Hi all,

How do you guys combat going on tilt?

A few times now, I've been sat there, playing good, solid poker (for a beginner, I'd still get wiped at the higher stakes tables). Can be doing this for a couple of hours, winning at a nice rate of 10bb/100.

Then boom. Out of nowhere I'll raise with a marginal hand (say KJ unsuited), and in the flop, I might get middle pair or whatever. I'll keep pushing and pushing even though Villain is raising me, rather than just folding post flop as a sensible player would. Before I know it, all the work over the past couple of hours has been undone when he puts down trips or something, and then a couple of orbits later I'll have lost the entire buy-in due to playing a couple more crazy hands after getting even more tilted by losing the first hand.

This has happened more than once now, and seems to happen after I've been playing for a couple of hours or more. I know there's guys on this forum who can play for 8 hours or even more, all at once, while multi-tabling etc, so my question is, how do you guys manage tilt? Is it normal to go on tilt after a couple of hours playing? I know this is a mental issue rather than a strictly card based issue, but it's possibly my biggest leak of them all - it's certainly the one which has cost me the most money in my playing days so far (only about 2 weeks, admittedly).

1.) Get a book called "The Mental Game of Poker" (the first version in blue NOT red)
2.) Read it
3.) Read it again
4.) Read it slowly, take notes
5.) Apply the theories and use the "Mental Hand History", "Mental Game Journal" and "Injecting Logic" tools from it.
6.) Maintain awareness and keep working on any issues over time as they come up!

Its completely normal to get tilted if your only playing two weeks. But, seriously, you gotta learn to control it, otherwise you will just donate all your money to everyone else who can control their tilt.
So, sounds like your playing cash games. Thats pretty easy to combat. Once you start to tilt, instantly sit out, go outside, breath some fresh air or make a tea until you have calmed down again. Just acknowledge, you either made a bad mistake or got very unlucky and accept it.
Trust me, i know, my tilting was so bad, back in the days, if i bubbled final table, i was so tilted i would sit in a HU cash table and piss all my roll away. Done it so many times. Its a monster of a problem if you dont instantly leave the tables for a break.

Tilt is physiologically when your body deprived bloodflow to the neocortex and only supplies it to the limbic brain. You just can't make decisions when your limbic brain takes over, not good decisions anyway.

It's extremely hard to get rid of tilt completely. Your limbic brain will make you think things like "I feel like he's bluffing me everytime." Instead of going through the motions of putting him on a range of hands and formulating a winning strategy.

Better players don't play hands like crazy mother ****ers when they go on tilt. They go through long periods of not making the correct adjustments to their opponents and getting slowly wound up until they have to take a break or give up.

Like many players, your aspirations are way to high. It's very unlikely you will ever get a solid 10bb/100 winrate and if you do, you will move up limits before you can confidently realise it.

You must give yourself a realistic goal to achieve, 3bb/100 is great going. If you give yourself impossible standards, you will just get frustrated when you don't achieve them. When you get frustrated, you go on tilt.

The way to stop tilt is to become completely indifferent to what happens at the table. Always be checking your emotions. Especially in tough situations, you have to be a cold calm killer.

i used to get mad then i got better... naw but honestly, it was hard 4 me to be accountable, i used to play the victim alot.... then i just read and watched some youtube vid's on the mental game, and heard some advice from very good players and tried to apply it. you gotta have a short term memory and realize that it happens to everyone, also never get upset over things you can't control. making the right decision is about the only thing you can control.

Cheers, I'll order the book. Did you have tilt issues, and if so, did that book help to minimise/get rid of them?

Sometimes cash, sometimes tournament. I really need to learn to get up from the table, often when I'm losing I'll just keep playing more hands and putting more in, trying to 'finish up on the day' or something ridiculous like that.

Oh don't get me wrong, 10bb/100 aint a 'goal' at all, it's just what I happened to be winning at before I went on tilt (where I promptly go and piss all my winnings up the wall on garbage like pocket 7's, when the flop was a 8, Q and K, and 2 players raised...). Right now, if I'm winning at all, even 0.1bb/100, I'd be happy, since I'm just learning. It's just when I have a bad beat, or not even a bad beat, but when I had a good hand, but opponent had a better one, I get tilted (i.e. I had a full house with kings, but opponent had a full house with aces).

Instantly sit out and take a bit of fresh air and breath slowly, let your brain take over again not your emotions

I love this book (and it's sequel). Some of the best money I have ever spent. I've been working through the activities/lessons it contains and I feel like I've improved noticeably since then.

Not true. 10bb/100 is absolutely fine for micros. If I say to you on what number i run ... you would probably dont belive me ..

