I’m having a nightmare downswing right now and it’s mainly caused by some deep rooted tilt. It started with a usual downswing (nothing I haven’t came across before) but then I had a insane bad run and now I can feel it’s some deeper issue that’s causing me to super tilt at the first sign something I perceive as unfair, I’m writing this coming off a losing session where literally tilted hard because I got a walk with AA in a super splashy game which resulted in me spewing off 3 buy ins.

Now I’m questioning every decision I’m making! I feel like all my bluffs are getting called, all my value bets are getting folds, villains always seem to get there and I’m on the losing side of every cooler. I understand variance, ev and equities so I shouldn’t care when a fish calls flop and turn with a gut shot and gets there and 3 months ago I would’ve brushed it off but now because of this deep issue I throw my game plan out the window and just start blasting off stacks.

Has anyone ever experienced something like this before and how did you overcome it? Saying things like “it’s just variance” or “that’s poker” really won’t help. This isn’t variance anymore this is a mental problem and I can’t seem to shake it!

I don't even know where to start. But it's a great question and a great formulation of it ... that it isn't coming from the circumstances or ignorance, or isn't addressed by cliches, but is a deep-seated issue within the self. A great question leads to better answers.

Deep rooted are the key words here.

Everyone thinks about the mistakes they have made in the past, especially those of us that have really dropped the ball.

So how do we make peace with this, so that our thoughts don't constantly keep re-focusing on them which causes us to feel emotional, depressed, entitled, etc.?

...

No idea, because that is the hardest part working day in and out to achieve this mental fortitude...

I have no idea how you will resolve this but you do. You called it "a deeper issue" so a part of you realizes/believes that your tilt is a symptom of a different problem. It won't be fun but try to find that bigger problem and deal with it. If you can't/won't/are unable to do that quit playing for several months to avoid losing a lot of money. You recognize the tilt is not rational; you are in a better spot than many.

Great question.

I would suggest that the solution will take the form of stubbornness and an internal monologue. You need to be stubborn a) about not playing when tilting and b) not tilting. So you make a deal, several deals in fact, the first, a soft deal, before you start playing, that you want to play and not tilt, but that you will not play while tilting. Then, when something happens, you MUST have the presence of mind to engage with the following sort of dialogue:
'I want to keep playing'
'I will not play while tilting'
'Therefore I will quit, or play without tilting'
You then keep on playing, and you must be honest with yourself. If you can feel yourself raging at the injustice, and that's not going away, just stop playing. Poker isn't going anywhere. But if you can decide there and then to stop tilting and start playing your normal game, what you have in effect done is acknowledge the feelings, saying to them 'I recognise the validity of these feelings, they're strong, but they're not helpful to what I want to do right now which is be in the right mindset to play my best poker'. It's not suppression, so much as deferral. But the crucial part is that you break the neural circuitry that associates playing poker with being in the wrong mindset.

Hi Popo:

The best predictor of your future results are your past results. This means, in your case, while it may be statistically possible for you to have a severe prolonged downswing, it's now, given the downswing, that your expectation is not as high as you think it should be (and may even be negative) or that the standard deviation you're playing under is higher than you think (or both). Thus, the first thing I would do is to start reviewing your playing strategy and make sure that you really are playing well.

Mason

I've been working for years to try to discourage this type of thinking. Tilt occurs when you lose the ability to think rationally, and once that happens, I doubt that you can do any of the things that you suggest.

I have written about the four psychological states of losing poker. You can find them here:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...poker-1756469/

and I suggest you take a look at it.

However, in my opinion, most likely my other post above this one is more realistic.

Mason

Hi Mason,

When you poopoo expertise, as is so common these days, in the form of

'Many so called poker psychologists, most of whom my opinion towards is negative, claim that tilt has something to do with the “fight of flight” mechanism that we all have.'

It's kinda hard to take you seriously for the rest of it. The fight or flight mechanism has been a crucial element in keeping all mammals alive. It is more like 'freeze, fight, flight or faun' and is hardwired into our nervous systems, but that we don't break out into fights in the poker room is not a sign that this system is not in use. When our nervous system perceives a threat, it has the effect of prioritising. At that point, rational thought becomes less useful to our survival than action. That action could, of course, be freezing, but sometimes it's running, and sometimes it's juicing us with adrenaline for a fight.

