Hey, all. As I've worked to improve my game there is something perhaps unique to me that I have been in want of squelching that I have been unsuccessful at: my nerves.

It's simple. Poker is an adrenaline rush for me. I've generally been a tight player but as my aggression game has been gradually improving I realize this is an annoyance. I can feel my blood pressure rising ANY time I am involved in a hand and I believe it is seeable sometimes through my body language. Seems weird, right? Can't help it. The good news is I don't think I give away any reads seeing as it happens whether I am solid or bluffing but regardless I would like to find a way to control myself more and get over this.

Has anyone dealt with this at the table before and if so, does anyone with experience have any suggestions for helping? Thanks.

I have this problem lol.

Centering breaths are helpful, in 4, hold 1, out 5.

Labeling feelings can be good, our physical reactions in situations like this are to a level disconnected from our conscious mind. They're reactions and instinct that has been beneficial in keeping humans safe from being eaten, but aren't super useful on the felt. "My blood pressure because I'm excited that I'm in a hand and I've been card dead for 3 hours so it's a sudden and significant increase in interest." "My throat is a bit dry and more noticeable because I'm nervous I'm running a big bluff and I will be embarrassed if I get get caught as well as upset I lost the money." It's good to tell your body you're not at risk of being eaten, and when you realize why you're feeling what you're feeling 9/10 times when you reframe it in good poker logic, there's nothing to feel any sort of way about.

Maintain a healthy lifestyle especially leading up to sessions. Eat well, be active, practice good posture, treat your body right and youll have less physical manifestation of stress, fear, anxiety, etc.

Dress for the room, I always need to have sweat pants with shorts in my bag and a hoodie with a comfortable tee underneath, if I'm cold or hot I know this sort of thing will be worse. Which is challenging for me because for whatever reason my temperature swings insanely while playing poker....I've also been in a card room twice now when power went out and when it came back AC wasn't working....terrible lol.

Volume/repetition. It's much easier to deal with now that I've played a few hundred hours than it was before, I hope it's better when I have a few thousand under my belt lol.

Be aware if your "symptoms" exist in the same way when you're bluffing, value betting, bluff catching , etc. It's not great if they know you have nerves, it's realllllly bad if they can differentiate the manifestation for different actions.

If you have visible things you can't correct now, hide them. Don't get into stare downs if they make you uncomfortable, hold your hands in front of neck if your adams apple is prominent when swallowing while nervous, wear loose clothes if your body moves a lot when breathing heavily, etc.

I think it's just a sign of concentration loss. If you're concentrated and focused, the stress signals can transform into something positive or neutral at least.

Also try to answer a question if you're ready to handle properly big numbers in your head. It may seem everyone likes big numbers and big profits, but the truth is that not everyone can stay calm when operating with them.

If you're trying to relax at the table, I'd suggest focusing on your breathing. Listen to all the background noise. The chips shuffling, the cards being dealt, the conversations being had. Order a water, or some tea, and have a good time

That body temperature thing is so true for myself as well; anytime I am engaging in something I am passionate about (poker happens to be one of those many things), I tend to exhibit that as well. It is frustrating.

I also have noticed it seems the psychological aspect of what I am playing for lends a hand. In my home games with my (mostly fish) friends I don't have this going on much, if at all. At a big tournament that I have real money invested, however? My body pulses from the adrenaline and that doesn't seem to have gotten me in trouble (I do pay attention, lol) but it is still a nagging thing nonetheless.

I will take to heart the comments here about breathing and focusing on background noise. Thanks, guys.

You've heard the expression: "familiarity breeds contempt"? Well, fight or flight reactions don't kick in very strongly when you're familiar with a set of conditions. Further, you simply need to practice dealing with the situation.

What I'm getting at is that the solutions presented are applied after your body has reacted and the adrenalin has started to flow. What you need is to learn how to avoid the reaction in the first place. That is done by becoming familiar with these types of situations in the first place ... or gain experience with the stimulus and the result (focusing on the result).

