Panic under pressure is a common problem amongst all armies and of course there was tilt in the trenches, it just doesn't get shown in movies. There were many attempts to deal with these problems. In World War I the job of an officer or NCO was mainly to make sure that the soldiers would leave the trenches and charge the enemy. In many cases they were even instructed to shoot those who refused to fight. This is also the reason why so many officers were killed by their own soldiers. In Germany there was even a saying for this "Lights out, knifes out, stab him!".

In our days in some areas they even use drugs to deal with this problem. There are many reports by airmen or special forces soldiers who claim to have been drugged to act fearless, reckless or even brutal. For instance that US pilot who destroyed the british convoy in Iraq was reported to have been under heavy drugs at the time.

This probably best describes my take on things - all I can do is get my money in the middle with a positive expectation. I have no control over the cards that come after that point, so getting upset over those cards is silly. Just yesterday, I had a set of Aces cracked by runner-runner quads (lol limit ), but aside from a brief chuckle, I just moved on to the next hand without missing a beat.

I wonder if you had been playing at yikes limit instead of lol limit, if this happened after you had lost half your bankroll in a series of hands just like this, if it happened when you knew if you lost this hand, you might not pay your rent - would you be laughing then?

Not much was threatened in the hand you played.

That's the benefit of playing with proper bankroll management - not much (relative to my bankroll) is ever threatened on any given hand. If losing a single hand means not being able to pay your rent, something is seriously wrong with your approach to poker.

I think I came up with a case where Jared's definition is inadequate but where Mason's still works: Tilt caused by running too hot. I think this is also a clear case of tilt IF you start playing or raising hands that you objectively would consider inappropriate at the particular table.

Example: Cards have been absolutely running over you, so you call on a gutshot to near pot bets against a credible player who likely has TPGK and is certainly ahead of anything but the straight you might make.

You're on tilt here not because of a threat (you're actually lacking in your usual perception of threats because you've been making every hand) but indeed because your mind hasn't adequately processed the fact that you've been running way ahead of the probabilities for a stretch--and that that has no bearing on whether or not you'll make your gutshot in this particular hand.

After sleeping on it, I really view Mason's idea as at least quite similar to Freud on psychotherapy--namely that UNDERSTANDING (in an internalized sense) the cause of a neurosis actually resolves it in contrast to when you go into a sub- or semi-conscious infinite loop in certain related situations.

I still really can't think of any exceptions to Mason's theory. I was wondering about tilt caused by playing above bankroll or because you're desperate for cash. But there, too, if you tilt, it's because you failed to recognize your objective risk of ruin and/or that cards can at any time run bad, etc.

The more I think about it, the more I'm liking Mason's theory.

Another thought - why does there have to be one and only one source of tilt, whether that source is "response to a threat" or "logical disconnects" or something else?

Actually that's not really how psychoanalysis works. As a matter of fact intellectual understanding is often a barrier to therapeutic healing because the focus is on understanding rather than catharsis which comes from the transferential relationship with the psychoanalyst.

Intellectual understanding quite simply almost never leads to emotional catharsis. Humour is one of the only exceptions to this, and even then it is laughter which is the key, intellectually recognising the humour is merely facilitative of that.

Mason did not establish that what he calls logical disconnects actually exist in poker. Becoming frustrated that something happens which will only happen 1 in 4 times is not the result of a logical disconnect. Tilt results even though there is perfect intellectual understanding.

I assume there are people who don't even freak out if they get diagnosed with cancer. They know that there is a certain percentage of people who will get it and so on. These guys just accept fate like it is. Such people are rare though.

Ithink there's some middle ground here.

mason is right 100% i think *if* one is playing within a large bankroll.

*but*, if not, then there is a definite *threat* of going broke from bad beats and it can cause some tilt i think like the psych article says.

also,

Or when W. C. Fields said:

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

could someone explain that joke?


-------------------------------
One example is Cold Harbor which took place late in the war, and for which Grant admitted was his worse mistake. Here, before the battle, the Union soildiers pinned their names on their jerseys so that their bodies could be identified later.

Now think (again) in terms of this statement from the original article:

Quote:
Tilt is a consequence of the brain’s response to a threat.
If this would have been the case, the Union battle lines couldn't have even been formed.

So going back to your friend, I would argue that the emotions and adrenaline that he talks about while certainly real, are something different from tilt. Also, keep in mind that in these type of high-stress situations, the ability to think clearly and accurately is most important, and that's the opposite from tilt.