Which action we should take in response still requires some rational thought. Is it an animal I can fight? Is it an animal that's not going to notice if I don't move? There is still some space and requirement for logic. And this is true in our brains when we get a bad beat or other tilt-inducing stimulus. We don't lose all our capacity for rational thought, it's just that the emergency apparatus in our brain is saying 'time for action, don't waste time on rational thoughts'. In other words, we have the capacity, with training, intention, and consciousness, to react in different ways.

You absolutely can do the things I've suggested. Primarily, the choice: keep on playing while not tilted, or stop playing. I don't enjoy playing while tilted. I find it frustrating. I don't want to carry on the habit of doing so. I want to play on an even psychological keel. So if I can bring myself back to an even psychological keel, on the basis of incentives - I like playing poker well, I like making money, therefore I will remind myself of the things I need to remind myself of, such as, a winning poker player makes money by virtue of reciprocal tilt control, and that I do in fact want action when I've got my opponent down to runner runner - then I can and will do so.

What following these rules does is it stops you from getting into the habit of playing while on tilt. Even if it's just down to variance. If you're on deep-rooted tilt then you maybe lie to yourself about your psychological stability on a given day, but that's ok, because maybe you'll run good this session and that deep-rooted tilt won't rear its head, and then you have a session where you've played without tilt, setting the habit. If you start to feel tilty, you stop playing. Eventually, you play with less and less tilt.

I don't know whether your poopooing of psychology is symptomatic of a general distrust of the soft sciences by the hard sciences, but trying to provide a mathematical model of tilt is imagining yourself to be an expert in something other people are. You may as well ask a psychologist to provide a psychological model of the laws of thermodynamics.

Again, you very rarely see a fight in a poker room, and when you do there's usually a drunk involved. And I have never seen anyone grab their chips and run out of the poker room.

While it doesn't happen that often, when someone is on tilt there is little ability to think rationally (and it's virtually impossible to reason with them in any way). See my book for examples. Also, when many people begin to play poorly, they have often gone into another state of losing poker. Again, see my book for discussion.

Any chance you're one of these poker mental coaches who is looking to recruit clients?

There's much discussion of variance and how it actually works in my book. You should read it. (By the way, I bet you're unaware that I'm the one who introduced most of the poker world to the concept of statistical variance.)

If you actually are on "deep-rooted tilt" I doubt that you'll know what day it is.

This is discussed in my book. I call it "pseudo-tilt" and also explain that's it's a subset of something I call "expectation bias."


This sounds like some of the nonsense that I have read from some of these poker mental coaches.

But I do provide a mathematical model of tilt. It's in the chapter "A Mathematical Model of “Tilt” — Cause and Cure." And the book can be found here:

https://www.amazon.com/Real-Poker-Ps...626621&sr=1-13

Mason

Wouldn't it be better to explain to someone who thinks he's supposed to win all the time exactly how variance works at the poker table and why this variance, assuming he's a winning player, is good for him?

You may want to look at the chapter "A Proper Balance of Luck and Skill" in my book

https://www.amazon.com/Cardrooms-Eve...%2C139&sr=1-14

Mason

Again, that you rarely see a fight in a pokerroom is not evidence that the fight or flight response is in play. It is in play all the time in society. In society, our status matters, and people represent a threat to our status in all sorts of ways, but if we react, we tend to react with anger, rather than physical violence.

You can and do think rationally while you're emotional, just less so.

No, I'm not a mental coach, but I did coach PLO for a while, have studied psychology and maths, and have been through a lot of tilt myself, because I'm not naturally even-keeled. I have played both online and live for a living for more than 10 years and have written articles about the psychological side of poker. Funny how you accuse me of having a product to sell and then go on to sell your own product with no sense of irony. Well done for introducing a term to the poker community. We should get you into the poker hall of fame for that one.

