From Wikipedia:

Learned helplessness is behavior that occurs when the subject endures repeatedly painful or otherwise aversive stimuli which it is unable to escape from or avoid. After such experiences, the organism often fails to learn or accept "escape" or "avoidance" in new situations where such behavior is likely to be effective. In other words, the organism learned that it is helpless.

There was a rather cruel experiment conducted in the 60s that subjected some dogs to electric shocks that they could stop with a lever and other dogs to electric shocks that started and stopped randomly. In the second part of the experiment, the dogs were given the opportunity to easily escape the shocks, but those in the second group just lay down and whined (think poker players).

I’ve just been on the receiving end of a brutal streak of runbad, and there’s something that resonates when I read about learned helplessness.

Example thoughts I’ve been trying to fend off:

What’s the point in folding bad cards? Nothing comes when I play good cards anyway.
What’s the point in being aggressive? They always pick me off.
What’s the point in concentrating…
What’s the point in staying sober…

I’d be interested in hearing whether and why you agree or disagree with me.

Thanks!

lol "whats the point of staying sober. " tilt is a pretty complex emotional reaction, but i think that you are right, learned helplessness is probably an aspect of some peoples tilt. although this phrase might be oversimplifying because unlike the dogs people are usually trying to escape

i mean every player generally knows that if you are super tilted you are better off stopping and preventing yourself from experiencing more harm, but in the moment many people just keep playing and increasing the damage with a 'helpless' and frustrated kind of mindstate.

like i said, where i would disagree with this phrase is that when you are tilted you are struggling to escape your emtional state by getting back to even or whatever...but at the same time ive seen many people who just become sullen and start giving their money away as if that was the only possible outcome, which is definitely a helpless mindstate

If you find this model of understanding emotions useful use it.

Things you should consider:

1) Negative thoughts are perfectly normal. Most of them arise automatically. However, when you're in a distressed/negative/depressed state they become the norm and they lead you further into a negative mood. One of the most liberating things is to fully experience is that all thoughts are just mental events.

2) It sounds a bit like you are trying to find comfort in an uncomfortable & unstable situation. This is perfectly normal. And you're trying to find the solution through thinking. Or a certain model. Unfortunately trying to think your way out of emotional issues is not very effective.

3) So what is? Exploring and investigating exactly what is happening when those emotions arise. How does it feel in the body? Where do you feel it strongest? What thoughts come up. This is what is more commonly known as practicing mindfulness.

PS This is a very quick overview over a topic that can't really be fully explored in a single written forum post. I hope you find some value in this, however.

Lol.

Great post, tx!

It's an interesting parallel drawn, between tilt and helplessness, as in a drama played out in the psyche, a classic repeat pattern, even a comfort zone within the drama, reaffirming one's lot in life sort of. Sounds dangerous. I've always thought of tilt in terms of frustration, a thwarting of one's will with the resulting feelings of lack efficacy, or ..... yup, helplessness. Great topic.

Thanks for all the responses, everyone.

Yeah, I probably am oversimplifying. I don't expect poker tilt and LH (learned helplessness) to be a perfect fit, but there are some aspects that seem to match quite well. I keep a spreadsheet for each poker trip that I update after each session, and here are some of my comments:

1. Conscious of tilt possibility, I paid good attention but started to avoid high-variance spots...
2. Still playing a bit cowardly and avoiding the high-variance spots, e.g. bet flop and turn w J9cc with two clubs on flop but failed to barrel river and he beat me with paired 3.
3. After this session while on the gym treadmill, I reflected that my recent play had been worse than I thought and I'd just been aspiring to play solid ABC poker which is easily exploitable by good 1/2 players. Should be aiming for vice versa.
4. Notice I'm losing my aggression again, e.g. missing a clear 3-betting opportunity when frequent raiser raises to 7, there a call and I pick up AJs in the SB.

