I've been struggling with a minor form of tilt for about as long as i can remember. Most days/weeks I don't play a single pot that I feel was altered by the emotions i was feeling at the table, however tonight I felt like I gave away about an entire buy in due to playing unnecessary spots, and I'm still quite upset about it. So I decided what better use for a blog that to vent away your life issues.
The size of a pot will never affect how upset I get over a hand. A $300 pot and $2,500 pot can get me the same high and the same low depending on the situations. I am also at a point in my poker career where bad beats just don't phase me. You hit a 1-outer on the river for $1000? who cares, because i know I got it in good and that is my goal.
That being said, what does get me, is when I make an error. I don't care if I run a bad $20 bluff into a $25 pot in a 1/3 game, or make a horrible $600 hero call in a 2/5 game. If when the hand is over I can look at the hand unbiased and feel that i made a mistake, or passed up on a +ev spot, it takes me a bit to get over it.
I think the logic behind it is that i know I'm better than the people i play with. I know that when i sit down I'm the favorite to leave with all the money, and no matter how well they play if I'm on my AA game, they can't win. So when i make stupid errors, I'm allowing them to have a chance to profit off of me in a way they should never have.
Tonights session
Tonight This leak of mine came out and cost me a couple of bills i just didn't need to lose.
Playing in my local casino, our big game only runs at night. It usually starts around 8pm and ends around 6am. The big game can sometimes be plo, but it is usually 2/5 NLHE. Which means that if I plan on putting in a session it's important that i be there by 7:30pm with my name on the list so i can maximize my time in this game, thus maximizing my hourly win rate for the week.
Tonight this did not happen. I had to go out today so i got up early to meet somebody. when I got back home at 5pm i was exhausted so crawled into bed and set my alarm. at 7:15 my alarm went off, and I hit the snooze button. I did this 3 more times until i decided that I just didn't want to get out of bed and I turned my alarm off. I ended up waking up at 11pm, rushed to the casino and played in the 1/3 game until 1:30am when i finally got called for the 2/5 game.
At this point i was pretty upset at myself. By me not having the self discipline to get up when i was supposed to I have now missed 5.5 hours of action at this table. Am unable to grab a seat that has position on the spot, and a bunch of action players have already left broke. To top that off i made a very Iffy C-bet in a 3bet pot at 1/3 that i was not happy with and was already stuck $80.
At this point I probably should have stopped myself, realized that it was only going to spiral downhill from here and walked around for 20minutes. Instead I sat down and within 3 hands i picked up Queens on the big blind. Button opens, i 3bet and he 4bets. Right here i know I'm behind. This player is way to tight to be 4betting anything but AA/KK but i stick in the extra $75 anyways. flop comes 9 high he cbets and i fold. Boom! $75 down the toilet for no reason at all. literally just handed it away. I try and convince myself that most players at this table lose $500 there, and I'm probably right. If I'm going to pat myself on the back for not being as bad as them I've got no chance tho. So now I'm really mad at myself going into this session.
Over the next little bit I played pretty good poker. Scooped some medium pots, and picked some well timed 3bet spots. I was still a bit upset at myself and it showed by me making some fairly loose calls from blinds/LP in multi way pots which just got me a little more tilted at myself as it was clearly cutting some dollars off of my hourly.
That's when it went downhill. I picked up pocket 4's in a 3bet pot and decided to cold call in position. Why? I can't tell you. My implied odds were probably close, but in no way was it the correct call. actually it was probably a very trivial fold. Anyways it ended up turning into a very odd pot and I made a river hero call on a J952Jddssx board and he was turning a 5 into a bluff and won the pot. This pot ended up costing me $315. While outside of the $65 i lost by cold calling I'm happy with how I played every street. It's just knowing that i shouldn't have even put myself in that position to be losing a pot that big.
From there I continued to spew by making loose calls and folding my second pairs, and top pair weak kickers in small pots. I turned a couple bottom pairs and draws into bluffs and was still playing a +ev game but i definitely not maximizing my profit in the game.
From there i went on to play a giant 3 way all in pot With my KK vs AA vs AK for a whole $700. This pot really tilted me. It tilted me for two reasons. First, i probably could have found the hero fold. I was down, and upset and stuck it in there without giving myself enough time. More importantly is the $315 i lost earlier would have been on my stack at that point. Meaning AA would have had me covered for 2 whole buy-ins making his 6bet much scarier and leaving me more room to make the hero fold.
After that hand i went for a walk and cooled down. Sat back down and played some great poker. I made a giant A high hero call at the end of the night to turn my night around and left with a $35 profit after 6 hours of play.
In the end I'm just really frustrated that I allowed myself to continually have things spiral downward and hurt my play all night long. Not waking up, making a bad C-bet at 1/3, to making a terrible preflop call with qq, to getting involved in a bad spot with 44, leading me to not making the hero fold with Kk. It felt like it all spiraled downwards costing me from having what very well could have been a $800-$1,200 night. This is something i have to work on and am not quite sure how I am going to go about yet. Tomorrow is a new session though!
Last edited by yoyobo; 08-22-2015 at 08:29 AM.