If you think that deep-rooted tilt stops you from knowing what day it is, we're talking about entirely different things. Deep-rooted tilt, as OP discussed it, is more of an underlying condition, whereby it only kicks in once some form of stimulus happens at the poker table. What that means is you can feel fresh and stable and play and if no significant enough mental stimulus occurs you play something like your A game, but if and when something bad happens you drop to D instantly, whereas without the deep-rooted tilt you might only drop to C or even B game. And then, when you take a break of a few hours and come back, thinking that you've cleared your mind, you're starting off again in your B or C game rather than your A game without even knowing it. You can very easily have your logical, rational brain engaged plenty and functioning well during this time.

If you're poo-pooing the idea of 'habits' then it's difficult to know what to say to you. If you keep on playing while you're tilting, you're underlining the habit of playing while on tilt, deepening the association in your brain. If you stop playing while you're tilting, you only play while you're not tilting, meaning your brain associates you playing poker with playing good poker.

One good heuristic I've noticed from the world of politics is that anyone who derides anything else as 'nonsense' almost never explains why they think it's nonsense and is someone who thinks that the force of their words is enough to convince others of their rightness. I.E. you're a browbeater. What a surprise that you've also got a vested interest in your book sales in convincing people that you're right. Pro tip: don't call things nonsense.

First, you need to understand that the poker mental coaches need to explain what tilt is. If they can't do this, then they'll be out of business. Furthermore, the only thing they've been able to come up with is "fight or flight." So, they all carry on about fight or flight.

However, if they understood mathematical modeling and how it works, they would discover that there are better models than fight or flight that can describe tilt. Again, see the chapter in my book "A Mathematical Model of “Tilt” — Cause and Cure" and you'll see a much better explanation of tilt than "fight or flight."

As for your comment relative to my book sales, which are small for "Real Poker Psychology - Expanded Edition," and which is sold for a tiny amount compared to what some (probably all) of these poker mental coaches charge, you're way off base. I've been doing this writing/publishing stuff for over 35 years and selling a few more or a few less books today has no impact on me.

And finally, I define tilt as the lost of the ability to think rationally. There are other states that players can go into which will cause them to play badly and again they are discussed in my book (and I'm also sure that the vast majority of the poker mental coaches had no idea about any of this until I began to write about it). Also, the distinction is important since the cure for tilt relative to the other losing states that I talk about is different -- again see my book.

Just because someone starts to play with a negative expectation (or a less positive expectation than what he plays with when playing well) doesn't mean that he's on tilt. The idea that there are "seven kinds of tilt" as one of these mental coaches claim is just silly.

Mason

Tilt is easily defined. It is simply a deviation from your best game. For a bunch of potential reasons. The classic one is simply anger at injustice.

'The only thing they've been able to come up with is fight or flight'

Come on Mason, don't be so damned lazy. Your mathematical model of tilt can happily sit next to a psychological explanation and exploration of the subject and complement each other. Their expertise does not render yours useless or irrelevant, and yours certainly can't do the same to theirs. Just beware of the tendency you appear to have fallen into, of having a shiny new hammer of statistics and thinking everything is a nail. Maybe you don't trust psychology, maybe you think it's newfangled, maybe you look at therapy speak and think 'oh ffs', maybe you see yourself as a hard scientist and don't like all these soft scientists trying to gain credit for being of the same status as you, or that their work has the same status as you, I don't know what exactly the explanation is or could be that you don't see their work as valid. But if you don't see psychology as valid, then I'm afraid that makes you a dinosaur, and it does you and the rest of your opinions a disservice if you're trying to muscle them out of a territory that absolutely they have a far stronger claim to than you.

First, you wouldn't know if I was lazy or the hardest working person ever.

If you understood statistical theory a whole lot better than you probably do you would know that your statement "Your mathematical model of tilt can happily sit next to a psychological explanation" is a very ill-informed statement.

So, you lose a couple of hands at let's say a game like $1-$3 or $2-$5, where's the physical threat to your well-being?

And to continue a little more, if you read the chapter on tilt in my book, you would discover that the mathematical model I use is based on the mental pathway, or at least one of the pathways, that causes humor. That is, tilt and humor are actually very similar. Again, you don’t have a clue or any understanding as to what I say and why I say it.

