So, I am not sure this is the right board for this and I apologize in advance if it is not. I did a basic search for threads about it and came up empty. I had a pretty embarrassing moment last night after losing about a buy-in in 45 minutes of 8/16. My girlfriend was with me and saw me fuming and basically demanded at the table that we leave (we can leave aside for the moment that she could have handled the situation better...because we both know that we both could have handled things better.)

My general question is this: How do you avoid tilt? I have gotten better at it over the years - generally at least being okay by the time I get home and not tilting off chips very often (I did not tilt off chips last night even though I had gotten pretty angry pretty quickly.) We all know that LHE has a ton of variance and we all know that sometimes things go monumentally wrong.

What do people here do to keep their emotions in check? What do you do when you find yourself getting close to the "I can't take this anymore" edge?

Moved from poker theory - I think it probably belongs here.

Personally, I have tried a lot of things, some have worked, some have not.

* buddhist principles (I'm not buddhist, but they help. mindfulness, meditation, action follows thought, etc). I recommend Tommy Angelo's series: http://tommyangelo.com/the-eightfold...enlightenment/

* exercise and frequent breaks. When I was playing online a lot, I'd try to get up once an hour for a few minutes. Do a set of bench presses or pullups. Every 3 hours I'd take a short walk, get something to eat, watch 5 minutes of something on TV, whatever. An actual break.

* hard limits - and I don't mean stop loss. Your girlfriend pulled you out of it. Learn to be your girlfriend. Practice quitting. Start a session, if you get down as much as, say, 10bb, quit for the night. Just get up, quit. Set a time to start playing again like 8pm tomorrow or something. Do this over and over and over until being down means NOTHING to you, you can quit literally whenever you want. Be the best quitter ever. (This is actually covered in Angelo's series - hell, maybe everything I've said so far is.


I used to have a problem playing plo8 where every session I'd start by dusting off 3 or 4 buyins, then start playing good. I could never really figure out why. I developed a workaround. I'd drop down 2 levels, and just donk it up big time. Gamble, make hero calls, etc, etc. I actually found that playing like an idiot lag really does get it out of your system, and you also learn that LAGs know some things that TAGs or passive players don't. That there are things you can learn and observe from it. And it's fun.

The Mental Game of Poker book by Jared Tendler helped me a lot. I started practicing the logical injection suggested in the book to the point where this is now my first reaction when a hand annoys me. Then my second reaction is "how can I exploit the mistakes my opponent just made going forward?"

Thanks both of you. I will definitely check out the Jared Tendler book. I am sure it is not unusal but my biggest leak by far is not a technical error in play it is the occasional failure to control my emotions (both positive and negative.) It also just sucks to be an unpleasant human being at the poker table. I would much rather be the friendly person I am 90% of the time regardless of whether I am down a rack or not.

I've had a few times when things were really not going right and i was making stupidly dumb mistakes and just got the feeling to get up and go. Better to bail before you just throw your money away.

Avoiding tilt is better than tilting. However, if all you do is leave everytime you tilt, that ends up becoming the problem, and it makes tilt worse.

+1 on the mindfulness stuff. there's a ton of science behind it, and it works as long as you put in the effort.

It's impossible for me to get tilted. Playing for a long time this is what I found will help:

Poker is not my career aspiration it's just a hobby, but one that I intend to excel at

Have a solid core strategy

I've dropped 6+ buyins so many times and recovered that I lost count. I am confident I can make it all back and dropping several buy-ins it's just a minor annoyance.

I'm often playing a lot of long-shot odds so I will temporarily lose money until I eventually hit.

Those clowns that get lucky on me almost inevitably go broke. Sometimes they hit & run but then they will go broke, I just won't see it.

A lot of times a guy with a big stack on the table isn't holding a profit, he's making back losses from previous rebuys

Just stay within your buyin limits: understand that you got coolered / sucked out and rebuy

Having a ton of cash for the game makes it much easier to mentally not care

I think is better to create a pleasant environment with good music(optional) and focus on that,rather on "avoiding tilt". Tilt happens more often than we want obv, instead also try and manage your behaviour when it does happens.

Jared Tendler's work its amazing in my opinion,however "how can I exploit the mistakes my opponent just made " it can be even more dissapointing when you don't get to catch him in an hand.
I personally go for more realistical approach,but catching him in a hand and "exploiting "him does happen a few times to.
So, you should think that are plenty of hands to go around(cash and mtt's) and try to play as best as possible(unnafected) the rest of the session. I personally try to go from there more rather than focusing on exploiting him even tough that happens some portion of the times.

best way to avoid tilt is to quit playing WHEN you tilt.

this weekend i went up a buy in, then had a bit of a cooler losing with jack high flush vs nut flush. usually don't tilt but for whatever reason it set me off....

after that hand i took an hour break, came back, lost a few medium sized pots, went on massive tilt AGAIN and ended up just donating about 3 buy ins by playing like an angry donktard.

saturday was not a good day for my bankroll, went 2-7 on college football betting too lol. don't sportsbet either, it's massively -EV i was messing around with a few betting systems based on historical trends i researched, but so far i'm slightly breakeven at best so it's not even worth the effort.

It's not about "catching him in a hand" it's about making adjustments to exploit the unbalanced tendencies of your opponent, which is what playing poker against bad players is all about. This is something you should be doing anyway. If you are always trying to play GTO regardless of the opponent you are leaving money on the table.

What I am saying is that Tendler' s techniques have allowed me to focus my energy on the things I should be focusing on, rather than getting emotional.

Those tilt sessions can really destroy your win rate. Assuming a 5bb/100 WR with the tilt, think how many hands it takes to make it back.

This is bad advice. Quitting when you tilt teaches yourself that it's ok to get angry at the game. You're not dealing with the problem, and it gets worse. Ask any psychologist.

Also, sportsbetting has like 99+% punters, you're probably not breakeven. Stop lying to yourself.