My biggest leak lately has been paying off rivered hands when I have a decent, but not great, hand. Last few days I've been just spouting off money. Most of it is run bad, and that is frustrating but part of the game so w/evs, but maybe 20%-30% is me making dumb calls on the river. And I've been making a ton of disciplined folds, so good on me for tightening up! Really, I've made some folds that I wouldn't have in the past, so kudos to me for improving. But I'm still calling off in obviously bad spots way too frequently. And the problem is, in real time, I don't think they're bad spots!! I tell myself a story like "oh, that line makes no sense, what hand would play that way?" (slow-played aces, as it turns out, takes that exact line) and I call off.

Has anybody else been able to overcome their internal narrative generator? I think this is my biggest leak right now, and I don't know how to fix it. I go into every session saying "big folds, big folds", and I make a bunch of big folds but still end up down like 3 buyins due in large part to calls that I think are good but are obviously garbage.

I will say, I don't think this is tilt (as in Angelo's hard tilt). I'm not thinking clearly, so it's some form of tilt, but it's not tilt from taking bad beats or playing too long. It's more like I know that I should fold more when I sit down at the table, and then I forget it when it really matters. It's almost like my perception of reality shifts or something.

Fold the river: so easy in theory, so hard in practice!

Like Albert Einstein said: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

You keep making bad calls, you know you're doing it, yet you keep doing it without learning anything.

There's a thread just a few below this one named: How to "get a grip"
You're pretty much asking the same thing.

If you refuse to fold and just keep making bad calls, there's nothing anyone can do to help you.

The solution is very easy: JUST FOLD

Hi benku:

I don't know what game you're playing but the question is, are these close decisions? (You may want to think about the play of the hand at a later time to help confirm this.) If they are close decisions, then it doesn't really matter what you do in terms of expectation. That is, in the long run, you expect to have approximately the same results whether you call every time in one of these spots, never call, or just call some of the time.

What I suspect is happening is that just by luck when you made these calls most of them lost. So, you think you're playing bad when you're not. On the other hand, if you are able to reason out that when you called your expectation really is quite negative, this would imply that you have to work on your overall understanding of strategy for the game that you're playing.

As for "hard tilt," or lots of the other kinds of tilt that these silly mental coaches talk about, that's garbage and you should ignore it. Tilt occurs when you lose the ability to think rationally, and that's the only time it occurs.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hey Yeodan, thanks for the reply.

Oh yes, I noticed that thread after I posted...quite the read

I think your reply is well intentioned but misguided. Ultimately you are taking the time to answer my question in good faith, and I appreciate that, but I don't think it's helpful.

To begin with, I've never found truisms or misattributed einstein quotes to be helpful. Truisms make sense in retrospect but don't help in the moment. They serve to capture a more complex notion in a convenient-to-remember phrase that you can recall again later.

I can't speak for any other posters here, but I certainly wouldn't have gotten to the point of posting last night without having had the thought of "just fold", and without having tried to put it into action with all my might. In fact, I'd say it's the single tool in my toolbag! "Just don't do it!" is so easy in theory; from another quote misattributed to Einstein:

As a recovering alcoholic/addict/ex-smoker this is a very familiar problem. I'd always hear "just don't smoke a cigarette", or "just don't get high", or "you just lack self discipline". These are all offered in good faith, but they also famously don't work (see also: D.A.R.E's "Just say no!")

My point here isn't to discount what you are saying: what you are saying is obviously correct...to make big folds, one must make big folds. But it isn't helpful. It's tautological. There is no new information here. Surely "just fold more" is neither atomic nor universal. Do I fold royal flushes? No. Do I fold boats? Maybe, but probably not. Do I fold flushes? Straights? Sets? Sometimes, yes! Sometimes it's close. Sometimes no way. And how do I differentiate between these scenarios? Do I just never ever bluff catch? This is ultimately a judgement call, and at that moment when I have to make a judgement call, I find myself focusing on the wrong things, or convincing myself in subtle ways that the call makes the most sense. This is what I want help with. Others have experienced this. I'm asking for help from them. I don't need to be told to "JUST FOLD". I need to be told how to "JUST FOLD".