What JayKon and Dilly_ are saying about "repetition and familiarity" is very true for myself (and almost every other player I'd say)..

First time you bluff big (whatever that might be on your limit) your heart is beating fast like Tyson.. but after the 100th time it's like meh

I can just keep my focus; I am not very emotional, so the coping methods are not for me.
Skill and experience changes things in the longer run. Before that, there can be a serious reason for coping methods, as one's thinking under the pressure can be weaker.
If I am not familiar enough with the stakes higher, I am nervous, but it will go away with a little time, like five or ten minutes if online. In live games, some describe the game as a long boredom with moments of terror in between, so get used to it. If I don't want to be that bothered by that, I take a mild sedative - it costs maybe 30 cents, that one can get from the nearest pharmacy.

This brings up a good point about emotion at the table. There is a significant contingent of players, including those who established 2+2, that are very unemotional and very in control/disciplined at the table. When someone with this style attempts to account for tilt, they apply their thinking about it to their own game and style, and in so doing whiff badly on what is causing the tilt of emotion driven, undisciplined players. So they come up with, "You need more knowledge," instead of "You need more self-control." Huge point, imo.

True. However, without the knowledge, what do you control? It all starts with knowledge, knowledge of the game and knowledge of one's self. It is through that process that one develops self control.

Self-knowledge and self-control is central to tilt ... and game knowledge isn't. In fact, game knowledge is almost unrelated to tilt ... except in that the more knowledge one has, the more drastically it is possible to get out of line with that knowledge under the sway of emotions, meaning, higher levels of knowledge create the opportunity for more flagrant tilt. Again, a bad, ignorant player playing bad is not tilt; a knowlegeable player spewing against his knowledge is tilt.

Well, we're just going to have to disagree on that point, as I maintain that poker knowledge is fundamental in avoiding tilt.

Think of the times when Phil Ivey gets snippy with Tom Dwan for beating him in a pot.

Based on your concept of tilt avoidance, what area of Ivey's poker knowledge is lacking?

If you mean an understanding of variance, and coming to terms with that, I'd agree.

However, simply understanding that runner runner happens sometimes isn't going to curb anger in the heat of the moment.

Well, if you can point out where Ivey's play is degraded after being snippy with Dwan, I might be willing to concede the point. However, I doubt you can find much of an example.

I think you're confusing having an emotion with dealing with an emotion. Also, there is the possibility that someone who expresses anger is using it as a tactic to make their opponent believe they are playing substandard - because it works.

That sounds like a term you just invented. Please explain what you mean by "having an emotion vs dealing with an emotion"

Tilt is acting against your knowledge under the sway of frustration and other emotions and personal demons. Poker knowledge won't redress it; self-knowledge will.

Without the knowledge, you can't act against it, now can you? With this knowledge, you will (eventually) know you've acted against it. Knowing is required before you can take any action to resolve an issue. Or, you can't solve a problem, if you don't know what the problem is.

I wasn't inventing a term, just using English to describe something. Let me try again.

Take a situation where your boss pisses you off. The emotion you have will be anger and you may very well want to punch him in the face. Not an action that has a very good result (though it might be satisfying short term). That would be "having an emotion".

Dealing with an emotion like that would be to suppress the violent urge and find a better way to resolve what stimulated it in the first place.

And I'm still waiting for an example of Ivey tilting.

This is a pretty limited view of how tilt works IMO. Poker knowledge fixes tilt in a ton of ways:

- It's poker knowledge to be aware that letting tilt influence your play is -EV.
- It's poker knowledge to be aware that bad players playing poorly and winning is good thing you should encourage.
- The more poker knowledge you have, the less uncertainty you have about your decisions, the less uncertainty you have about your decisions the less likely you are to experience negative emotions around them and subsequently tilt.

