Some thoughts on TILT

[kvnstv]

I’ve lost count the amount of times in the past year I have tried to put down on paper my observations on TILT. My last effort began, “Oh you fubbing barstool, how can you call your stack of with a 4 high flush draw!” You might have spotted that anger may have been the motivation at the time and thus not a particularly solid foundation for well reasoned thought on the subject! 

Tilt-Orama, full blown monkey tilt, the red rage, mouse mashing, whatever you call it all amounts to the same thing anger fuelled poorly executed play that can decimate a bankroll in minutes that might have taken weeks, months or even years to accumulate. I find the TILT label as a global term for poker related control lapses a little inaccurate as personally I have a number of succinctly different variations on a general TILT theme.

Loss of emotional control is quite embarrassing and something pretty much all of us are capable of but few of us like to admit it. Even the most calm and calculating of us are capable of ‘Tilting’ if enough of the right buttons are pressed and although some of the players at the highest level might be very good at hiding there emotions this does not mean that the beat they have just suffered  has not had an affect on there mental apparatus.

I’m not a psychiatrist and have done bugger all research on the matter but I’m sure there must be a clinical term for these mental states we find ourselves in. I’m going to list my own experiences and see if you recognise any of the same behaviour and maybe you can suggest some ways to counter these because I don’t seem to have improved my coping mechanisms.

Flipperitis

The wife’s taken the kids out for the day; you have snacks on stand by and settle down for a day of enjoyable, interruption free online poker. You start your first game of the day full of excitement and looking forward to the many flops to come and a day of out playing your opponents. But then nothing good happens to you, your dealt unplayable hand after hand and every steal attempt is met by a re-raise.

This is tremendously frustrating and slightly on the short stack your dealt AK and make a raise, your quickly get re-raised and find yourself moving in. You’re called by pocket threes which are far too good to throw away even though you have hardly played a hand and are clearly the tightest player at the table! You hit nothing and are eliminated, Oh well that’s poker, next game same story this time you moved with pocket jacks and get called by AQ and they spike a queen. And it just continues like this game after game and hour after hour, you’re not taking any particularly bad beats it’s just you can’t seem to win a 45-55, 50-50 or 55-45 when it matters.

Cause and Affect

The cumulative affect of all these small pieces of bad luck slowly but surely free the tilt monster from its lair. It just does not seem fair that you can continually lose and there must be something wrong with the universal order. It really strikes at our sense of fair play and it just seems unnatural and wrong, bizarrely though instead of having a break or giving up entirely for the day because ‘its just not going to happen’ I start to open up more tables and instead of gambling less and seeing more flops and trying to outplay opponents I start to gamble much more as if fate owes me a few breaks. Then gradually the spots I choose to gamble get gradually worse and my whole game just collapses! Pocket 2’s under the gun, open shove of course! Re-raised all in whilst holding pocket 3’s, well he might have two’s I call!

Things I should remember or somebody should remind me of when I’m suffering from flipperitis but I probably wouldn’t listen too anyway

Good poker is not about taking every coin flip on offer and winning them, the beauty of the game is that you can outplay your opponents by using your position and by portraying credible holdings that are superior to your opponents by utilising betting patterns they will instantly recognise. A more concise wording might be, when you running bad gamble less (or leave it for the day) not more you Muppet!     

FBMT (Full Blown Monkey Tilt) 

Full blown monkey tilt strikes almost instantly and takes as little as two or in severe cases only one incident of gross stupidity by an opponent to trigger an attack. In actuality the play of you opponent has to be so poor that it’s almost as they are deliberately trying to engineer the situation, an example just making up the small blind when three people have flat called and they have pocket aces! They then move all in when you just happen to flop the nut straight only to see them hit runner, runner for a flush or some other cruel twist of fate denies you the pot.

Cause and Affect

Very strange this particular mental state, I find the only way to restore my sanity is to get lucky on someone else. I instantly start playing like a deranged maniac and move in with all sorts of rubbish until I return the favour to some poor unfortunate. 

