Perhaps you don't know what you're talking about. I have a whole book called Real Poker Psychology that explains most of this stuff. But let's look at what you're saying.

Meditation is not mentioned in my book because it should have virtually no value for poker. But why is that?

Well, if meditation works, it should help with things like relaxation which may be good for things like speed, timing, and coordination. I know from playing tennis since I was a kid that when I'm relaxed on the tennis court I hit the ball better than when I'm tense.

But poker is mainly a knowledge game where the execution component is at most small. So you can meditate all you want and I doubt if it will improve your knowledge and that's what you need to play well. On the other hand, I don't think that meditation will hurt your poker game unless it becomes a substitute for doing those things like studying to improve your game in the future.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Elrazor:

I think this is a good comparison. In fact, what happens when a road rage event occurs and you don't get enraged. You'll begin to laugh.

What's happening here is that when your mind get solve the difficult information that gets presented to it, you'll begin to laugh since the same pathways that are used for humor are used here. But when your mind can't understand what has happened or why it happened, it can't move past this point and tilt can begin. An excellent example.

I agree with this. But also feel he doesn't understand poker well enough to understand that many of the things he calls tilt are not tilt at all. For example, he has something called "revenge tilt" which is when a player makes a rational decision to go after another player by betting, bluffing, reraising, etc. Now while this may be a decision that lowers your EV, it's done rationally and tilted players do not think rationally.

Again I agree. Also, thanks for your posts. I feel it's important that more people who are struggling with these issues begin to understand that the solutions which are commonly advocated for by these so called poker mental coaches have little value.

Also, later today (when I'm in front of a different computer), I'll post the chapter from my book titled "A Mathematical Model for Tilt -- Cause and Cure."

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Everyone:

Here's the chapter out of my book that explains what causes tilt and how to fix it. Also notice that if someone came to me for counseling, it wouldn't take more than 15 minutes of my time.

Best wishes,
Mason

A Mathematical Model of “Tilt” — Cause and Cure


Many years ago, in 1975, I finally left my home at Virginia Tech and went to work as a Mathematical Statistician for the United Stated Census Bureau. Upon arrival, I found myself assigned to an office with several well educated statisticians. This meant that there was always a statistical journal around and an article to read.

After working for a few months, my supervisor brought over the latest journal article that others had already found quite interesting. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the article, who the author was, or what particular journal it was in. So to this unknown author I apologize for not giving proper credit.

The article was about a mathematical definition of humor, and it’s my conviction that tilt follows the same pathways with one major difference. However, for those who don’t know, let’s describe tilt at a poker table:

Generally, what happens is that a player, after sustaining a series of losses will begin to play in a sub-optimal manner, and sometimes this can appear to be, and truly is, quite irrational. Usually it manifests itself by the tilted player playing far too many hands, meaning many hands for which the expectation would be negative. Thus this player will tend to have results much worse than what he would normally expect.

However, by playing too many hands, the tilted player can occasionally get lucky and actually do quite well in the short run. When this happens, the tilting will almost always stop and the steamer will return to their normal game.

Other characteristics can also be seen. This can include yelling at the dealer, demanding that new cards be brought to the table, getting upset at other players, and playing in an extremely aggressive manner.

In addition, I have even noticed that on occasion tilt can carry over from one day to another. On several occasions I have observed a new player sitting down in my game, and after announcing that he was a big loser from the day before, immediately begin to play in a tilted fashion. So it’s clear to me that tilt can last a long time.

Now that we have a definition of tilt out of the way, to understand what is to follow, we need to define a continuous function and a point of discontinuity. And we’ll use this very simple definition:

A continuous function is a line or curve that you can draw across a piece of paper from left to right without lifting up your pen or pencil.

In other words, it will just look like a line, not necessarily straight, that starts on the left side of the paper and finishes on the right. On the other hand, if it’s necessary to lift your pen or pencil up and then set it down at another point producing a gap in what you are drawing, this is a point of discontinuity, and your function is no longer continuous at that point.

Continuing with the article I read many years ago, it then argued that humor was simply points of discontinuity in the logic presented that your brain had to process. And it gave this example which to the best of my ability is repeated below:

There was a young lady who wanted to have a boyfriend. But she had some requirements. She told her friends that her future man needed to be short but well dressed. So her friends introduced her to a penguin.

