Hello 2+2,

Will I be able to gain control of my tilt? Or will the monkey inside continue
to rear it's spewy head??

8 year part-time professional player, learning to control my tilt. Hoping this thread will hold me accountable in addressing this issue LOL

.25/.50 thru 1/2 NLHE, full ring and short handed

Tilt has creeped into my play steadily the last few years.
I'm hoping to use this thread to keep myself honest and to journal my path, hopefully leading to total control of my tilt.

Pouring thru my results has led me to understand tilt has cost me thousands of $$ over the last few years and the time has
come to address this head-on.

Still winning money. Used to completely crush but: games harder + run bad long time

Worst tilt day was -17 buy ins a few months ago Can you find it below

Graph since new computer:


Wish me luck!

Current strategy:

Read Jared Tendler's book "Mental Game of Poker" again and implement some of his strategies.

Meditation daily (before playing)

Exercise daily (before playing)

Play less tables (4-7 instead 6-10)

Check results less (maybe every few days)

(BTW I'm not a shill for Jared Tendler lol)

Tilt profile:
Jared Tendler breaks down the different types of tilt. I suffer from a few of them LOL

Injustice Tilt
"As the name implies, injustice tilt is about fairness, equity, and justice. While it may seem as if the answer is simply to accept the realities of poker, it’s clearly not that simple or this problem would have already been solved. So, as with all other types of tilt, finding the missing logic is key to unlocking a lasting solution."


Entitlement Tilt
"Entitlement tilt happens when something you believe to be rightfully yours has been taken. Winning is a possession that you already own and when inevitable losses mount, it’s as if you’ve been robbed by someone not deserving of winning—either a regular or a fish.7 Often the first signs after losing are disbelief, shock, or even laughter because you can’t believe what just happened."

Running Bad Tilt
"Running bad tilt is caused by a form of accumulated tilt that develops over days, weeks, months, or years of bad cards. It’s a vicious cycle that builds momentum because variance makes you tilt, which makes you play badly, which makes you tilt more, which carries over to the next day, which means you’ll probably tilt more quickly. Then when you do tilt again, you tilt harder, so your losses pile up even more, which makes you quit early."

Tendler, Jared; Carter, Barry. The Mental Game of Poker: Proven Strategies For Improving Tilt Control, Confidence, Motivation, Coping with Variance, and More (p. 128). Jared Tendler, LLC. Kindle Edition.

First goal is to make it through today without sinking into frustration during my sessions. Small steps. Will update.

Played a few hrs today and was hyper-focused on my mindset more than anything.

Did pretty well not tilting. I ran pretty good though so it wasn't that difficult. I did feel myself starting to boil when I made a thin call down when playing HU vs a LAG-fish.

I 3bet QTdd preflop and flopped Q63 one diamond vs set 6's

I caught myself immediately though and was able to breathe my way back to a calm state.

My problem is that when i'm NOT focused on what my mindset is, tilt sneaks up on me
during the course of most sessions. This is why I'm trying to play less tables. So i have more brainpower to focus on my mindset.

Will be playing a short session tomorrow. Hopefully it goes smoothly as well

I'm also reading the same book at the moment. I have had problems with tilt, laziness, lack of motivation and confidence etc. I totally agree that each of these things affect your bottom line as much as technical leaks.

Have you taken notes on the book and looked at specific areas? Once I've finished reading I think I will do that.

Good luck

Oh great! The book is a few years old now but i find it's still very spot-on to how i'm perceiving this tilt issue. Feel free to post here how you're doing too re: this issue. Would be great to help motivate each other to handle our issues, especially since we're utilizing the same source

I also have had issues with motivation over my career that is mostly fear-based (avoiding losses and tilt).

Yes, I've identified the broad strokes version of how tilt occurs in my game. It's an (accumulated) auto-response to what I perceive as the "unfair-ness" of the game.

I have to learn to manage how I process those "unfair" instances in poker that everyone has to deal with (injustices). The problem for me is I get distracted and focused on the actual game itself and forget about managing my perceptions of how things are playing out.

So "Injustice Tilt" and "Entitlement Tilt", according to Jared, are the two main ways of describing my case, with a side order of "Running Bad Tilt"

Just finished a "heated" session

67/12 fish running super hot against me got me going. It was a real challenge. Was trying to maintain "A" game but got spewy at the end.

I play a lot looser preflop when my game starts to detoriate. Like anything suited and remotely connected becomes "good enough". Then i put in money postflop marginally as well, so any slippage ends up costing me usually and the EV of the situation becomes a non-factor in my decision making.

