Thursday 25 January 2007

Going On Tilt

This subject has been covered by So many people in the past, and I don't think a poker player is alive who has not done it. I like to refer to it more as 'stacking off' because you might as well say goodbye to your stack.

Now most of these articles try to teach you to avoid tilt by just not doing it, but when your AA gets picked off by a 72 off suit for the third time in a session even the best of us lose it a bit, a lot in most cases.

I like to embrace tilt, that is I know it will happen I look for it, I know what causes it and I know what it does to my game. It makes me loose, aggressive and if I can't stop myself from clicking in that chatbox-obnoxious.

It was the number one reason I used to lose when I first started playing, I knew what were good cards, I knew in NO Limit Tournaments KQs was a mediocre hand at best, but the monster within erupted and I stacked off.

Now I embrace it, I look forward to tilt moments in my head and I tell myself, this is what all poker players are going through all the time-the good ones and the bad ones. They can't believe they are losing and believe they are playing well and everyone else is a Donkey, so they are going on tilt.

So this insight gives me an edge, I recognise tilt in myself and use this insight to calm myself down before I completely 'stack off', I then look for the same patterns in others, if someone who has a VPIP of 15 loses with an AA I watch for the following.

1. Are they playing more hands?
2. Are they being obnoxious with there chat?
3. Are they being too aggressive?

I then know I can see a flop with them more than usual as they are not being selective or rational.

To sum up recognise your own tilt demons and examine them, if you understand them you will understand them in others and be able to take advantage.

Tilt WILL lose you money when it happens to you so be on guard look for the signs, but do not despair if you understand your own monster then you should make more from others than you lose from your own.

One particular player I regularly see losing his temper at the table I have given a few bits of advise to in the past, in fact I joined a table just the other day and won my first hand and got told to '**** off'.

Upon exclaiming he realised who I was and apologised as I have given him a lot of free advise. I recommended the following book to him Zen and the Art of Poker. I would recommend this book to anyone who hasn't come to terms with there inner Tilt Monster. Recognising you have it is the first step.

Anyway good luck at the tables.

Peter

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

well this particular person you mentioned at the end of this article must have felt very ashamed that moment, i really wonder who this was ? ;)

Peter said...

Hi Razor

I would never say that in a public blog.

Peter

Anonymous said...

i just found out something new about my game, i just cant handle extreme aggressive players raising preflop .... i might have been trapped at a table where the teamed up together to cheat on others ... but they were raising preflop like hell ... and also postflop and i couldnt do anything about it ... the one pushing most often lost and some other guy won .... i just got sucked in and lost 30 dollars and started crying like a baby ... because not knowing what just happened to me and my game (which won me about 300 $ the last two weeks !!!!) ..... i was so much confused and still am .... never thought i could lose so much in such a short period of time .... i want to aviod this to happen again ... but the only way i know is to stop playing poker ... which is not really an option :) ... maybe stopping temporary after a 10 $ losing mark would be an idea .... well im still stunned ..... did something like this happen to you too ?

nethertheless i want to thank you for making a good and winning player of me *hehe* never thought this can happen ... you gave me so much help and info !!!! and i gave nothing back in return yet !! :(((

Peter said...

Hi Razor

Yes I have had losing streaks that bad, sometimes it can feel like collusion when the table seems to be on tilt, and if you suspect it report it. However I tend to believe that at this level the chances of collusion are too low if anyone is gonna tak ethat risk they are going to do it for higher stakes.
Anyway glad to hear you are winning, but remember that all short term results are just that "Short term". Keep learning keep improving and keep tracking your game.

Peter

Anonymous said...

looks like you decided to play turnament poker only, do you ? what about your results ? would really like to know how you are doing !?? :)

Anonymous said...

peter whats up ? your still alive ? your still playing poker ? have the feeling something happened to you ! :(

Peter said...

Hi Razor

Not been playing much as I have been contract hunting. I am as i have said an independant contractor. Still have a new contrcat now and so can get back to live.
Thanks for the concern

Peter

Anonymous said...

just some news from me which i thought i should let you know :)

today in a sitn go tourney i flopped a ROYAL FLUSH of diamonds, bad thing is i won nothing with it just the pre flop bets even when i slowplayed it

i was so shocked *hehe*

J A in my hand

and Q 10 K on the flop :)

i mean, this is the best hand you can ever have and the most rare one, a royal flush on the flop :) do you know how rare this is do you have any numbers ? :)

too bad the pokersite i played on does not offer any bonusses like a tshort or a cash bonus, i think on party or titan poker you get 100 $ cashbonus for a royal flush :((

btw. looks like you quit writing the blog and articles ?! even if you have some more time now ?

Anonymous said...

here is another microlimit question about something that drives me crazy !

it happens SSSOOOOOOOOOO often, i raise preflop with something like AK or QK or i limp with some spec. hands .. doesnt matter ..... fact is i am most often only vs 1 (ONE) other player !!!!!

flop comes, i hit a pair or a 2 pair or sometimes a set, again im only up against 1 player

but then the others sooooooooo often get a full house, a straight or a flush holding some kinda silly cards

i dont understand that, im up vs 1 player and then they get exactly the only right cards they need ...... often a 1 or 2 out river to beat me ......

if there were lets say 3 or 4 other players in the pot, but having only 1 idiot in the pot and then lose when he gets exactly the only cards with he can beat me it drives me sooooo crazy !!!!

i mean this cant be explained by THATS POKER only or my bad luck ..... this is sooo silly

Anonymous said...

and another question as well !

a friend of mine just registered at pokerroom, but he was not able to find the 15 cents / 30 cents limit tables ! but i know you are registered there as well and you played 15 / 30 there, i looked also in the tables list and these kind of tables are just gone ???!!! is that right ?

i mean i play at a different pokersite just using the same pokerserver and i have access to the supermircotables !!!

Peter said...

Firstly Razor,

sounds like you hit a wall, your line about cant be explained by THTAS POKER is wrong.

I can't explain how wrong it is and you will see what I mean one day.

Poker is great because the worst player can win and can get lucky, if that wasn't the case then bad players would never win and so they would stop playing.

It happens a lot to you for the same reason it happens a lot to me, We play a lot of hands, as I have said before I am an ex croupier and so this gave me an insight into this that most people don't get. When I used to deal roullete all the punters used to see patterns in random numbers. and I used to point out that you can mae a pattern from any 3 numbers if you have enough imagination but it is still random.

Remember when you play the carsd are random so everything that can happen will. Get Poker tracker running and you will see that in the long term everything distributes slowly to the norm.
You will get more unsuited cards than suited etc. you will get a similar amount of KK to AA, yourAA will hold up about 70% of the time if you play it aggressively.

But short term this will not be true and you will see patterns that aren't there such as gettibng sucked out on over and over again.

Basically get over it suckouts happen and poker wouldn't exist without them, to be great you accept this and treat it as feeding the fish.

Hope this helps

Peter

Peter said...

Next you are correct Pokerroom has 25/50 as its lowest tables which is good if you want to move up from 15c as fish go to the lowest level and so they swarm a slightly higher level at pokerroom, if anyone wants to join pokerrroom it is an excellent site and can be linked to from the banner at the top of my site.

happy gaming