Notice that this little joke is funny and it contains a point of discontinuity which we’ll call a logic disconnect. While a penguin is certainly short, and they do appear to be well dressed, this is obviously not an appropriate boyfriend. But the brain processes this discontinuity, understands it, and finds it funny. And it’s my contention that the fact that the brain can understand what has happened is what causes it to be funny.

Put another way, the brain has figured it out or solved the puzzle, and we’ll come back to this idea below. But as long as the puzzle is solved, humor appears and we find the experience enjoyable.

Three other examples of humorous discontinuities are when Groucho Marx, aka Captain Spalding, stated:

One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.

Or when Mae West commented:

When I’m good, I’m very, very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.

Or when W. C. Fields said:

There is not a man in America who has not had a secret ambition to boot an infant.

It should be obvious, as in the penguin example that was in the original article I read many years ago, what the logic disconnects are. We see the logic discontinuity and also understand the error of the logic. Thus we laugh.

But what happens when a logic disconnect happens and we don’t understand the error in the logic. That is, our brain is unable to solve the puzzle that has been presented to it. Do we still find it funny?

It’s my contention that instead of humor, the brain sort of shorts out, or perhaps gets caught in an infinite logic loop similar to what can be caused by some sort of bad computer programming. This leads to frustration, and in extreme cases, irrational decisions.

Recently, I was sent a paper titled “‘This is just so unfair!:’ A qualitative analysis of loss-induced emotions and tilting in on-line poker” by Jussi Paloma, Michael Laakasuoa, and Mikko Salmela from the University of Helsinski in Finland. One of the things that they pointed out is tilted players often don’t sleep well. Could this disruption in sleep be caused by the infinite logic loop that our brain is stuck in still being active? I believe so.

When playing poker, despite what some others have claimed, I virtually never go on tilt. But there is something I do all the time where tilt occasionally gets the best of me. It’s playing tennis, and this is an activity that has been part of my life since I was a kid, and that was a long time ago.

What will occasionally happen is that I’ll miss an easy shot which is simply impossible to miss, or perhaps miss several shots in a row where I shouldn’t miss any of them, or my service toss isn’t straight when trying to serve, etc. And my mind will view these things as simply being impossible. That is, there is no logical way that any of this can happen. I’ve been playing too long and have too much skill for these events to occur. But they do occur and a logical point of discontinuity is manifested.

But unlike the humorous examples given above, there is no solution. I’m not able to realize that a penguin is not a potential boyfriend for a young lady even though he seems to meet some of the criteria, that an elephant was not really in Captain Spalding’s pajamas, that Mae West wasn’t referring to being polite and well behaved, and that we’re not suppose to be kicking little kids across the room. My logic just fails because, again, there is no solution, or at least it seems that way.

This brings us to poker. Here it’s my opinion the same problem occurs for many people. When they lose several hands in a row, or can’t understand how their aces are cracked, or have trouble dealing with running bad, it’s again a logic disconnect. To the person on tilt, in their mind, the events that just occurred are simply impossible, and thus their logical circuitry, so to speak, gets locked up as the information that their brain needs to process enters some sort of infinite loop.

So what’s the solution to this? It’s simple. Understand poker and the probabilistic events that govern it better. Once you get a grasp of the fact that your aces can be beat, it’s very possible, and eventually quite likely, to lose several hands in a row, and running bad for long periods of time can and will happen, tilt goes away.

In fact, when you see good players who are known not to tilt suffer a horrendous beat, they usually chuckle. Their minds have the solution at the end of the discontinuity. So instead of processing it as frustration, they process all the chips going the wrong way as an “elephant in my pajamas.” That is, they see these events as being funny, not frustrating.

On the other hand, you’ll occasionally hear about a player, usually because he has won a tournament or two, who claims to have never read a poker book. While this may be literally true, it’s also my observation that many of these people are steamers and do poorly in the cash games. I also don’t think their poor results here and lack of studying is coincidental, and suspect that their constant tilting is from an incomplete knowledge of poker, and an unwillingness to gain that knowledge.

On our forums at www.twoplustwo.com, I have written many times that understanding the game of poker well is the best cure for tilt. Now most of you can understand my reasoning behind this. Tilt is not a “fight or flight” experience as some people have proposed. (If it were, we would see lots of fights in the poker room, and a poker room fight is something that only happens on very rare occasions.) It’s actually something humorous where the logic that your mind requires gets hung up. And once you acquire enough information that your mind won’t get hung up in an infinite logic loop, tilt should be a thing of the past.