So it looks like I'd been coolered and bad-beaten into losing my aggression, against my better judgment. It's this bolded part that really reminds me of the dogs experiment. I mean, how hard is it to 3-bet AJs from the SB? You just need to pick up six red chips and put them into the pot, just like how the dogs just needed to jump over a low wall to escape the shocks. But I'd acquired such a strong aversion after losing so much money that I just couldn't pull the trigger, and before you know it I'm only 3-betting AQs+ which is really exploitable.

On the other hand, the worse tilt I got on the entire trip was when I was waiting for over an hour for a cocktail waitress to bring me a Red Bull which (I felt) I badly needed. I way overreacted to that one, not observing the table for ages and just glaring at all the waitresses, and that doesn't seem to have anything to do with LH.

Right, so I looked up Mindfulness on Wikipedia and it turns out I'm terrible at keeping my concentration focused on my breathing. It says that beginners should start with ten minutes, but to be honest even a minute is a challenge right now (depending on exactly how focused you're supposed to be and exactly what counts as your thoughts straying). Does this meditation thing really get easier with time? Does this practice really help you in other ways?

Again guys, thanks for giving my topic some thought.

Starting with a minute is completely fine. In fact, starting with short meditations is perfect because the whole practice is going to be completely alien to the way your mind has operated for years and years.

Have you tried guided meditations? They are a great way to get started and discover what kind of meditation you enjoy.

Insight Timer, is a free meditation app, that helped me get started a year ago. I wrote about my favourite meditations on there, in this blog post.

Just have to add, that one of the first things you should work on dropping is the judgment you have towards yourself practicing meditation. There is no right or wrong way to practice it. Just experiment with finding a guided meditation that you enjoy and go from there.

PS Yes your concentration powers will develop with time. Progress with meditation is incremental and not always linear, which is why non-judgment is so valuable.

Do you give up while playing?

Are you focused on results rather than the process?

You run bad then you ask the question whats the point in folding bad hands?

Shouldn't you be focused on doing things right rather than the actual $ you win or lose? Would focusing on this actually help your game? Does $ only matter for bankroll/risk purposes?

Which doesn't really describe tilt, since tilt (or runbad leading to tilt) is not unavoidable as there is a foolproof way to escape it: through patience. Runbad doesn't last forever.
This is assuming you know that you play decent poker. If the runbad is due to being outclassed at the table then the situation is different. But even in this case there is a foolproof way out: leave the table (or "git gud, scrub").

The issue with learned helplessness is that you think that the future will definitely hold bad things. Each hand of poker is independent of the last one so that premise doesn't hold.

Don't know about that. I suppose my theory (in parentheses) is that:

Learned helplessness is behavior that occurs when the subject endures repeatedly painful or otherwise aversive stimuli which it is unable to escape from or avoid (i.e. runbad).
After such experiences, the organism often fails to learn or accept "escape" or "avoidance" in new situations where such behavior is likely to be effective (i.e. tilt).

In my case, I lost almost every big pot I played over several days, sometimes via coolers, sometimes via bad beats and sometimes via poor decisions. After a while, I became averse towards making pots bigger and started losing my aggression, even though I know that not firing the final barrel when you have a missed J-high flush draw is terrible, and 3-betting AJs from the SB is much better than calling and playing OOP vs. two opponents.

Sitting here now, a week after Vegas and in the cold light of day, it's easy to see where I went wrong, but in the moment the runbad was preventing me from acting rationally. A normal dog can jump over a low fence to escape an electric shock, but the ones in the experiment had been conditioned out of it. I can normally fire a third barrel with J-high, but I'd been conditioned out of it.

I think there is a parallel between learned helplessness and the tilt you are experiencing. The dogs that experienced random shocks couldn't escape and the dogs that had control could escape. What better way to experience randomness than dealing a shuffled deck of cards? So, you have to embrace and accept the randomness with your logical mind the way a dog cannot. Take control and make the three bet in spite of the randomness of the deck. Accept that you will be putting in money bad sometimes, but it is out of your control as you can't control which cards you or your opponents are dealt.