Best wishes,
Mason
---------------------------------------------
above civil war example reminds me of mike caro's pain threshhold where after you lose so much you are numb to the pain of losing more, and then there is a real danger you can blow your whole bankroll.

============================
some posts above about bankroll management /tilt issue

OK - at the top of the screen where you write your reply are some icons and other stuff. If you want to bold something, you highlight it and then click the big black letter "B" on the left.

Now, moving to the right in the same row - you will see what looks like a comic strip balloon with writing in it - it has a little "tail" that in a comic strip would point to the character who is speaking. That is the QUOTE feature. ...VOILA!

You can also make a quote box by typing [quote] in front of the text and [/quote] at the end. Just make sure there are no extra left over sets or partial sets of those directives in whatever you have copied and pasted.

I'd like to keep the ball rolling, as I think we're getting pretty close to the real issues here.

First, on my Freud comparison... well, it's been a good while since I read my Freud, and I did note that it requires "internalized understanding" to resolve a neurosis. The tranferential relationship with the psychoanalyst is something I don't know much about, but I find it hard to believe that the only way to avoid neurosis is through that relationship. The ego can often also deal with problems itself, right? Anyhow, I apologize if that comparison generates confusion rather than clarity, as I was hoping it might.

Anyhow, someone was also bringing up some neurophysiological arguments that sounded interesting but also needed more clarification for me, anyway, since I'm not up to snuff on neurophysiology either.

What I'm wondering is whether the difference between poker and physical sports isn't more significant than one might think. Mason also brings up the tennis example, but the context is doing something that he normally doesn't do and then getting aggravated about it (infinite loop).

Anyhow, what I'm really not sure about at this point is whether being "off one's game" in golf, for example, may not have quite different roots from tilt in poker. I just note that poker, like chess, is almost exclusively a cerebral game--with the small exception in live games of the tells aspect, which we're not really focussing on here anyway.

I'm still currently seeing Mason's idea as pretty solid with regard to poker--but I doubt it is more than a small part of the solution in keeping one's tennis or golf stroke consistent or in playing one's best in physical games.

Once again, since this quote has appeared again, what officers do during battle is nothing but tilt management. They have to clear up the chaos and keep their soldiers functioning as a unit. All those commands and those drilled battle sequences have just one goal and that is to avoid or fix tilt issues amongst the troops.

The fact that the Union battle lines were formed means, that the Union officers did a great job! Not only did their soldiers follow their orders, they also trusted them. That lead to courage and courage eliminated tilt. Since they knew what they were doing was right, they were able to think clearly.

Hi Shandrax:

I think there's a slight confusion here. Fear, which can be a response to a threat, is not the same as not being able to think well, which can become tilt if the thinking process is impaired enough.

Best wishes,
Mason

I think this is an excellent article.

Something I've been thinking about lately (not just with regard to tilt or poker) are "open loops". I think these the same as Mason's infinte loops in that the brain is "stuck" as it is unable or unwilling to resolve a problem. The unwilling part of this sentence suggests we need acceptance as well as knowledge. Even someone who knows that beats happen can still be susceptible to thinking "why me" or "why now".

This explanation fits better with the more general form of the definition of tilt (any deviation from your A game due to emotional reasons). It doesn't have to manifest intself as fighting back. It may just be that you are distracted or that your confidence in your poker radar has taken a knock.

Closing these loops is the reason why I find I always need time to mull things over after playing before I can get on other things. A bit of time out will deal with most tilt issues but that isn't always available (particularly a problem online - games faster, multitabling).

These open loops may be at the root of more serious physchological trauma such as post traumatic stress (I have no knowledge in this area) . April's tilt article actually mentions EMDR which I think relates to this.

James

Or they knew there was a 100% chance the officer would shoot them but less than a 100% chance the enemy would.

All--

I'd just like to say I think it's cool that so many people think this is an interesting topic. I'm pretty sure that tilt is a special case of "weak will" (or akrasia), a topic on which there is a truly huge philosophical literature. (It's as old as Socrates, who I'm pretty sure would agree with Mason, broadly speaking. That said, most philosophers--and I--prefer other accounts.)

Anyone itching for references to stuff written by philosophers about this should feel free to PM me.

All my best,

--Nate

It's good that someone mentioned akrasia because it highlights the limits of logical rationality as a driving force in people. Socrates probably would agree with Mason alright. But anyone who has spent time studying the findings from the world of psychology over the past 100 odd years would not agree with them.