Last hand
J8 UTG open 4x 6 handed fish on button
30/20 Reg-fish flats MP, fish flats
flop ATx rainbow i bet 7bb into 10bb reg flats
turn blank K i bet biggish
river blank
Board ATxKx
I shove (blocking QJ- even tilted i put that together)
reg-fish snaps with QJo lol

The play is terrible and unnecessary without much history but the point is I was fuming because the 62/13 fish kept showing up with top pair or better against me and was sitting 180bb deep (much of it from about 4 pots with me)

I played about half the session off my game. Also i was annoyed when finished so I checked my results and lost about 1.5-2 buy ins

Small step backward but will try again tomorrow

Just had a good little meditation session. About to play for a couple hrs

Worth noting that i didn't sleep all that well the night prior to yesterday's session when I didn't play "A" game for more than maybe half of session. Feeling fairly rested today so we'll see how it go

Also via Tommy Angelo, I'm going to start paying attention to my posture when playing. It's another thing to think about but I have an alarm app that goes off every 5 min so I can hopefully remember to keep good posture and perhaps it'll help.

Just played 90 min or so and again ran pretty good so wasn't really challenged mentally. Below is the biggest pot I lost and this is def not a fold I make when tilted lol Villain was 24/14 semi-reg

I can def see arguments for shoving turn, or calling river but I felt like I was bluff catching and there are only 3 combos of suited 8x (A8 78 98) that I beat and I lose to way more combos on that river (including 's).



Anyway it was a short session but successful as far as tilt goes and something to try and repeat next time.

I did notice i wasn't getting as irritated when facing repeated aggression from regs (they try to tilt me at this point I'm sure ) so maybe meditation is helping. That is usually one of my tilt triggers

Today was pretty smooth. No major incidents of spew or even urges to spew occured over around 3.5 hrs of grinding.

(hand converter not working right )
Evening session brought another huge fold. Top two on KQTss blank turn blank river vs 3 barrel. I was bb vs sb's 4.5x iso and I call flop and turn, fold to pot size bet on river

IDK if I should be folding this actually but I feel like its either a bluff w blockers (possible bc of turn bet sizing- half pot) or set +

I don't have enough of a read on this guy to know if he's good enough to be 3 barrelling w AQ or JT etc or busted

Bleh

Anyway I folded again making big folds like that is usually a sign that I'm close to "A" game so at least that is a good thing.

Today was another step forward. I hope the meditation is helping. I think it might be.

Today was a serious roller coaster! Here's my graph



1500 hands of jerking back and forth

It was pretty challenging from a mental standpoint. I didn't spew horribly or anything but i would say i was playing "B" and "C" game for most of the day.

I did catch myself a few times needing to slow down and breathe. Also i ended up having like 9 tables going at one point and had to force myself to get off a few of them.

The good news is that I meditated and exercised again before my session. I'm glad to be sticking with that and I again think it's possible that the meditation helped me keep from monkey tilt on a volatile day.

Been breaking even for like 30k hands but here's some rungood:

Back from a small break.

Just played 3 hrs and didn't run well at all. Also PT4 wasn't working correctly so that was pretty tilting. Sometimes i like to review my hands as i go and not all hands were being imported today

Here's a 3 barrel that basically sums up the last 2 years for me LOL
Villain was 38/8 I block AQ and AJ KJ so i thought the river was profitable
also river gives him less set combos



There was another 3bet pot (that didn't import) where i had
AJo in BB and i 3bet vs reg in CO
flop A33 rainbow
I cbet smallish he calls
turn K bringing two on board
I bet 2/3 pot he calls
river offsuit 9
I thought a decent amount of his range here is spades or chops so I checked (debatable but i think a shove is a bluff at that point)
HE SHOVES lol
I tank/puke in mouth call and he has A9 for two pair

There were like two more hands where I lost biggish pots in similar fashion.

In spite of all that I didn't really spew in bad spots and generally stayed pretty calm so that's probably a small sign of progress as far as controlling tilt goes.

Just played a couple hrs. My gf was home so I forgot to meditate. First time i haven't taken the time to do that and sure enough i got a little tilty after this hand:


I think I could have handled him showing up w set or even Aces up (maybe lol) but the whole thing just was very irritating at the time. Going to try meditation before playing another session today.

Felt better after this donation though. I thought his limping range contained a ton of flush draws and AA KK (he's fishyyyy). I think he may have done this bc we have recent history. I figured out that he's been snap-3betting flops when he gets check/raised so the other day i stacked him 3 handed w 97o from the BB on 755 flop. i 4bet and he shoved his A high. That MAY have influenced this hand but:

Here's how I play when I'm tilted lol. This is from today too

Just finished another sesh. Got into a crazy 3 and at times 2-handed game, among others and won a few flips






and here was another vs. a spazzy semi-reg. You know you're known as crazy when they don't respect your OOP 3bets vs their UTG open

Played 4 hrs today, without any significant breaks. Had a few rough spots happen but overall handled them well.

I exercised and meditated before the session again. I've long known that top poker players meditate and the general benefits it has overall in anybody's life but I'm starting to be pretty convinced that whatever happens to the brain during and after the process is making my instantaneous reaction to "bad news" not as severe.

I've described my tilt to friends who don't tilt as "involuntary" before. It honestly feels like my reactions are hard wired sometimes, which has made conquering it quite a challenge. My response to bad beats may be easier to control this way I'm thinking.

