My thesis: The true reason behind tilt is your own ego.

Because you are not just playing poker for the $$$. You are playing poker because you want to show off. you want to show everybody at the table - "look at my game. I own you completely!"

But when the cards dont allow that, or even worse you get outplayed, you will raise your fist in anger and throw your chips around trying to calm down your hurt ego.

its like a small dog barking off in a situation he feels helpless in. Everytime you sun yourself in imaginations like you are Phil Patrick Dwan but unlucky till now, remember that your own egomanic imaginations might set you up for the next tilt.

diff people tilt for different reasons. You just pointed out one of those reasons.

i think there is a good chance that you could track back most tiltforms on narcism.

Selfpitty for instance is often a form of narcism, especially if your not taking substantiell losses. I call this selfpitty without an realistic background narcism, because this person thinks he deserves something better. Same gos for loss chasing.

hey,very nice post,thx

I think the OP just learned a new word and wanted to toss it around a couple times...

now you really wounded my egos narcism. I thought my post made me look like a true psychology-poker genious, but now you spoiled everything.

Im going to rape, torture and kill you you ****ing prick!

I think you're correct.

Poker is one of the only games that I know of, that everybody believes they're good at playing. Probably because of the element of money involved.

People involve a lot of pride in their poker. It's often a mental test, and every believes themselves stronger than another. Thus, the narcissism.

well put

that being said i think i think what seperates TRULY great players from the rest of us is the ability to avoid this. not to beat a dead horse, but look at durr and ivey (PA honorable mention). they seem to look at everything objectively. They have confidence in their decision being the right one in the long run, results are less important. i guess you can say achieving this is like reaching nirvana for a poker player.

I don't know if you can call it a game but sex also fits into this category. I've never heard anyone say they are bad at it...

going on tilt while having sex lol.

Narcism is definitely a component to tilt. I would say that it is #2.

What is #1?

IMO, it is the lack of 'justice'.

All human beings have a philosophy in regards to 'right and wrong'. In fact, the feeling and notions of Right vs. Wrong is engrained/hardwired in all of us.

So, in poker, when the worse hand wins, it is not only wrong, it shakes our moral foundation. It's just not fair!!! The injustice of it feeds into our anger and you get a runaway train effect.

But I believe those at the higher levels and states of poker understand that poker is a game of probability. Probability means there is no best hand, merely the hand with the highest probability to win at a particular instant in time. And when the hand loses, it loses. No justice, no injustice, just probability.

Once you get over the 'best hand' syndrome/mindset you'd be amazed how bad beats will just roll off of you. Because you know, in the long run, you will be ahead of the donks chasing gutshots, etc.

Tilt=need/desire

Both in life and in poker.

u guys are killin me. its narcissism

and there are other things that cause players to tilt.
even solid players tilt on occasion, but they usually arent thinking in terms of "Im better than my opponents so i deserve to win every pot and if i dont its unjust and im going to start spewing", they think in terms of whats the best decision in every situation. So when they tilt its their decision making process that goes bad, not their ego.

Agree. If have to tell somebody how good you are, you aren't good at all.

+1

Use a dictionary on the hard ones, please.

I definitely agree with the idea that poker has almost become centralized around ego. We have become so desensitized to the actual $/numbers in a lot of cases, and just want to collect thousands upon thousands to assert our "dominance" over others.

It's one reason for tilt. There are several others. Some have already been mentioned, but add:
- Being tired or drunk
- Behavior or play of opponent
- Losing or winning
- ...

Good post - I see people wanting the respect of the other players all the time. They keep talking trash, they keep responding to trash talk, etc.

My favorite is when they do this at play money tables. I'm on Bodog playing a couple play money tables to make my bonus when someone tells me how poorly I'm playing. I never explain how I'm folding when I get a hand that requires my attention on one of my real money tables, or that I already have all the play money I need and really don't care. Instead, I just feel sorry for them. They need to help their ego by trying to hurt mine; over play money. They are sad.

It's like the first Red Sox team to win the world series a couple years ago. They were called idiots, and they loved it. I'd rather be an idiot with a ring than anything without.

I'll trade my respect for your cash any day.

Yeah, I think I try too hard to keep my alter-ego's ego from getting an ego, and that Tilts me...

I check out these threads because tilt has always been an issue for me. I want to find the silver bullet to kill my tilt in these threads, but tilt is a tricky and hard thing to define. I really feel like I could be much further in my game if I was more emotionally mature.

Personally I agree with the sentiment that different people different reasons for tilt. I believe my tilt stems from ego and frankly just greed. Even though in a given hand I might only be 80% to win, I irrationally believe the money is already mine, and when that 5 outer hits I feel ... again irrationally...that he took my money. He doesn't deserve it!

Average poker players tilt because of:
- loss of pride
- sense of injustice
- loss of money

Poker pros tilt because of:
- bad play

When I tilt I play craps. lol..

Exactly. They know it's about money and making the best decision, not looking good and impressing hordes of netboys.

Well said.

wow, an insightful first post. +1

I've studied narcissism in depth.

Narcissism probably is not the root cause of tilt. In fact, tilt is probably related to anger, whereas narcissistic injury is closely related to anger, and narcissism is probably one of the root causes of tilt in many players, especially someone like Hellmuth.

Narcissistic rage is a perceived slight to a narcissist's sense of self worth. A narcissistic poker player wants to flaunt his skills, show off his abilities, and when the cards don't go in their favor, or someone demeans them or pertrudes on their grandiose sense of self worth, the narcissist will react with narcissistic rage:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_rage


Good luck on the paper, need any help just pm me, I've done research into narcissism.

Not to tilt you BTW, just to let you know it's narcissism. Just wanted to say that because you put narcism in the title.

FYP

IMO, pros 'should' love it when players play bad. If there is a player that wishes to call an all-in re-raise on the turn with a 3 outer, every pro worth their salt would want that call and if they just happen to hit their 6% out, that is poker.

It is only when a pro 'plays' bad or makes a mistake that they are prone to tilt because 'they should know better'. But pros should be able to take a step back and walk it off and hit their internal 'reset' button.

Or put another way, if pros tilted because of bad play, they would always be on tilt. Tilt is always INTERNAL not external.