Sometimes great players with tons of knowledge tilt and act driven by emotions in spite of their knowledge, but I would argue the vast majority uncertainty factors in which means knowledge can correct tilt. Most players who are studied, bankrolled, and confident they have an edge in their game don't tilt, I think that's not a widely held opinion because so very few players are those three things.

Part of using English to describe things involves taking the structure of the English language to help clarify your thoughts.

Having an emotion, and doing or not doing something is dealing with an emotion. It means the same thing.

We both know it’s impossible for me to show a subsequent hand where Ivey is playing poorly. Poker After Dark doesn’t show every single hand, so if he ran a couple bluffs while steaming (compared to his A game), it likely wouldn’t be as bad, or TV worthy as a tilty fish on the stream who gets their AA cracked and starts playing ATC.

However, if we assume he is indeed angry based on the results of a hand, that is tilt. Maybe Ivey can still play his A game afterwards. Maybe he drops to his B game for a couple hands but never really blows up the way a fish does. He’s one of the goats after all.

I have battled a lot of decent regs heads up over the years. Solid players, playing full time. Against some of them, if you cooler them once or twice their play starts to noticeably deteriorate.

A guy with a 75% SB range ramps it up to 95%, their 3 bets go from 15% to 25% and they float wider and are stickier against barrels. Sometimes this happens for 10 hands, sometimes 20-30+.

In this example, do you think this full time player lacks poker knowledge? If so, I cannot fathom how.

OK, VeniceMerchant, there is a lot there and I'm going to try and address the heart of the discussion, not too much of the specifics.

First and foremost, I never said and don't believe that poker knowledge, by itself, is a cure for tilt. Nor will lack of detailed poker knowledge prevent someone from conquering tilt. Some people seem to be particularly good at learning from experience. After all, that's where most of the knowledge we have originated. These special people were kind enough to share it and then more people refined it until it became canon.

So, when someone gets their money allin on the turn, with 2 outs, making our tiltable hero a 96% favorite, and hits, knowledge softens the blow.

Only that's not what happens all the time. I see it over and over. The villain didn't really have 2 outs and the Hero's range wasn't that narrow. From a knowledgeable observer's perspective, the Villain had straight and possibly flush outs as well as the 2 set outs. In addition, the final bet size, in relation to the pot was small enough to justify the call.

The other side of that 2 out scenario is that the Villain really did make a horrible call. Well, then the knowledgeable Hero knows the Villain is going to lose all his money.

Last, I will address your example where the Hero increased the hands he played after taking the bad beat. I submit that you are, in part, missing the point. You don't need a good hand to win a pot, you just need a hand that is better than the other guys. So, if you know your villain is raising QTo type hands and overplaying them post, feel free to 3 bet him with QJs.

Yes I agree that poker knowledge will help soften the blow.

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean about not needing a good hand to win the pot, only better than your opponent?

I was just mentioning that even solid regs can become frustrated by short-term variance, and begin to play less optimally (usally by widening their ranges) than they are capable of playing. It was in reference to the idea that lack of poker knowledge is the reason for this.

Both of these ideas are related.

It doesn't take an expert poker player to know that someone plays worse after losing a big pot. Therefore, they will often open up as well. Knowing this allows an excellent reg to open up safely, knowing they will often still have the best hand.

So, yes knowledge can allow you to open up your range after a bad beat, look like you're tilting and still be playing winning poker.

As to the pros on TV, don't underestimate people's tendency to ham it up while being filmed.

Just out of curiosity, haven't you ever had a read good enough to call a river bet with A high and win?

Ok, but I still don't see how that relates to my initial point, which was a solid reg losing a big pot who begins to expand their ranges afterwards for a period of perhaps 10-30 hands depending on how upset they are.

The person who would be able to safely expand their ranges is me, the one not on tilt.

If poker knowledge were a root cause to prevent tilt, the ranges of these good regs would not change.

I'm wondering if I failed to make my point clearly, or if you filtered it to a particular point of view. Let me try again.

Poker knowledge is like the covid vaccine. It won't stop you from tilting, but it will stop you from dying when you do get it.