Your Worst Enemy
12-26-2010
, 01:33 PM
12-26-2010
, 05:37 PM
Quote:
Posted this article awhile ago on a site and never threw it up on here, thought i would do so as one of my students was having tilt issues and wanted to share it with every1 here.
Your Worst Enemy
A poker player’s worst enemy are themselves. Many pro’s have stated this concept time and time again. This is a powerfully true statement mainly because many player’s biggest leak is not how well they play, but how often they tilt and how it affects their play. Because this is such an important issue to all players I have decided to write my second article on tilt. I will be discussing and analyzing it, not only the forms of it, but also why people tilt, and how you can fix this massive leak.
THE FORMS OF TILT:
Super-Aggro (a.k.a. “Donkey Tilt): Shoving your stack all in every hand until you double up or bust. Many players will bust out of a tourney and move down to micros and do this (some will even start doing it in their current game or games while multi-tabling), they will shove until they suck-out vs. someone in a large pot to feel “vindicated” for the massive suck-out vs. them.
Spewing-Off: While not as bad as “Donkey Tilt”, this is one of the most prevalent forms of tilt. Players who are normally positionally aware will begin to 3xing from any position using atc. While they may normally play 15/12/4 (15% of the time they put money into the pot, 12% of the time raise when putting money into the put, 4% they 3-bet when putting money into the pot), now that they have tilted their stats have shifted to 45/35/15. Not only are they no longer positionally aware but they begin to poorly chase draws, and randomly 3-bet over shove hands like 22-77 and 69dd (for “t3h lulz” obv). Players tend to do this because they feel that bad play is working against them so “Why don’t they play like the donkeys around them, maybe they’ll win for once.”
Nit Tilt: Opposite of spewing off. Players begin to play only hands like JJ+/AQ+ and they play them hyper aggressively. Due to this style they lose tons of value and tend to get blinded off when playing under this form of tilt. The reason people play like this is because they realize they are tilted and don’t want to spew off and they are scared of getting sucked out on more.
Semi-tilted (a.k.a. “perma-tilt”): This is by far the most common form of tilt. Most poker players who do not have themselves exceptionally well disciplined play while tilted for long periods of time and may not even realize it. While only partially tilted (maybe you “downswonged” 5 buy-ins in a hour, or maybe you are in a 500 game swing) you will still make many mistakes that are a mix of “Nit-Tilt” and “Spewing-Off”. You will 3-bet shove light on someone after they sucked out on you just because “F**k-them!”, or maybe you will become tight when you should loosen up and play lag when you should be tight. Semi-tilted is simply a shift in your standard +Ev mindset. You may be still playing winning poker, but it is no where near of the level you are capable of.
Bankroll tilt: Players with poor BRM tend to have perpetual issues with this. They may be able to play within their bankrolls (whether it is 30-buy ins they have set for themselves or 150) for short periods of time (maybe a week, or a day, or some extreme cases for no longer then a few hours or till the first major suck-out vs. them). However after they get sucked-out on once or twice or maybe a dozen times and run bad for a period of time they will then stop caring about their bankroll rules and they will take shots at higher limits, they do so to chase losses usually.
WHAT CAUSES TILT?
Now that we have gone over a general idea of some of the forms of tilt and you know what to look for to spot tilt in yourself and others lets take a look as to why people tilt.
Tilt is mainly caused by 2 factors, ego and greed. While running bad many players tend to feel a variety of emotions ranging from “I should have won this hand!” to “He stole this pot from me!” or “I am due for a major win! I deserve it!” and sometimes even “Why does god hate me!?!?!?!?” (Who could say such a thing!?
). Each of these emotions of anger, annoyance, or even hate at another player are in the end a mixture of greed and ego.
For instance when a player gets sucked out on a feels as though they were stolen from (lets say you have AA all-in-pre-flop (“aipf”) vs. someone’s Aj-offsuit, in this hand you are a 92% favorite, however the player with AJ flops jjj and they end up winning the pot), when such a hand occurs you feel that you deserved the pot because not only were you a huge favorite to win but “how could that fkn idiot get in with such **** and win!?!?!?!?” Your ego is stating that by playing well and being a huge favorite all the chips should be yours, your greed desires to have that pot back and thus the 2 combined mean you become angry and either lash out or enter a form of tilt or possibly even both.
Your ego makes all players feel as though they are better then they truly are and their greed causes them to feel anger or extreme happiness at winning pots (nobody likes to lose, and poker players are all extremely competitive).
