Lately I am trying to find any triggers that cause me to tilt.

It was a bad session already with many unfortunate rivers and lost flips.

However I was nowhere near tilting. I can not say I was playing my absolute best, part of it because I wasn't very well rested and part of it having many things in my mind making it hard to focus.

I usually keep a notebook near by when playing to write down random thoughts, to take them out of my head and come back to them later.

Then the following hand occurred against a player who has been all in with the worst of it in numerous occasions and always come on top. It was like a door opened and every flaw in my mental game came out. Injustice tilt, entitlement tilt, bad beat tilt.
Everything came crushing, I started banging my desk with the intention to smash it. Smashed a desk or two back in the days but hadn't reacted like that in years.

After I cool down I was thankful to the player. He showed me my flaws. He showed me that I still need work and should never feel I am totally over tilt.

It is not the hand itself. It is more the opponent.
I know poker doesn't care about what is fair. However sometimes it is hard not to indulge to the thought how is it possible to lose to such a weak opponent.
I try to focus on my decisions
stacking off with 99 might not have been the best play against an UTG open
and not on the result but I am not always successful on that.
Thank you for your advice.

Op the opponent has nothing to do with it. Even if you're playing someone ten times the poker player you are, or someone that is playing their very first poker hand ever.

99 is 72% favourite to win over Q8 28%

This means if you play the hand 100 times you are going to lose on average 28 times.

As a poker player you need to think like this, not who you're playing, you want to be playing opponents who are putting it in behind in equity, isn't that what you want him to do? or do you want him to fold? ofc you want him to get it all-in.

Its basically like asking you, do you want your opponent to call your all-in with 28os vs your AA? so what difference does it make if you're 88% fav with AA vs 28os or 72% fav with 99 vs Q8?

Op bookmark and learn from this sitehttp://pokerdope.com/poker-variance-calculator/

And buy the book Real Poker Psychology it will be the best $15 you ever invest.

Hi F1k0sII:

When I read stuff like this, which comes right out of Tendler's first book and which I think is flat out silly, I can't help but think that it makes players think that there are so many ways that a player can go on tilt that going on tilt is something he must do.

Of course, the way to solve this is to hire one of these poker mental coaches and do a lot of sessions with him, and after this I guess you can then go on "lack of money tilt." On the other hand, if you were to hire me, it would be difficult to come up with 30 minutes of stuff to talk about, but you would be told that there there is only one way to go on tilt and that has to do with the inability of your mind to process some of the information that gets presented to you at the poker table, and things like injustice tilt, entitlement tilt, bad beat tilt, revenge tilt, being hungry tilt, not taking deep breaths tilt, lack of sleep tilt, being unhappy tilt, hate your wife tilt, or whatever other kind of tilt you can come up with, is a worthless idea.

Best wishes,
Mason

Solid point. I will try to think like that next time a similar situation occurs. Removing the *why me?* while playing poker is a big step and I intend to make it.

Mason thank you for your nice definition of tilt. Have to admit I am a bit fan of Tendler but I will take the time to consider your ideas.

We stopped his advertising because we feel that what he has to offer, and it's very expensive, has at best very little value.

Mason

Hi F1k0sII:

I define tilt as occuring when a player has lost his ability to think rationally, and this usually happens because a player has information presented to him that his mind cannot process. Thus his thinking tends to get locked up (trying to solve what he doesn't understand) similar to a bad computer program that gets caught in an infinite programming loop.

As for Tendler, and all his forms of tilt, some of it in my opinion isn't even tilt. An example I've written about before is what Tendler calls "revenge tilt." Notice that when playing poker your goal should be to maximize your expectation against your opponents. But when a player takes revenge, he has decided that getting revenge against a particular player is now more important than maximizing expectation, thus in the long run he can expect poorer results. But also notice that while this decision should degrade your results relative to expectation, it's also done rationally because this is something you have to decide to do, so it isn't tilt at all.

Best wishes,
Mason

Someone could argue that it is not rational to seek revenge from someone because he tried to beat you in a game you voluntarily decided to play. Especially if the person is not the type to seek revenge in any way outside poker.

Mason you seem like someone who really studied the tilt element of poker and I will look forward reading more ideas from you in different threads.

I know the price list of Tendler and I agree it is indeed crazy.
But you have to admit tilt is not an exact science, you have to read between the lines to rationalize a certain behavior.
And different people can interpret different things as rational or not. Would love to hear some more words of wisdom from you when you get the time