Avoiding Tilt

Tilt is the enemy of virtually every poker player. Unlike other poker flaws, tilt doesn't tend to discriminate between skill levels. It is a universal destroyer.

Tilt is a product of anger, and anger is the product of a plan gone awry. Or to generalize further, anger is the result of the disconnect between reality and our previous expectation of reality.

We can avoid tilt by not expecting to win. We do not expect to lose however, that would be pessimistic. Instead, we anticipate no result whatsoever. This is, naturally, a difficult position to hold the line on. Divorcing yourself from expectations is a challenging enterprise, especially when you still need to make the right decisions at the table.

For instance, say you have seen into the dark, inky soul of your adversary. He has pushed all of his chips to the center of the felt. You have correctly put him on an exact hand, and you know that you beat him 80% of the time by the river. You smile and call, only to see him make a gutshot straight. Here is the tight-rope you must walk, you have to be happy with your call. To become angry and sullen would arise out of a sense of entitlement. And, the poker gods punish nothing more severely than taking their largess for granted.

However, while you must maintain emotional calm, you must also keep a critical eye to your play. If you've made a mistake, you must be able to objectively evaluate your own play through a cold, analytical lens.

This book, Zen and the Art of Poker, can help you to walk the middle path. It explains how to take emotional control of your game and play poker without ego.

While you may think, "Why would I need to worry about my emotional responses? I can play great poker no matter how I feel." Allow me to provide a second example.

Say you were playing poker in an online casino, rather than a brick and mortar one. You are dealt aces in a no limit cash game. You manage to get it all in pre-flop with three other players. One of the players holds a hand like 78s and makes a flush, quadrupling up, while you get felted.

Two terrible things could happen here. The first is that you could change your mind about how to play aces, thinking that getting all in preflop is too risky, and you have more of an edge if you see a flop. This is patently untrue, but a little bit of emotion can often open the window for a bad idea.

However, if you already have a sound poker basis, the more likely result is that you might say something berating your opponent. Even a very casual "nice hand" (and of course we've all seen much worse than that in the anonymous would of online betting). By berating your poor opponents you make them feel uncomfortable, and when they are uncomfortable it is likely that they will leave, taking a good portion of your earn with them. That's not all. When they leave, they may decide that they do not want to be berated again. They may decide that if they are going to have fun at poker (which they were likely doing before you came along) they need to play well enough to avoid being criticized. Worse still, they may decide that what they really want to be able to do is consistently bust jerks like you.

These are only a few of the ways that tilt can unwind you at the poker table. Next time you feel yourself getting angry, just take a deep breath and remember what you're there to do.

Matthew on 07.24.08 @ 10:10 PM GMT [link]