The 2 (ego and greed) combined make most players feel that when they play they not only should win, but they deserve to win because of how well they play. However the truth is….” YOU DON’T DESERVE ANYTHING”! Lets face the facts people, life is not fair! Poker is a game of skill… However, in the short run, anything can happen (some players consider the short run to be 1,000,000 hands or more). Just because you have been losing a lot over the past week or month, does not mean that if you played like the idiots surrounding you that you will make a miraculous comeback and make a ton of money. If you let your ego and greed control you they will consume you and make you into a bad and losing player.
HOW DO WE FIX OUR TILT?
Now that we know the major forms of tilt and what causes tilt how can we fix our tilting issues?
Something that I have began doing recently is that I made a set of rules that I must read before and after each session and I try to follow the rules to the best of my ability. The rules are the following:
POKER RULES:
1.You must read this every time you start a session and end a session.
2.Poker is about self control, discipline, and making the right moves, the goal in poker is not to win, not to prove others you are better then them, but to make the best decisions you can with the information available and to make yourself better each time you play.
3.Bad beats happen, nobody cares, accept them and move on. Variance/luck are part of the game, if you desire to do well in poker you must accept this and control your greed!
4.Each style of play has flaws, no style of play is the best. Each style can at times win, accept it! Analyze why it happened (variance/luck, miss-read? Over-estimation/under-estimation of skill), accept that it happened, and through this you will become a better player.
5.At the end of each session go over the game you went the farthest in of each type you played (win an 18man, study it, win a 27 man, study it…ect), you must go over the HH from that mtt/sng/cash-game see if you made the right moves and if you are uncertain ask someone/post.
6.Winning does not matter.
7.Did you make any bad plays? Why was it bad? Why did you make the play?
Trust your reads.
8.Did you tilt? Why did you tilt? Did you let your emotions control you? Greed controls and destroys if you let it, there are many great examples from pros and history, do not make their mistakes.
9.Your emotions are your greed, if all your desire is money and winning then you are not worthy of it. Desire to be a better player and a more true/honest/noble person and you will obtain happiness.
10.You owe no proof to others, it is you whom is most important, it is your thoughts on your actions that matter and how your actions affect others. Affect those around you positively and their happiness and respect will give you happiness.
11.Bragging to others of what you have done proves only your insecurity and weakness in your game and life.
12.Have balance in your life! Workout a few times a week, work, hangout with friends when you can, work on your hobbies! Poker is a part of your life, as is everything else. The sum makes up the whole.
13.Control your greed, your anger, the world owes you nothing! You have gifts of intelligence and the means to use it!
14.Poker is not about winning!
15.Look at each day, each game separately, the past cards do not affect the future cards! Accept it and realize it. The better you play the more you understand about poker and yourself the better you will do.
16.BAD BEATS HAPPEN! THERE IS LUCK IN POKER!
17.When you become angry that is your greed that is controlling you, if you let it control it will consume and destroy you.
18.Accept flaws in others, nobody is perfect, people make mistakes and let their greed control them (Greed and ego come hand in hand). If you can accept your own flaws and mistakes and do what is needed to fix them and understand why you did them then you can become the man you desire to be and who you are capable of being.
19.You must read this every time you start a session and end a session.
By reading these rules twice or more every single day I bring to the forefront of my mind what causes tilt, and how I should be playing and behaving in order to become a better person and a better player. Most of the players who read this will realize that they know everything above stated in my rules, however what makes the difference is not just knowing them sub-consciously but also to know them consciously and thinking about them daily. Making yourself something like this (or even using my rules) will help you on many levels, it will keep you more self aware and thus prevent many forms of tilt and anger.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. Hopefully you can take something away from this and with enough dedication and determination you can become a better poker player, horse, investor and human being.
Your Worst Enemy
A poker player’s worst enemy are themselves. Many pro’s have stated this concept time and time again. This is a powerfully true statement mainly because many player’s biggest leak is not how well they play, but how often they tilt and how it affects their play. Because this is such an important issue to all players I have decided to write my second article on tilt. I will be discussing and analyzing it, not only the forms of it, but also why people tilt, and how you can fix this massive leak.
THE FORMS OF TILT:
Super-Aggro (a.k.a. “Donkey Tilt): Shoving your stack all in every hand until you double up or bust. Many players will bust out of a tourney and move down to micros and do this (some will even start doing it in their current game or games while multi-tabling), they will shove until they suck-out vs. someone in a large pot to feel “vindicated” for the massive suck-out vs. them.
