Last night was a low point - I made a decision so ridiculous, so over-the-top bad, that I literally didn't sleep last night thinking about it.

Details of the hand aren't important. The main cause for the poor decision was tilt, obviously, but not tilt by the most obvious definition. The best analogy I've seen so far is a passing "alien hand syndrome" - I acted, but barely remember doing it or why, almost like being controlled by an outside force. The feeling leaves moments later.

What I believe I need to do to conquer this form of tilt is to train myself to wait a few moments before acting, letting any emotional locomotive pass through, and then let logic take over again. "Taking a break" is a common form of tilt control, but obviously won't in this case - my problem is mid-hand!

I'm asking for assistance in accomplishing this. Any resources, techniques, methods, or programs that exist to help people overcome this problem would be useful. Has someone worked on this problem and found a path to improvement? Telling me "just slow down, dummy" is obvious but not particularly helpful.

One great way to take back a piece of psychological control is simply to focus intentionally on one volutary action: it could be breathing intentionally 2 or 3 times. Or it could be focusing on your hand and making a gesture that you've decided in advance will be a habitual and physical cue to regain your composure. It could be lots of things: what matters is the intentionality of the action.

The feeling you describe also makes me want to recommend the novel Red Shirts to you.


-EF

Recognizing what thoughts are a result of your tilt is key. then, once you identify the thought, correct it. Either with some pre planned statement like "make the best decision possible", or corrective breathing, or anything that corrects the tilty thoughts.

For instance, I know that my most common form of tilt is just saying in my head "**** it, i'm calling down." I'm now super aware that that thought is so prevalent when I'm tilting, that when I catch myself thinking that, I instantly re-focus on the hand, the board, ranges, etc.

What are the circumstances of these episodes? Are you stuck at that point or are can this even happen when you have a winning session? Are you involved in hands against players that you dislike and you want to prove yourself to them or badly want to beat them?

All these factors are important to seriously answer your question.

I had episodes where I wanted to force 'comebacks' when I was stuck a couple of hundreds, now I try to remind myself that only 200 down is a positive when only the cards fell bad and that I am likely adding more minus if I try to push it. My tilt scenarios really felt like a fog right behind my forehead and if I feel that now I know I have to take a break/quit it or consider my actions really really good.


If you are able to identify your tilt, I would suggest you ask yourself the necessary questions in that given situation. Essentially stop the autopilot and really carefully think about the hand and what you are trying to accomplish without twisting villain's ranges in the favoured (tilty) outcome (e.g. he MUST have a draw and he MUST muck it if I make this strong bluff).

If you are really capable of identifying your tilt within the hand, I would even suggest to completely avoid bluffing.

I can identify three recent episodes when the adrenaline tilt happened, all three occurred in hands where a huge pot is building up. Since I don't really get involved in a huge pot unless I have a huge hand, I have named it "monster tilt", meaning it happens when I'm holding a monster. What's odd is that my monster tilt has caused different outcomes:

1) I tilt-called a nut flush to a river bet when the board paired. The way the hand when down, there was NO POSSIBLE WAY he had a worse flush or trips. (this is the common frustration tilt call that we've all experienced, I think).

2) I tilt-overshoved a set of tens on the river into the table captain (after he called my stack-a-donk checkraise on the turn), he had actually rivered two pair and would have called a carefully-sized bet. My tilt-overshove convinced him to fold.

3) Last night's beauty - I tilt-FOLDED the overfull in PLO, putting my opponent's pot sized turn raise as meaning quads and quads only. After serious thought, I think part of the reason for my fold was to show off what a boss I was, capable of folding the overfull when obviously beaten. Of course, I wasn't beaten, villain had flopped the nut boat and slowplayed into the third nut boat. 3 seconds of rational thought about the nature of my opponent (not a great Omaha player, unable to fold any full house) would have told me I was ahead about 10 times more often than behind.

Go ahead and try and psychoanalyze that last one. A real beauty.

It's not related to bluffing. Last night I flopped a flush draw+gutshot after raising a suited connector and was calmly able to raise this same opponent's flop donk and make a solid turn barrel into him without a hint of emotion. The difference was I wasn't holding a monster.

Is there a way to identify what thoughts are causing this?

ie, in hand 1 it looks like one of my "**** it, I'm calling down" spots. Does something similar pop into your head during the hand that you can identify and correct?

Different things, probably. I will work harder on self-monitoring.

You should take some notes during a session. Identify all the thoughts that go through your head that lead to you not playing your A-game.

Thoughts like:
"I'm down xxxx."
"I'm running like ****."
"I'm up xxxx, I should leave."
"Why am I so unlucky."
"**** it, I'm calling down."
"man, I can never beat this guy."
etc

You said yourself that once monster tilt takes over, your decisions are generated by emotional reaction rather than analytical decision making. Finding the source of what causes you to lose control is beyond me and best left for someone else, but the cause of this monster tilt is somewhat irrelevant if you know how too control it.

Think of each time you feel monster tilt taking over as an opportunity to practice getting better for the next time you feel it coming. Start small and promise yourself that the next time you have a monster you absolutely must perform some sort of conscious activity, whether it be taking 5 deep breaths before acting, or standing up and doing the chicken dance.

Start imagining before sessions how you will respond when you have a monster. If you can remain focused that monster tilt is taking over, performing some sort activity that you are in control over will help regain power over your decision making. Won't be very easy at first, but use each opportunity to practice and get better for the next time. these concepts can be found in "elements of poker"

From my successful experience, the only way to combat tilt is proper Bankroll management. A meaty 15 buy ins should be well more than enough.

1) Bankroll management
2) Position
3) Position
4) Position
5) Know the math.
6) Suckouts happen to everyone.

I used to suffer pretty hard from this. Sounds crazy but I know the exact feeling.

Two things helped me a ton. First was Tommy Angelo's Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment. It has nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with avoiding tilt and it is the nuts. Second was starting to meticulously plan every hand. Before my thoughts would be like "i have AK, ok I raise. flop is Q high, ok standard cbet here". And because I didn't actually think properly in the beginning of the hand, when an opponent did something to put me to a tough decision later in the hand, I'd be completely unable to decide what to do, and this is usually where the 'alien hand' would rear its ugly head.

If you start planning ahead every single hand you play though, even super standard spots, I think you'll find you don't act impulsively anymore because you've already considered that this situation that puts you on the spot would happen and you've already thought about what to do, or at least what it would represent.

Hand example 2) might not even be too bad. Of course you ring a lot of alarm bells when you demonstrate that you want to shovel in chips, but there are so many non-believers in poker or people who simply play their own hand, so you might not lose too much against most players.

Hand 3) seems really like a bankroll management problem. It is good that you think about your opponent's hand even with a hand very close to the nuts, but you have to go through these types of hands where you think: ok, if I am in his shoes I am never doing that without the nuts, but villains do crazy ****. If you have a sufficient bankroll, you should be able to call here and simply embrace the variance if he shows up with the nuts.

What i teach that works really well is called SBRTA.

Stop - Breath (deep breath)- Relax - Think - then ACT.

Stand behind a friend and play his hand mentally as he plays. You will find that you play much better from this vantage point. Why? Because you are not emotionally and monetarily attached to the pot. Folding big hands becomes clear as day where the hero in the pot will for sure make more calls than he should there. Emotions trump logic everytime until you realize it and put safeguards into place to prevent it from happening.

When you SBRTA, you are attempting to remove yourself from the emotion of that hand as well as the money you are tied to. When u go home you will have no regrets as you played every major decision only after total consideration of all factors and removed yourself from the emotions of the hand as best as possible.

If you do this religiously in game, you will find that your mistakes will be cut down to a minimum (obviously you must know the correct plays etc to begin with), and will play as perfect as you can for your current skill level.

Coming to terms with yourself about the real validity of any single hand is another epiphany that higher level players have conquered. KNowing that any single hand means nothing, and being confident that if you play each hand as if you are playing 1000 hand trials each time is vital.

I'll note that you need to practice any of these techniques on all hands after the flop, not just the tough ones. First, you want to condition yourself to continually do this. You develop a habit that overcomes your emotional response. In addition, you don't want to tip your hand, so by doing this every hand, you're not giving off a tell.

I'll note that I exploit players who fall in this trap by playing faster. If you get the sense someone is speeding up their play, you want to keep the rhythm moving so that they don't think, they just react. Mimicking their mannerisms makes them more comfortable with your play and makes they think their assumptions are actually correct.

Gold.

I'll be honest, I only read Venice and Devin. I think they're spot on.

I was going to add that you seem to have identified exactly WHEN this happens. The rest is just conditioning now. Breathing and intentional thought are key. Form a plan for yourself whenever you see a big pot coming on. For me all it takes is a small mantra in my inner monologue: "Think." You're experienced enough that you should be able to overcome this now that you know it's there. Best of luck.

What aintnilimit said at the end will def help. I had the alien takeover feeling quite often. What helped was each hand/decision I make, I will try not to think of it in a vaccuum. Instead, consciously think "what would I do in this situation if it came up 1000 times". This will force you to be thinking and turn off your autopilot.

You need to design a process, or rather a series of them for figuring out different spots that you can walk through before making a decision.

Choosing when to bet and call will require you to:
- keep count of the pot - check money behind for players involved
- calculate minimum equity to call or combos youère ahead required to value bet
- figure out fold equity when bluffing
- consider how future streets (specific to turn cards) will play and what you will do on different turns and rivers and evaluate what is best

Unrelated, there is merit to taking a break. You were probably tilted before the hand began.