I've seen so many responses that I think are unhelpful, and in some cases can be detrimental. For instance, what are you trying to accomplish with the sentence

I know you didn't mean it to be, but this is pretty condescending. That word "refuse" is doing so much work. It is implying that there is a clear path in front of me and that I'm just not willing to do the obvious thing. "Refusal" implies obstinance. It implies fault. Blame.

I am fortunate enough to know that I'm trying my hardest, doing my best, and asking these questions in good faith. I'm comfortable enough with myself and know enough about my process to not let sentences like that discourage me. But do you see how this can be offensive to someone? Someone who is struggling against their own natural tendencies and not understanding why they are doing things that they know are bad? Someone reaching out for help from the community in a moment of frustration and desparation, only to get a pithy and overly general reply?

Anyhoo, rant over. I hope you take this reply as constructive criticism rather than me just trying to salve my ego but taking down your response.

Hi Mason, thank you so much for your reply. You're right, a lot of my run bad is just that: run bad! But I am also calling in places I should fold on the river. Some spots are close, some aren't. I'm worried about the ones that seem like close decisions but aren't. Sometimes it seems like reality shifts, and I become overfocused on non-important aspects of a hand and miss the relevant details that I should have noticed. For instance, a weird line will feel fishy and I bluff catch (slowplayed aces!)

I lost 6 buyins last night. I think 2 of them were avoidable. The other 4 were largely variance, and I'm fine with that. But I've been on a huge downswing lately and a LOT of it is from river calls. I'm having trouble getting away from some hands, and I want to focus on what I can change.

Re 'hard tilt': Could you explain? From my experience I tilt in different ways. There is the classic "I'm fuming from a bad beat and I shove with 72o because I hate everything" and I've done that before. Not for a while, but I've done it. I've also played worse because I'm tired, or because I'm distracted, etc. Or hungry. I feel like each of these has different characteristics, and each should be treated differently. I agree that there isn't a hard line between them...we like to categorize things in nice hierarchical branching structures, and the world just doesn't work that way. But is there no value added from differentiating types of tilt? Genuinely curious to hear your answer, I know you've spent a lot of time thinking about this!

Put another way: in real time I say "I played that well", and in review I'm like "OMG WHAT WAS I THINKING???" lol

Hi benku:

Poker is a game based on probability theory and probability theory can be at times counter-intuitive to many people. What this means is that in this case, try to remember a few of the troublesome hands when away from the tabke and take your time thinking about them. You may just see that the decisions were not close and this will help you at other times when you're in the game.

One thing you may want to do is to play a little tighter than what you think is optimal. Assuming you're a winning player, this should reduce your expectation a little and the standard deviation (variance) by much more. I think you'll find this helpful.

I don't think any of this is right. I suggest you read the following paper:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...38&postcount=1

Then, relative to your shoving with "72o" ask yourself the question of whether you're really on tilt or are suffering from expectation bias, and I suspect it's the later.

As for your question of whether there is value in differentiating the different types of tilt, you'll need to understand that there aren't different types of tilt. Again, in my opinion, I believe that all these different types of tilt you hear about are garbage. However, there are states, as my paper talks about, which are not tilt because you're still thinking rationally (but incorrectly) which can lead to losing play. That's where your concern should be.

The key to all of this is that for you to play worse (or better) you must now play some of your hands differently and this new way of playing is inferior (or superior) to your former way of playing. Once you understand this, you have to ask the question of whether something like being hungry will now make you play differently. I bet the answer is almost always no.

Best wishes,
Mason

I went through a phase where I had the same problem as you OP. The natural tendency is to rationalize calling just because as humans we have a curiosity about what they have, plus folding feels like admitting defeat in a way.

I'll tell you what worked for me. I put a note in my phone that said, "if other actions are not +ev fold and record hand!"

Then I made a conscious effort to pause on the turn and river, and ask myself whether a call had a positive expectation. If I was not 100% sure that a call was plus ev, then I would fold and record the hand to look at after the session.

This might sound extreme, but it worked for me to counter my natural tendency. Admittedly it took some time using this process before I successfully retrained myself. But I think my process had an even greater effect on my game just by forcing me to look into spots I was not sure about.

GreatWhiteFish, thanks for your reply! I think that given our predisposition to want to call, having a default-fold strategy is smart, and honestly doesn't sound too extreme. I think that if I'm not sure if it's +EV or not, then it's very likely -EV (my brain is always trying to find reasons to get to showdown and realize my equity, so I gotta play against that). Also, from a metagame experience, fewer bad beats means less tilt.