Exercise! Go run or something. It will release a big chunk of stres and it will make good to you body and soul

Pll will say you read a book,i agree that book awesome but its just a book.Like you cant just read a poker book and be pro the next day.You must doing more stuff that you think,just work and work day after day.When,work harder and harder... and again and again.

What number over what sample size ?

Back in the day I'd tilt like a complete degenerate. If I got sucked out on, basically the next hand I'd ship my remaining stack with any 2 cards. Start playing any 2 cards, targetting the villain that sucked out on me. Chase gutshots.

Now I basically never tilt, ever. Here's how I deal with most situations:

(1) Get sucked out on in a big pot: I smile and re-buy, or just leave. I need people that are willing to put their money in when I have the best of it, otherwise I'd never make money. In fact, getting sucked out on leaves me with at worst a neutral to slightly good feeling. I know I made the right decision, and that's really all that matters in the long run

(2) I get bluffed out of a big pot, villain shows the bluff (or doesn't show, but in hindsight I'm pretty sure I was bluffed): Again, I smile and thank the villain (in my head) for the free information. I know I'm playing against someone now that is willing/ capable of making big bluffs, so I look for situations to exploit that.

(3) Card dead: This happens to everyone, I think. You sit at the table for 2 hours and the best hand you are dealt is 10-5 off. I don't let this get to me. If anything it helps keep me disciplined as I'm generally a very tight player anyways, and I just concentrate on watching and observing the play around me. Or I'll just make friendly chatter with the people around me.

So those are the 3 major things that used to make me tilt like crazy 6-7 years ago when I first started playing, and how I deal with them now. I also think getting a bit older and more mature helped me as well.

55bb/100 25k hands on NL4 6max

25k hands isn't that many!

Running hot, come back when you keep that at 100k+ hands.

I do, but my point was, that 10bb/100 at micros are absolutely real ..

Just for comparison, the all time biggest winner on merge 10NL has a winrate of 3.04 bb/100, and there is only one out of the top 50 who has a winrate >10bb/100 over a sample > 25K hands.

Take a break. Take a walk. Take the rest of the day off. Take the rest of the week-end off. Take a week off. etc.

3bb/100? Really? ... where did you get this number?

PTR

If you ran at 10+bb/100 through the micro's you wouldn't be a microstakes player long until you were a medium/high stakes player. This is why I don't believe you.

I ran at 20bb/100 at 2nl but I came to 5nl way before I could realise my true winrate. I then ran at 10bb/100 at 5nl but again, I graduated to 10nl way before I could realise it. At 10nl, things changed a lot and took me a long time to really understand the game before I could crush it. Then I went through 16nl pretty fast and 25nl but from my experience 5bb/100 is crushing at these limits.

EDIT

It's not that I don't believe you. I do. Personally I ran 27bb/100 for about 20k hands at 10nl pokerstars. It's just variance.

It depends on the sample size. A lot of players who make 3+bb/100 don't stay around at 10nl long enough to get a decent sample size on them. Lets say they run 4.5bb/100 and need to make $300 to get to 25nl. That means they only need to play 66,500 hands or so before they can move up. That would take someone who plays 1,500 hands about 45 days to do. Not very long in terms of such a dramatic leap in stakes.

I've seen databases of hundreds of thousands of hands played at 50nl which have been about 5bb/100. I think this is possible if you are a very very good player.

Back to combating tilt for a moment. I generally don't tilt from being card dead or the other guys bad play being rewarded and so on. Coolers get me started down the road. If I get dealt strong hands, flop well, and bet correctly and at showdown get set over set, and all the rest, I hate the game briefly. If I get a few of them in a short time I tilt. The only thing that helps is for me to quit the game before I blow off what I have left or re buy and blow that too. I am not good enough yet ( maybe never) to keep on playing thru tilt once it hits. I simply recommend leaving the game as a good remedy to tilt. There will be another one tomorrow !

So....winning 10 big blinds per 100 hands in .02/.05 would mean that you are winning .50 every 100 hands.

If you are playing 6-max .02/.05 you are paying .07 in the blinds every 6 hands, right? which is like $1.16 out of 100 hands?

So, even if you win 10 big blinds, or .50, every 100 hands, how are you not losing money?

I'm confused on the math. Obviously I have it wrong.

I worked out the 10bb/100 figure after deducting rake.

There's no way I'm a 10bb/100 winning player though. I'll play at that level for a couple of hours then in a few orbits will spew and lose the lot. I'm currently a losing player (working on improving though!).

Isnt win rate in "big bets" not "Big Blinds"?
Isnt a "Big Bet" double a big blind?

So 10bb/100 actually is 40c per 100 hands at 2NL. With regards to posting blinds, don't forget that the hero may actually have a good hand and win some money in some of the blinds.