You keep saying things like this, and I keep not believing it because it doesn't fit with my experience of the world. People's mental states can influence their ability to apply knowledge. I was recently reading in Politics Unchained and ran into a post that reviews some related research:

How can you make sense of this research if you are right that one's state of mind (except in extreme tiredness, I believe you've said) can't affect their ability to apply knowledge?

Hi ganstaman:

The reason I keep saying the same stuff over and over again is that the same issues keep coming up over and over again.

I have no issue with this research. What does it have to do with tilt? As for being tired, we're talking specifically poker, and I've stated that there is a big difference between being physically tired and mentally tired.

Best wishes,
Mason

Mason, meditation is the fundamental practice and habit to learn how to build many of the most critical aspects of being a good poker player. Knowledge is really just the beginning when you're talking competing at a high level.

Meditation will help us transcend thought and into awareness and therefore make us more creative, help us trust which thoughts we should be trusting and which we shouldn't, have much better emotion control due to not letting the emotion of getting unlucky/etc make us make poor decisions, have better self awareness and have better self honesty, all critical aspects of long term winning poker(ive been msnl+6mnlcash winner since 07). You seem to think meditation is simply about relaxation or something when really its all about transcending thought and evolving into awareness which is an incredible place to get to that requires years if not decades of consistent theory work + implementation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugvMqHkUO-0 Check out this video for a better explanation.

This is just really the tip of the iceberg for what it and Jared can help with though imho. I have been passionate about mastering my psychology for the past 4-5 years and what I have seen/heard of jared's work clearly show an excellent grasp of how our brains work when related to poker as he has helped a ton of top poker players succeed.

You should check out https://www.youtube.com/user/ActualizedOrg/videos for great advanced psychology content if you're interested. Not just trying to argue here, simply disagreeing strongly so felt the need to post :P. <3!

The answer is quiet simple

Short definition of tilt: Getting upset because of the outcome

Why?: Because something is stopping you from achieving your goal

Who tilt? Everyone. People with a more aggressive attitude will tilt more and faster.

How to stop tilt? Stop making money the goal. Be comfortable financially and have a stress free life. Play poker following a strict bankroll management and play smart like it was play chips money. Set up other goals, like a number of hands per day. Make yourself a stop loss, like after 4 buy in lost, i log out and take the day off.

Pros don't tilt because they already have the money to play, they're often pretty calm, if they get upset, it's because something is doing so. You need to think why, it's always more than just 'the stupid fish hit his 1 outer'.

Hi adam001:

If you think meditation helps you then I have no objection to that and I do say the following in the conclusion of my book:

Best wishes,
Mason

Yeah, this forum doesn't tend to cover a great variety of topics. I do appreciate posting with you here.

This may be better addressed by looking at a different post of yours from another thread:

What I'm reading here and in your other posts is that you feel stress doesn't affect your ability to apply knowledge: since poker is a game of applying knowledge and not physical feats, stress won't affect your ability to play (after all, why would you make a play you know to be bad?). Similarly, intelligence tests and tests of mathematical abilities are tests of knowledge application and not physical feats, so if you're right about poker then I'd expect stress to not affect one's scores on such tests (after all, why would you mark down an answer you know to be wrong?), but there are plenty of studies to show this isn't the case.

This isn't really about tilt but is about the general message is just about all your posts here that one's mental state (stress, emotions, etc) won't affect their ability to apply knowledge in a poker game.

Hi ganstaman:

Extreme stress can certainly affect your play. A well known example is when in a major tournament someone approaches the point where the money can be life changing. Many players in this spot are known to breakdown and lose their ability to execute good strategy. On the other hand a little bit of stress is probably good for your poker game. It will help you to pay attention and assure you don't make careless errors.

You also need to understand that l'm addressing what I see in the poker psychology literature where it's in their best interest to go on and on about this stuff as they try to recruit students for counseling. And of course what they then produce is mostly garbage.