Even if it's placebo effect, I'm ok with that too. Whatever works. Blogging about it here is helping too probable

If anyone who meditates or knows a bit about it has any advice or techniques to share, that would be ace.

So today i played 4 hrs. I meditated and exercised (some) but still tilted pretty hard for the first time in awhile

It was about 20 minutes of spew and is the worst episode in awhile. The "good news" is I was able to recover financially for the day. Naturally I'm disappointed that I regressed but I'll keep trying to control it.

3 board ran out 4 straight in 3 consecutive 3 bet pots I was in vs. the same guy, a LAG fish that i had position on in a shorthanded game. The first time I folded river, the other two times I called (was tilted by the 3rd time) and I just snapped lol mainly because I flopped top pair and flush draw vs his bottom pair (he called 3bets with 85s two times that he stacked me) but still managed to lose somehow. GARPH:



So, at this point I'm dealing with some cumulative emotion at the table the surfaces rather easily I'd say and it's no small task to keep it in check.

Here are some interesting hands from when I wasn't in spew mode:

I got this in 116 bb deep because i have a TON of history w this guy and I' know he'd continue with AKo and JJ (maybe even flat all his middling pairs). He's just about the only reg I play vs who snap gets in AKo in a full ring game vs me



On this one i'm getting 5/1 when he raises the turn. I didn't think a rec player would fold his 89, 79 etc bluffs often enough on turn to shove then but when that river hits and he's no longer betting his 87 combos I thought he became extremely polarized to basically T9, J7s and 88 and a lot of turned draws that bricked, so I shoved after tanking. My line also shouldn't make sense from his perspective but he didn't appear the be thinking that deeply lol

I was trying to iso the shortstack here but then got 5 bet shoved on. I don't think there are any bluffs here really so it's QQ+ or AKs and I'm around 35% if you throw a couple of random bluffs in there with my QQ. In bigger games it's more of a fist pump call i think

10.4 k hands of full ring and short-handed since my 'Tilt Control Challenge' began. I'd give myself a "C". Mainly for sticking mostly to my meditation and exercise routine before playing.

Played 4 hrs again today and once again got irked in the middle but not quite as bad as yesterday. Set over set ticked me off today. Pretty routine beats are causing me issues right now (and have been for awhile). I think it's because of the frequency of beats possibly but not sure. Could just be because i've been playing a long time and my brain has had enough of "not being in control of outcomes". Either way I'll need to keep trying to accept the things that happen more peacefully (lol). I'm actually running over EV the last couple weeks, so that's kinda nice.

Graph since challenge started:

Played 440 hands but stopped bc I'm having HUD issues since the recent Windows update. Hate that Windows 10 updates are mandatory. BLEH



Not a lot of tough spots but here's some fun ones

SUCKOUT





I'll normally just betting a lot of rivers for value OOP but J was mother of all bluff cards and he didn't even think about folding on turn so I felt good about being ahead often enough

Made some progress today in terms of controlling anger-based spew. Once again a fish ran super hot against me. He was literally playing 93/7 and also literally won about 8 hands IN A ROW and suddenly had over 200bb in his stack. Many of them of course were vs me.

The hand that irked me: Fish donked KQo vs my KJ on a 9 high board. I had two backdoor draws so i called. Turn was a Q, bringing 3 clubs (i had K clubs) so i called again with two draw. River bricked and he checked his incredibly wide range and i bluffed and he ofc called with top pair lol.

That was the last hand of a run where MY stack went from 200 bb to around 110, all vs the fish lol.

Anyway i was very angry at that point but I caught myself. I had Q3spades under the gun and wanted to raise it and start spewing but I stopped myself I just folded, took a few breaths, calmed down and a few minutes later ended up with 240bb after the fish cooled off lol.

Yesterday, this hand happened that set me off I spewed a little but didn't go out of control for too long. Notice the size of the stacks and therefore the magnitude of the beat lol

almost 14k hands since my challenge started. Haven't been playing a ton lately but have had a succession of small winning days. Can't complain:



Here's a hand i enjoyed. Small pot in a blind war VS a pretty loose regular. I thought I'd bet the flop with my great blockers on Q high board. It's a board that smacks his range so cbet is debatable I'd say because I kind of need a perfect runout to do what i did.

Turn i knew he'd be calling most of the time and my intent was to bet a lot of rivers. Total brick comes and I think I need to bet to fold his pair + str8 draw region.

Almost 18k hands into my tilt control challenge.


I did pretty well for a few days with tilt control til yesterday when runner runner straights against my huge hands took its toll on me one too many times.

Today was rough too with beats. I played decent but the suckouts came fast and furious, especially at the end of the session. I controlled the spew and calmly quit the session. Couple hands:

DIDN'T NOTICE THE BOARD PAIRED HERE UGGGGGGGG lost and extra 74bb



This same thing happened twice vs fish overplaying their hand: