After reading Jabonator's 1k milestone post few days ago, I realised I never made one. I thought to myself: "meh, don't think I'm an expert on any particular aspect of the game anyhow". But then I remembered that I had done a lot of thinking on tilt-control and the causes of tilt, which would be a nice topic to start a thread on and make an attempt at contributing to the forum I owe so much. Ok, here goes:

The Essence of Tilt is Insecurity

Let's start by defining tilt. Simply put, a player is considered to be tilting when s/he starts to make decisions based on his emotions (not to be confused with instincts) rather than rational thinking. The cause of tilt varies greatly for individual players, it can be induced by an individual nightmare session, offensive chat or a single villain who is either running too hot or playing too well for us to beat him/her. Especially in PLO, when a player is either inexperienced or moving to a new site/stake, it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between a genius LAG and a drooler on a heater. At first, anyhow.

Often tilt is extended over several days, weeks or even months for reasons not directly related to gameplay. These include seemingly endless downswings, sleep-deprivation or something, anything that screws up your emotional balance - problems with your romantic life, stress at the work place or studies going nowhere (my personal favorite ), etc.

What do all these different causes of tilt have in common? In my opinion, they all create insecurity for players. Why are we tilted by a villain holding over us? Either because we feel the need to show we are the better player or because the losses are hurting our bankroll significantly. Both are signs of insecurity: either we feel we have something to prove or are playing too high.
Why are we tilted by a player constantly pwning us? It is often sheer pride, but most of the time, at least for myself, it is because we don't know exactly how they are pwning us. The most infuriating sensation of all .

Why are we tilted by extended downswings? The easy answer is that losing money sucks, but in the end, every non-recreational player fears going busto. Also, this maybe the first major downswing we are experiencing, and we haven't had that wonderful sensation of bouncing back. Financial insecurity is the worst of them all, and can often be enhanced by similar troubles IRL.

My advice to everyone having to tackle their respective insecurities is this: be self-aware and adjust. You're poker players, after all!

Discuss and share your views and related stories!

Very nice post sir, thank you.

Nice post, IMO.

When we recognize that a player is pwning us, is it better IYO to study him/her to find out how they're pwning us or just avoid them altogether?

You want to see what PLO tilt does to you?
Here you go



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Luckily still up around 4k profits from Cake poker but they dont allow software use.

Moral of the story: When you feel tilted insta-quit!

SICK !

Good luck to recover from this.

Hand history of the biggest pot ?

I'll try post some soon. I thought that was the end for me. Luckily I had cashed out maximum twice before that, so I had kinda broken even ish. Deposited on cake yesterday, think it was 600 or something and I'm on like 4.5k so withdrawing some of that, so overall 3-4k profit.

Obviously sucks though to lose so much at this age. I want this money to be my way out in life as I'm really hating University atm.

Ty, sir.

The better option is always to study our opponent rather than avoid him. And, unless we're playing HU, avoiding is not even realistic if you aspire to become a reg at a certain stake. One thing to take the edge off is avoiding marginal situations like 3betting for thin value oop. Don't start mixing it up before you get comfortable and confident with your post-flop options vs the villain in question.

Sick graph, swing, you wanna tell us what caused this particular donation?

I saw Cole South sitting HU at lower stakes than usual and I was very tilted. I think stakes were 500/1k deep stack. Anyway I told him I was very tilted and he said he has to go soon but he will give me abit of action. He said we can do mandatory 3bet if you want and I obviously agreed. He even was min4betting most of his hands. Obviously that game was sick variance I coulda won 10k or lost and happened to lose.

Im up 7k on Cake though in one day from yesterday to today

Great post OP, thanks!

What do you mean by 500/1k deep stack? Sounds like you were playing $3000/$9000 PLO but I doubt that's the case

Swingtastic do yourself a favor search 2+2/google for "tulina83".

Combination of both. I'll avoid playing OOP against 1 particular opponent on FT unless there are plenty of fish to my right, and even then he is smart enough to know what i'm going when i'm isoing and 3 betting light so i still have to be careful.

IP it's not an issue, as from what i have seen they afford me the same respect i give them when OOP, but again they won't put up with too much crap from me so i still have to be mindful.

Ofc, i only know this by reviewing hundreds of hands they have played against both me and other players.

Nice. How had I never seen that before?!

ty for this. EVERYONE should see this.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/54...streak-526923/

My first time ever reading BBV, btw...

Hahahaha what a degen, fortunately enough I'm not as crazy as him I guess.

Seems like the basis of a 1BI challenge.

Start with 1BI at your normal stake. As soon as you have 1BI at the next highest stake, you move up. As soon as you have 1BI for the next highest stake above that, you move up. Rinse/repeat until busto or the stakes get so high relative to your norm that you quit.

We do it every once in a while in my other forum (it's 15BB challenge there) and it's not uncommon for people playing .25/.50 to end up at 5/10 or higher. It's a good way to get some exposure to higher limits so actual move-ups aren't as uncomfortable.

I'm not going to put together an official thread for it atm with everything else going on, but people can do it anytime and post results in the BBV thread, IMO. Maybe in a couple months we can dedicate a weekend to forum participants attempting it/see who makes it the highest from the lowest/have some fun/etc.

cool idea again, i'm up for this one

I would like to think that I've mastered my tilt controls. Beyond the obvious need to create stop-losses for yourself based on the size of your bankroll and not to play tired/drunk/angry/etc., I have found one thing that keeps me balanced and focused; it's what I'd like to call "the marathon." Although every poker player that's gone pro inevitably has illusions of grandeur about binking out a 1mm$+ score which would allow them to quit "the grind." You have to be able to focus on the fact that it IS a grind, like any job. No matter how bad a day I'm having, I've learned to focus on the fact that I'm a winning player, and I WILL win. My graph might be full of peaks and valleys, but every peak seems to be a bit higher than the one before it; this is what I have learned to focus on. Tilt, in my opinion, is the inability to see the bigger picture. Nanonoko's graph might look like he never loses, but zoom in and he goes through all the same fluctuations of anyone else, he just pushes through it and continues to win with the same consistency.

Here's what I always try to tell myself when I'm running bad. Instead of thinking to myself, "how unlucky am I to be running like this?" I think instead, "how lucky am I that I can do THIS for a living?" -- and a good one at that