Best wishes,
Mason

Mason,

Thanks for posting your view on tilt. I think what you are saying makes a lot of sense and I totally agree that a greater understanding of the game is a sure way to deal with bad beats, etc. However, for some players tilt is not just a reaction to losing. Personally, I can accept a bad beat much more than playing bad, or becoming impatient and doing dumb things for no real reason. Again, I suppose those things are still ultimately fixed by becoming better at poker and understanding the game. Although some players have a naturally calm, patient personality and others (like myself) are a bit ADD, hyper, impatient, talkative, etc. At times, my personality traits feel like a curse. I feel like most of the grinders here is Vegas are pretty calm people who at the least know how to internalize and process negative feelings correctly. This is something I struggle with both in poker and in life - which is why I said in another post why poker has taught me so much about myself. I wish I could just say nice hand to other players, laugh it off, and move on. I wish I could have more compassion on myself when I make mistakes. I miss "easy shots" far too often in poker. I level myself and try too hard to win. The last few sessions I have lost thousands in bluffs. I didn't feel tilted, but maybe I was impatient or bored. Clearly they were sort of impulsive plays because they didn't work out repeatedly. Its easy when this happens to also have less confidence. All of this makes loosing that much harder and leads to depression. Quite simply, poker is a tough game, and the hardest opponent Ive ever faced is myself.

A human being is an emotional creature. It overrules their intellects billions of times every day all day. We are not logic programmed computers though some fancy that is the case, or even that that is the ideal. This emotional nature is just as present when one attempts to repress them drastically or act computer-like. Human beings act against not only their knowledge, but their self-interest (meaning not altruistically so but irrationally so), trillions of times per year. Poker is no exception. To assume that people act by logic and rationality automatically or by default or exclusively bears no relation to what is happening on the planet, in the poker rooms, or in the consciousness of human beings.

Yes, this is well known in basically everything, that a little stress improves performance, but at some point adding more stress impairs performance.

Just because others make money from a certain idea doesn't make it wrong. And this response doesn't really address my point (which I make no money from). Maybe these posts show the issue I have more clearly:

In here and the other posts I've quoted, you seem to be speaking against the idea that focus and energy can impact your ability to apply your knowledge in the game of poker. But we have studies showing one's mental state (including focus, if you really want me to find one) does impact your ability to apply knowledge in various intelligence or achievement tests. Why would poker be different?

Even outside of studies, Synchronic says it nicely:

Hi ganstaman:

You need to pay attention. But do you need the same type of extreme paying attention or focus that you would need to hit a 95 mph fastball? I doubt it.

As for why poker would be different. Is it as hard as a specific test that's designed to push and determine what your mental abilities are? I doubt it.

Best wishes,
Mason

Emotions might drive us, but we still ultimately are able to control these actions - especially with practice. When we are babies, we use emotion to convey our needs. Toddlers are also emotionally driven, however they are beginning to form higher forms of intelligence and communication at this point, and also learn about social norms.

So while emotions might be the engine that drives us, we are still able to control these emotions the vast majority of the time. Some people are obviously better than others, but all mammals have this ability, which is ultimately what separates us from fish and reptiles.

Meditation enhances presence and calmness. Presence enhances learning and perception. Calmness obviously aids with tilt. Meditation is major +EV for poker.

Hi Synchronic:

Why will calmness help with tilt? If your brain can't process certain information that gets presented to it in the form of a logic disconnect, how will being calm allow you to do something that you're not capable of doing?

Best wishes,
Mason

^ Mason: "One of the prime areas affected by mindfulness is the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a part of the brain associated with self-perception, regulation of attention, emotions and impulses and cognitive flexibility or the ability to change problem-solving strategies when you aren't getting the results you want. "

Full article here

If - however tilt may be abstractly envisioned or mathematically represented - if at the table and in the mind of the player it is about stress and how we cope with stress ... how can enhanced, deeper calmness not help with it?

Generally speaking, it is tough to change. Just like someone who has a bad temper. The volcano erupts and it really is tough to hold on. Most all habits that can get out of control are tough to reel in if you are one of the ones who gets caught up in it.

What does this article have to do with poker?

Here's a quote from the article:

You do realize that in a game like poker with a large short term luck factor this isn't meaningful.

Best wishes,
Mason

Perhaps if you read it slowly, you can figure out how it relates to poker.

I'm sure you're right and that any poker player will benefit when he reads something like this slowly:

MM

I'm going to take a look at Jared tandler book hopefully will help with tilt issues.... Fingers crossed

If we cling to the hypothesis that tilt is exclusively about logic disconnect and not understanding that aces can get beat (whatever that means) ... and ignore massive evidence that it is about stress and frustration ... then there is no sense in practicing calmness away from and at the table. Agreed. WTF???