Mason appears to have a fundamental belief that rationality guides behaviour, and that behaviour which is contrary to logical, rational behaviour is caused by a deficit in rationality. Of course often our behaviour is dictated by rationality, or at least rationalised by our left brain interpreter (see the work of Michael Gazzaniga). Also irrational behaviour is *sometimes* caused by a deficit in rationality. But more often than not that isn't the cause.

Almost whatever paradigm in psychology you choose, be it psychoanalysis, behaviourism, evolutionary psychology, social psychology, neuropsychology you will not come to the view that people's behaviours are very predominantly informed by rationality. And is has been shown quite clearly that this is not merely due to deficiencies in rational thinking ability.

It's the 21 century, it's about time this point was more widely understood and accepted. Any analysis of behaviour needs to examine a multitude of motivations both conscious and unconscious. Viewing instances of akrasia as a failure of rational thinking or just a failure of application of this rationality ignores the complexity of motivation and its hierarchical nature (e.g. we can want to want to do something, should as want to want to give up smoking).

Mason is obviously a very rationally based guy, usually that's pretty helpful if you are going to be a statistician, but philosophically and scientifically it's bordering on anachronistic at this stage.

Also it's not healthy either, you know who are the most rational people about themselves? people suffering from depression. The rest of us have irrational but healthy and adaptive attributional biases. Being rational is not necessarily adaptive or welcome.

Tilt as a disposition is obviously not caused by a failure of rationality, the question Mason tried to answer is can the action of tilt be prevented by the exercise of rationality. I suggest that of all the possible panaceas for tilt, attempts at rationalising it away are likely to be the least successful. Logical disconnects are not the cause of tilt, nor are their amelioration the answer. Not even the most optimistic and robotic of rational emotive therapists would think you could use mere cognitivistic methods to cure tilt.

I don't think I wrote anything like this. Furthermore,

I wasn't talking about any of these things.

Best wishes,
Mason

I think hotspur makes some good points and frankly, I don't think that you, Mason, understood what he (and I in my reply to your article) was talking about. Otherwise your replies would consist in more than "No. That was not what I was talking about."

As I already said:
The key question is: What is more basic? Sophisticated knowledge that can prevent my brain to get into tilt mode or is it other more basic mental forces that stop my sophisticated knowledge from being accessible and thus lead to tilt?

I think your conlusion,
"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." is false.
As hotspur said in his post, it is a naive idea to believe that "people's behavoiur is predominantly informed by rationality". There is tremendous evidence that this is not how it works. There are mathematic geniuses that tilt anyway because sophisticated knowledge has no power to control their actions.

You seem to make the false assumption that rational shortcomings are the cause for tilt. I think the real cause lies in emotional conditions that are to a high degree immune to rational considerations. And this view is highly supported by recent studies in psychology.


(Your analysis is plausible under the premise that one's actions are completely informed by rationality. Maybe you are such a person. But this is certainly not true for most of us (let alone most of all tilters)).

thehotspur--

Thanks for that reply. I tend only to learn about these results from psychology when philosophers cite them.

All my best,

--Nate

If Mason's basic premise was true...
Quants would be immune from tilt...
But Mason's premise is not even the ** main cause ** of tilt.

"Play the man, not the cards".

Interpersonal warfare is at the heart of poker...
And therefore is the main cause of tilt.

And becoming immune to this...
Requires major, long-term growth in character and self-control...
Which is ** orders of magnitude ** more difficult then understanding the math...
And laughing off bad beats.

Look how easily a 11 time WSOP winner...
Is tilted by a specific individual he hates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kHkdjmssus

What he said.

So what is the quickest way to resolve a loop? I tilt like the player earlier (bad decisions, or bad results from what I think are good decisions -> logical disconnect -> cause me to tilt) and not really bad beats that much.

So in a situation where you make a play that you're not sure about/or think is the right play but results badly for you. How do you solve the logical disconnect? Stopping every session until you figure out a solution to the logical disconnect seems horribly inefficient.

ok I got a good example of tilt. when I haircut my dog or a long time ago when I gave cat a bath, what happens is it starts out okay, but then it gets very very very frustrating cause things don't go my way and the animal ain't cooperating.

somtimes the dog even nips me and i get all tilted and get *angry* and get all this *bad power* to get the job done. but mostly I just recognize that I'm about to go too far when I start to get so pissed I'm gonna start physically beating the dog so I just quit and figure I will do the rest later.

So what's the best way to combat this tilt? or the best way to think about it.

by bad power i mean i get this feeling (inextreme cases) that I'm gonna get this dog groomed if I have to cut his throat and skin him and hang him on the wall.

so yeah you could say I've tilted and become irrational at least to the point of thoughts or thoughts being influenced by emoitions.