Spewing-Off: While not as bad as “Donkey Tilt”, this is one of the most prevalent forms of tilt. Players who are normally positionally aware will begin to 3xing from any position using atc. While they may normally play 15/12/4 (15% of the time they put money into the pot, 12% of the time raise when putting money into the put, 4% they 3-bet when putting money into the pot), now that they have tilted their stats have shifted to 45/35/15. Not only are they no longer positionally aware but they begin to poorly chase draws, and randomly 3-bet over shove hands like 22-77 and 69dd (for “t3h lulz” obv). Players tend to do this because they feel that bad play is working against them so “Why don’t they play like the donkeys around them, maybe they’ll win for once.”
Nit Tilt: Opposite of spewing off. Players begin to play only hands like JJ+/AQ+ and they play them hyper aggressively. Due to this style they lose tons of value and tend to get blinded off when playing under this form of tilt. The reason people play like this is because they realize they are tilted and don’t want to spew off and they are scared of getting sucked out on more.
Semi-tilted (a.k.a. “perma-tilt”): This is by far the most common form of tilt. Most poker players who do not have themselves exceptionally well disciplined play while tilted for long periods of time and may not even realize it. While only partially tilted (maybe you “downswonged” 5 buy-ins in a hour, or maybe you are in a 500 game swing) you will still make many mistakes that are a mix of “Nit-Tilt” and “Spewing-Off”. You will 3-bet shove light on someone after they sucked out on you just because “F**k-them!”, or maybe you will become tight when you should loosen up and play lag when you should be tight. Semi-tilted is simply a shift in your standard +Ev mindset. You may be still playing winning poker, but it is no where near of the level you are capable of.
Bankroll tilt: Players with poor BRM tend to have perpetual issues with this. They may be able to play within their bankrolls (whether it is 30-buy ins they have set for themselves or 150) for short periods of time (maybe a week, or a day, or some extreme cases for no longer then a few hours or till the first major suck-out vs. them). However after they get sucked-out on once or twice or maybe a dozen times and run bad for a period of time they will then stop caring about their bankroll rules and they will take shots at higher limits, they do so to chase losses usually.
WHAT CAUSES TILT?
Now that we have gone over a general idea of some of the forms of tilt and you know what to look for to spot tilt in yourself and others lets take a look as to why people tilt.
Tilt is mainly caused by 2 factors, ego and greed. While running bad many players tend to feel a variety of emotions ranging from “I should have won this hand!” to “He stole this pot from me!” or “I am due for a major win! I deserve it!” and sometimes even “Why does god hate me!?!?!?!?” (Who could say such a thing!?
). Each of these emotions of anger, annoyance, or even hate at another player are in the end a mixture of greed and ego.For instance when a player gets sucked out on a feels as though they were stolen from (lets say you have AA all-in-pre-flop (“aipf”) vs. someone’s Aj-offsuit, in this hand you are a 92% favorite, however the player with AJ flops jjj and they end up winning the pot), when such a hand occurs you feel that you deserved the pot because not only were you a huge favorite to win but “how could that fkn idiot get in with such **** and win!?!?!?!?” Your ego is stating that by playing well and being a huge favorite all the chips should be yours, your greed desires to have that pot back and thus the 2 combined mean you become angry and either lash out or enter a form of tilt or possibly even both.
Your ego makes all players feel as though they are better then they truly are and their greed causes them to feel anger or extreme happiness at winning pots (nobody likes to lose, and poker players are all extremely competitive).
The 2 (ego and greed) combined make most players feel that when they play they not only should win, but they deserve to win because of how well they play. However the truth is….” YOU DON’T DESERVE ANYTHING”! Lets face the facts people, life is not fair! Poker is a game of skill… However, in the short run, anything can happen (some players consider the short run to be 1,000,000 hands or more). Just because you have been losing a lot over the past week or month, does not mean that if you played like the idiots surrounding you that you will make a miraculous comeback and make a ton of money. If you let your ego and greed control you they will consume you and make you into a bad and losing player.
HOW DO WE FIX OUR TILT?
Now that we know the major forms of tilt and what causes tilt how can we fix our tilting issues?
Something that I have began doing recently is that I made a set of rules that I must read before and after each session and I try to follow the rules to the best of my ability. The rules are the following:
POKER RULES:
1.You must read this every time you start a session and end a session.
2.Poker is about self control, discipline, and making the right moves, the goal in poker is not to win, not to prove others you are better then them, but to make the best decisions you can with the information available and to make yourself better each time you play.
3.Bad beats happen, nobody cares, accept them and move on. Variance/luck are part of the game, if you desire to do well in poker you must accept this and control your greed!