Also, it does take time to retrain ourselves, and I've just started the retraining journey...gotta be kind to myself while I rework my game

@Mason I love this paper, thanks for the reference. And your accompanying comments do help tease apart some ideas. Like with many disagreements, I think this might come down to a difference in working definitions? Tommy Angelo defines tilt as "non A-game", and I guess this is what I'm thinking of when I say stuff like hard-tilt versus other kinds of tilt. You are defining tilt to be a player's state of strategic deterioration that occurs when that player loses the ability to think rationally at the poker table.

A quick nuance, just to ensure I understand: you are not saying that tilt is sub-optimal play induced by illogical thinking. If I think illogically, but still have the ability to (I just choose not to, say through apathy), this is not tilt. I must have constitutionally lost the ability to think logically to be on tilt, correct?

Another clarification: there is a difference between working illogically towards the correct goal (e.g., EV) and working logically towards a non-EV goal (e.g., revenge). And if I understand correctly, the former is tilt while the latter can be decomposed into the other states you describe, yes?

This is a nice framework, and I think it has a lot of merit. I do think that we are running two different notational systems into one another here, a la Newton vs Leibniz. Angelo's tilt is sub-optimal play, and there are different categorizations of that suboptimal play. In your system suboptimal play has different manifestations, and tilt is simply one of them.

Is any of this right? I'm trying to wrap my head around a different viewpoint and at the same time reconcile it with a view point that already makes sense to me.

Also, FWIW, the shoving 72o stuff was me just raging. If this isn't tilt, I don't know what is. I am pretty sure that any reasonable definition of the word 'tilt' should include rage-induced actions. Would you say that somebody who punches their monitor is on tilt? Or breaks a mouse? While neither of these have anything to do with playing suboptimally, and in theory one can continue to play perfectly after, say, taking a baseball bat to their keyboard, I am going to argue that any of these actions should be considered 'tilt', and that any definition of tilt that doesn't include them is incomplete.

Hi Benny:

If I have a chance I’ll get back to your post later. But if you were to read my book [I]Real Poker Psychology[/] you would see that I think the A Game / C Game stuff is nonsense.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Everyone:

This is from my book Real Poker Psychology:

Play Your A Game — Why Wouldn’t You?


When reviewing the poker psychology literature one of the things we are told is that we always need to play our A Game, and not our C Game. (Apparently the B game doesn’t exist.) Well, I think we all know what our A Game is, but what exactly is our C Game?

To start, lets define each game. Your A Game is when your are making the very best decisions that you can based on your knowledge of the form of poker that you are playing. And the C Game is where you are not doing this. That is, you’re now making decisions different from your A Game, and these are decisions that you shouldn’t be making.

For instance, suppose you’re playing seven-card stud and under the gun you’re dealt the 427. Now playing your A Game, this hand would be quickly folded. But I guess if you’re playing your C Game, you might sometimes call or raise with this hand. Does anyone know of someone who actually plays like this?

I also want to point out one other thing when playing your C Game, you’re not on tilt. That’s because you can still easily make decisions and tilted players have a great deal of problem making any decisions.

Now let’s diverge for a moment and talk about how you actually go about playing poker (and we’ll come back to this idea again and again as this book continues). That is, what do you do when you have a decision to make? and why do you make the decision that you do?

It turns out that poker is a game based on concepts that you learn. For instance, in the stud example above, if you understand how to play stud, you should have learned that the 427 is not a good hand and so it should be quickly folded. Furthermore, since you know this, and you make your decisions based upon what you know, why would you ever play it? Put another way, in this situation, your A Game and your C Game should be exactly the same. In fact, I claim that your A Game and your C Game will always be exactly the same and you won’t be leaving your A Game at home.

Now it may be true that you’re a losing player or perhaps are only a small winner. But this doesn’t mean that your A Game is gone and only your C Game is present. What it does mean is that your A Game can use some improvement, and that’s the task your brain needs to address if your goal is to be a successful poker player.

Also, I do want to mention that there are other reasons besides tilt where a player’s strategic decisions may deteriorate and we’ll be addressing these at various places throughout this book. But as we’ll see, these changes have nothing to do with the A Game versus C Game concept.