There has been a lot written on poker and tilt- especially tilt caused by negative factors at the table. Tilt caused by running bad, by being card dead, by the man sitting next to you at the table with breath that smells like sour milk (personally this might tilt me more than any 2 outer).

But I haven’t come across much discussion about a form of tilt that I know most of us encountered on a (hopefully) frequent basis: winner’s tilt.

We all know the feeling, you are running good and playing good, crushing your opponents with a huge stack of chips and those who try to “made a stand” against you just get stacked. You’re the table captain and everyone knows it. This is power poker- this is what Doyle was talking about! You feel relaxed and confident, maybe even a little smug. You guys better watch, you tell yourself, because finally my results are catching up with just how good of a poker player I am…

Stop!! These are the times we are most likely to make some costly mistakes! These are the moments we need to really watch out for!

Winner’s tilt, as I’ll define it, is being too confident in your changes of winning, in your ability to outplay your opponent’s. It’s assuming you will hit your hand (even when the odds are saying you won’t) just because you’ve been hitting your hands all night. It’s being overly optimistic about the chances of you making the right play and blissful ignorant towards the possibility of making the wrong one.
What are some of the defining characteristics of winner’s tilt?
It’s different for each us. For me, I often overestimate my implied odds like:

-Like putting in too much money preflop with small pocket pairs.
-Or calling with gutshot draws on the flop even when, if I was to stop and think about it, I know my nitty opponent wouldn’t stack off even if I do hit my straight.
-Or being a little too trigger happy with my semi-bluffs.
-Occasionally, (and luckily I’m getting this one under control somewhat) I’ll make very bold double and triple barrels against opponents I somehow deem “deserve” to be double and triple barreled.

Having a big stack at the table can be a powerful weapon. But it also can be seen as mirror unto the blind spots of our incessant egos.

I once played against a guy at a 1-2 game at the Monte carlo in Vegas. At 1 AM he had a stack of about 250 and was playing very solidly. In fact, he was the only player I was trying to avoid. By 7 AM he had a stack of around 1000, but somehow, over the course of winning all that money, he had decided that c/calling three streets vs me with holdings as weak as Middle pair top kicker was a good strategy. His winner’s tilt ended up costing him most of the money he won.
From an EV standpoint, when faced with the prospect of playing too nitty as a result of running bad and playing too loosely as a result of running good, I’d take the former any day of the week.

In hindsight, one of my proudest moments at the poker table in recent months is when, while I was still crushing a 6 handed 1-2 game (being up over 600) I decided to quit the game. Why? I just wasn’t playing well, and somehow, winning all of my hands only felt like it was reinforcing the bad moves I was making. So I got up and left.

What’s your winner’s tilt? It’s not always so easy to say and often it will change with your mood and the players you are playing against.
But ignorance can be a costly excuse. So- watch out, winners!

My winners tilt is that i feel entitled to win money from players i know are bad and dont have half of my poker knowledge. And when i am winning those feelings can be even stronger and pushed to be taking more space when i run over the table.

I have gotten much better at this, been working on it regurarly the last year or so. But i find that it is a process that it still going- especially when i am facing horrible runbad periods and those bad players running like jesus in the same period.

My big two symptoms of winner's tilt are:

1) playing a hand lazily, not thinking hard enough about it through overconfidence

2) letting people off the hook when I have a big hand so that I don't get sucked out on and lose my win. Like I I have a set and the board's drawy, I'll GII too fast instead of playing it optimally.

When these things happen I either take a break and refocus or just rack up.

Some of the things you mentioned in your OP may be winner's tilt but can also be optimal strategy. For instance, I will push my semibluffs more often because people give me more credit when I'm up. If out bluffs work more, we should exploit it.

For example, one day I was up $800 sitting on a 1.1k stack. I see the flop with T9 on a QJx board (no flush draw), an unsophisticated player cbets, and I check raise him big. He thinks for a minute and says "2 pair?" and folds. This would've been a horribly incorrect play if I had been losing. But when we're winning, we can often get them to fold all of their non-monster range when we semibluff.

So basically, when winning, we should open up, and do it smart. If we tighten up to lock up a win, or we open up recklessly, it's time to reorient or just rack up.

I can relate to this. I was playing 1/2, and was up $300 in the matter of 45 minutes crushing the table with squeeze plays, and big bluffs. I got cocky, and decided to re-reaise all in, in a bad spot and got snap called. After reading this thread, it was a good lesson to keep my mind in check when I'm in the green.

this whole discussion is pretty results oriented imo, esp the response above me

If trying to become aware of our tendencies that cost us from making more money is results oriented, than yeah, I guess you can say I'm trying desperately to be results oriented

Your point is well taken though. There is a difference between running a big bluff that's not successful and blaming it on the fact that you are up and trying to be more mindful of the ways winning (and the mindsets we slip into while we are winning) affect our game.

Because there are winning mindsets and losing mindsets and breakeven mindsets (and probably a few dozen other mindsets) that all act as filters in which we experience our play.
The best players are able to minimize these filters, and through doing this, are able see and act more clearly, while bad players are hardly aware they even exist.

In the grand scheme of things is winner's tilt costing most of us as much money as the tilt that comes with a big downswing? probably not.

but if you think of your game as enormously complex machine, we all need to do a little fine tuning once is a while

Some great points in here, Donderstron.

I sometimes find myself playing scared towards the end of a winning session. There is one thing that i've started to do when I have the biggest stack at the table that helps a lot with this.

If I'm afraid that I might begin to play on scared money (and I have the table covered), I never count my own stack at the table- I just count the stacks of my opponents.

Somehow, counting my own stack allows me to view the chips as mine own. Tallying an actual number on my stack solidifies my win (before its technically happened) and allows an element of possession to creep in which can cause me to play scared, or greedily, or rashly.

When I'm just tallying up my opponents stack, my win is much more abstract (both numerically and in my heart) and than I'm allowed to focus on the action at hand.
Give it a try and let me know if it works for you!

Obviously this only works when you cover the second biggest stack by a noticeable gap.

Once I was up $1300 and cashed out because I was tired. I tilted on the way home and bought a quarter pounder from McDonald's. I felt awful.

^ Same thing but for a different reason, I think.

A 10-egg omelette cost me about $1 if I make it myself, a steak cost me about $5 if I make it myself. Too often when I win I buy Chinese food the next day for about $15. I don't mind that I ate it, I hate that I spent $15 on one meal.

The McDonald quarter pounder tilt is more spewy than check/calling three streets down with 6 high.