Mason

There is no physical threat. There does not have to be to activate our nervous system. A perceived threat to our status is more than enough. There is plenty of well respected research on the nature of the nervous system, it's functioning parts, and it's evolutionary history. It is considered a part of biology more than psychology. And it tallies very well with the model of tilt and tilt control as I've described it.

Humour? Hard pass. Do you hear yourself? 'psychologists don't know anything about tilt! Nervous system? Pah! Buy my book where I reveal the secret of tilt, that really it's just like humour!' I'm not going to read your book to learn about tilt control the same way I'm not going to read any books by the ancient greeks to learn about chemistry.

You could be the hardest working person in the world and still be intellectually lazy, which is what I'm accusing you of. You have not updated your knowledge of the world as the world has changed around you. Learn about the vagus, dorsal and ventral vagus systems.

And you need to understand what it is I say, why I say it, and where it came from before you begin to attack it.

MM

I think I understand what you're saying.

A psychological model of tilt, that understands it in the context of the nervous system, is incorrect. The survival mechanism 'fight or flight' is not in place because people don't break out into fights in the pokerroom.

Statistics is all you need to explain and solve tilt.

Did I miss anything out or mischaracterise your position?

The mathematical model I use for tilt is not based on statistics. Again, you have little understanding of what I’m even talking about.

Since you're someone who writes about poker, you really should pick up a copy of this book. Just to see how you can use a mathematical model to explain tilt, and to see how a mathematical model can work, should be of value to you. The kindle is only $9.99 (and I don't make a lot of money from that):

https://www.amazon.com/Real-Poker-Ps...%2C150&sr=1-10

And even though the mathematical model for tilt has nothing to do with statistical theory, you'll also see (in other places in the book) how statistical theory does affect those who play poker, why it's important to grasp this well, and, perhaps most important, how things like poker, which are based on probability theory, can be counterintuitive to most people (and, of course, this can lead to tilt).

Mason

Ive experienced almost exactly what OP as describing earlier in my carreer. I was able to get over it through a combination of support and reassurance from poker friends, hours of session analysis so I could pinpoint exactly how the tilt was effecting my play, and constant, intensive reinforcement of 'that's just poker.'

I could talk about this in more detail, but one thing I'll emphasize that really helped me was my reaffirming my understanding of the fact that the great majority of my win ings over years occured during periods of running well above expectation. Upswings work very similarly to downswings, but our understanding of the former is almost nonexistent. Start with reminding yourself that no o player almost ever runs at expectation. Winning you're actual average hourly win rate... Somewhere near zero STs, and more infrequent then other sample of results within your distribution. Variance is your friend. It enables you to win. Those rare, epic downswings (the reasons we actually need bankrolls) are a natural byproduct of the more frequent upswings that winning players have.

There's no such thing as tilt. Your just playing bad. Best cure is to pick on your sister or brothers or feel like your mom's baby. Read, buy stuff with your winnings and phuk these bishes hoes and these lame niccas. Trust God.

There's no such thing as entitlement it's a word that will fade from vocabulary when the time is right

You need more life experience, because you're wrong on both points.

I said this as well in response to the article and was told I didn't read. Seems brick wall-y to debate it.

Welcome to the club. How long have you played? After playing for nearly 40 years, I came across a downswing that was 30 times worse than any other streak I ever had. I had had one 20 session downswing one time in which every runout went south and you could continually call the worst card possible and it would come ... and had had a bunch of 5-10 session wipeout blips.

Fast forward to the modern era last 10 years, and yes, the game was changing to much more difficult and higher competition, and I had no problem with this as I was not an egomaniac type about how great a player I was. I readily admitted that as some of the best players I knew from our home game began to struggle mightily, both far better players than I. Yet in about 2011 I took off on a super heater. Winning streaks of 10 in a row a bunch of times, 17-out-of-18, 30 in a row, 60-out-of-62, 93-8 for a year (2015). Playing in public rooms against pros and semi-pros, with of course the occasional star.

Well I'm a firm believer that there is vicious regression to the mean in these types of situations, and the further it got out of whack in terms of expectation, the more vicious that correction is gonna be. On January 1, 2016, I took a 1-outer beat for my stack on a K-9-3 flop, trip kings versus trip 3's, and there began something over 600+ sessions that was so many standard deviations from the feasible that I began to take the thing metaphysically, and still do.

