do you live in?

My tilt comes in the form of "if I double up, I'll be even/up/close to even." And then I proceed to look for places to get it in, intentionally ignoring fold equity.

Pretty much as soon as I notice that I'm thinking this, I get up from the table, even if I've been dealt a hand, and quit for the day, or take 30 minutes away from the table.