4.Each style of play has flaws, no style of play is the best. Each style can at times win, accept it! Analyze why it happened (variance/luck, miss-read? Over-estimation/under-estimation of skill), accept that it happened, and through this you will become a better player.
5.At the end of each session go over the game you went the farthest in of each type you played (win an 18man, study it, win a 27 man, study it…ect), you must go over the HH from that mtt/sng/cash-game see if you made the right moves and if you are uncertain ask someone/post.
6.Winning does not matter.
7.Did you make any bad plays? Why was it bad? Why did you make the play?
Trust your reads.
8.Did you tilt? Why did you tilt? Did you let your emotions control you? Greed controls and destroys if you let it, there are many great examples from pros and history, do not make their mistakes.
9.Your emotions are your greed, if all your desire is money and winning then you are not worthy of it. Desire to be a better player and a more true/honest/noble person and you will obtain happiness.
10.You owe no proof to others, it is you whom is most important, it is your thoughts on your actions that matter and how your actions affect others. Affect those around you positively and their happiness and respect will give you happiness.
11.Bragging to others of what you have done proves only your insecurity and weakness in your game and life.
12.Have balance in your life! Workout a few times a week, work, hangout with friends when you can, work on your hobbies! Poker is a part of your life, as is everything else. The sum makes up the whole.
13.Control your greed, your anger, the world owes you nothing! You have gifts of intelligence and the means to use it!
14.Poker is not about winning!
15.Look at each day, each game separately, the past cards do not affect the future cards! Accept it and realize it. The better you play the more you understand about poker and yourself the better you will do.
16.BAD BEATS HAPPEN! THERE IS LUCK IN POKER!
17.When you become angry that is your greed that is controlling you, if you let it control it will consume and destroy you.
18.Accept flaws in others, nobody is perfect, people make mistakes and let their greed control them (Greed and ego come hand in hand). If you can accept your own flaws and mistakes and do what is needed to fix them and understand why you did them then you can become the man you desire to be and who you are capable of being.
19.You must read this every time you start a session and end a session.
By reading these rules twice or more every single day I bring to the forefront of my mind what causes tilt, and how I should be playing and behaving in order to become a better person and a better player. Most of the players who read this will realize that they know everything above stated in my rules, however what makes the difference is not just knowing them sub-consciously but also to know them consciously and thinking about them daily. Making yourself something like this (or even using my rules) will help you on many levels, it will keep you more self aware and thus prevent many forms of tilt and anger.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. Hopefully you can take something away from this and with enough dedication and determination you can become a better poker player, horse, investor and human being.
The very first point caught my attention. The last time I played some guy pushed ALL in with A3 with a very high M. He must have been on tilt but we were only playing for 30 minutes.
01-02-2011
, 01:05 AM
thanks guys. hoping i make a few less tilty players, will have made the time n effort more then worth it ^.^
i hope ur 2011 is going better then mine has so far and best of luck at the tables
i hope ur 2011 is going better then mine has so far and best of luck at the tables
01-30-2011
, 03:56 AM
This post is awesome. Why is this the first time I read it? Because until now I was only going through the uNL forum, I felt I was too good to read beginners questions 
No more of that, this is the third time that I lose 7-10 buyins due to permatilt after feeling that I finally had things figured out and was running as I deserved. As a regular at 10 NL I reckon that over the last three months I've lost around 50-60 buyins due to some form of tilt or other, and I'm breakeven over those three months. I used to feel like I ran bad but considering that I can only deem myself lucky. I will read your thread before every session.
Basically, my ego and greed are what's stopping me from moving up, and nothing else. I'm kind of a newbie here so I don't have much authority, but somebody with pooh bah or carpal/tunnel status should write a sticky in the uNL forum encouraging people to read some of the threads in this forum, and especially this one. 6 stars if that's possible.
No more of that, this is the third time that I lose 7-10 buyins due to permatilt after feeling that I finally had things figured out and was running as I deserved. As a regular at 10 NL I reckon that over the last three months I've lost around 50-60 buyins due to some form of tilt or other, and I'm breakeven over those three months. I used to feel like I ran bad but considering that I can only deem myself lucky. I will read your thread before every session.
Basically, my ego and greed are what's stopping me from moving up, and nothing else. I'm kind of a newbie here so I don't have much authority, but somebody with pooh bah or carpal/tunnel status should write a sticky in the uNL forum encouraging people to read some of the threads in this forum, and especially this one. 6 stars if that's possible.