After a couple years of it, I began to take it "personal" as an affront to reasonableness, and reacted with exasperation, and even started to show it, like you say from the very first hand. The flush thing went to near 100% for opponents and near 0% for me over a 6 year period (playing only twice a week in PLO, that alone will destroy you). Kicker beats galore, 1-outer beats approaching two dozen, quads beat twice, a straight flush beat, long, long impossible hours of flopping absolutely no pair, no draw, no back-door draw in PLO. I remembered pro that told a story about his streak, "You just couldn't believe it. There really is such a thing. It's as if they rooted thru the deck for the perfect nasty runouts" over and over and over for100,000 hands. Like it was stuck."

THAT. So this streak of mine was over 30 times longer/worse than any I had experienced in 40+ years of play. I had another pro tell me that his worst streak right around this time, surely a slight exaggeration, that he couldn't win a hand for a year and had he played every hand his seat still never would have won the hand or made anything. That kind of ice cold freeze out by the deck. It resonated with me; I know it's real. I didn't 10 years ago.

I tried everything, taking 10 minute walk breaks thru the casino and coming back mentally fresh (4 or 5 minutes not enough), and taking long breaks from playing at all, changing games/tables/limits. Right you are, it isn't "normal variance" at some point. The amount of outs that I whiffed on was into the thousands and thousands, with almost no respite in between. In fact, I started saying, "This game is probabilistic, but it isn't random." It's part of the universe, the game and the deck is. Therefore, it is part of metaphysics. Therefore, in my view, it is also mystical, teleological, transcendent, occult (hidden), psychological, self-fulfilling ... and a lot of other things. You get the idea. I read a book called "Lost in the Shuffle," then hundreds more in a similar vein. And my life was on a new path: not lost in the shuffle, not escaping personal realities into the casino (a great quote: "They come to the casino to leave the self behind"), not using the game as a massive diversionary campaign from the shadow (do read "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"), but beginning to come to grips with what the game is in your psyche. The universe deals with us and frigs with us and tricksters us where we are, so whatever we are engrossed in, including poker, that's where this trickster energy shows up. As a satori, as an awakening, as a new direction and path.

"When luck isn't random," I'd say, as in actuality a quantum apparatus deals cards and life to the sojourner. It's a beautiful but tortured thing. It shows up, was always there: The Trickster. This Jungian archetype is not a supernatural entity, not an entity at all, more like an unconscious pre-existing image, a universal template of a given theme. Man is involved in this. The deck, as part of reality, is involved in this. Where a man plies his time the archetype will appear. Poker is no different. So it is a learning, changing, reorienting, destructive-of-the-old type energy. The universe of course IS energy. This isn't new wave woo woo. When we enter this vortex, led and captured by it, ANYTHING is possible because randomness isn't really a thing, but more a spot-holder for the unknown. Everything is part of metaphysics. Everything is part of self-knowledge/self-blindness. That's where the real game is even when playing poker, and its stirring down below the acting on the hands.

I watched a friend go through a pretty epic downswing. There were times when I told him to end a session and go home, when he was obviously tilting. He refused to leave before he torched 3-4 buy-ins.

I tried to talk to him later, and give him some friendly advice about what I saw - basically, he was his own worst enemy and toughest opponent. His own negative attitude and expectations were creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of losing sessions followed by more losing sessions. He didn't want to hear what I had to say. His pride got in the way.

He blamed his losses on "running bad". Other players were all terrible and just getting lucky. He externalized everything. Refused to take a hard look at himself. Couldn't see his own self-sabotaging tendencies.

Eventually, he got some coaching (and started exercising more, and changed his diet). His downswing ended. He's mostly been crushing it since.

Admitting that you have a problem is only the first step. Admitting that whatever the problem is, it's in YOU is a bigger step. Committing to change is the only way out.

Take a break from poker. Step back and look at yourself, and your play. Don't come back to the table until you've cleared your head of whatever thoughts are causing you to self-sabotage.