Things I should remember or somebody should remind me of when I’m suffering from FBMT but I probably wouldn’t listen too anyway

Don’t be a mug, calling your stack of with J2 is the very last thing a semi serious player is going to do and to progress your game you have to seriously work on your self control. Self control is the cornerstone of a poker player’s skill base and your failing miserably. Also you find it hard enough to get group one hands to hold up so how long and how much damn money do you think its going to cost you to get this tosh to hold up!   

Vendetta Tilt 

Someone shows you a bluff or rub’s you down and you go after them. You try to control your emotions but it’s no good, your honour must be restored. 

Cause and Affect

When poker gets personal my game just goes to absolute pot, I become completely absorbed with revenge and the cannier players around the table pick up on this immediately and every hand becomes laden with traps as the sharks flock when ‘TILT’ money in the water fills there nostrils.

Things I should remember or somebody should remind me of when I’m suffering from Vendetta Tilt  but I probably wouldn’t listen too anyway

Chips have no memory they care not whence they came! Player A’s chips have no more value than players B just because he slow rolled you. If you take your poker seriously knuckle the hell down and regain some self control.

There’s other things that set me off, random Shoveitis where one player reduces the game to a series of slightly lop sided races that you just can’t win and Crucial Stage Donkey Punched, you know when your three hours into a big buy-in MTT and your flying, second in chips at your table with nearly double the average you are stealing and bullying and using the full poker palate to accumulate chips and it appears you will sail to the final stages when the big stack does something really silly that gets you eliminated.

Hopefully writing about my own personal TILT conditions might make me more aware of my mental state and improve my self control, but I doubt it. 

[fearisthekey]

nice post.
Online, the more i'm involved with the personalities at the table, the more I'm liable to vendetta tilt.

Tilt is a perfectly healthy, natural force: away from the table. It spurs you to change and to action when you're dissatisfied and annoyed. Unfortunately, the poker table is not like the real world, and needs a lot of adjustment.
I'm tilting a bit less these days, depends how well I've slept.

Thanks for sharing.

[RED-DOG]

Great post kv

[booder]

guilty of vendetta tilt

[Swordpoker]

 

I regularly convince myself that tilt no longer applies to me. Until, of course, my next bout of flipperitis comes on.

[Sark79]

nice post Boss

[kvnstv]

Thanks for taking the time to read gents and the kind words. I think i left out the deadliest tilt of all though! I can speak from personal experience the chasing loses tilt monsters a a real killer.

[johnbhoy76]

Excellent post. had a few wee chuckles to myself reading that as I recognised almost all of those forms of "Tilt"

One I'd like to add to the list is what I call "positive Tilt" for want of a better phrase.

An example would be in a cash game you started out with $100 and now have $450 after 2 hours of playing good solid poker. You haven't put a foot wrong. You have played perfect and your hands have held up when they had to. You start to feel that you can do no wrong and that you are in fact a poker genius

But now when someone raises UTG and you are sitting with J7os you call his raise just to see the flop I mean after all "it's only $6 and I'm still $344 up if I totally miss the flop". Even If I do miss the flop I have position on him and I playing so well today that I'll be able to outplay hm and take the pot off him on the turn or river etc.....

But before you know it you have frittered away $50-$100 of your profit in the space of half a dozen hands.

Beware of "Positive Tilt"

[cambo]

you forgot to mention inverted tilt a phrase from tillermans blog where he talks about when ur winning and dont want to lose what youve won already and leads to situations where ur giving up a lot of doe

[The Dark Horse]

Good post!

I have noticed an unexpected, positive side-effect of tilt, however:  When tilting (I suffer from all of those varieties described above), I tend to get very 'vocal' in the chatboxes - I'm not one of those fools that types in such illuminating comments as 'fuk of retard' and 'u gayboy' etc, however I do occasionally rant and rave at anyone who cares to listen.  (Particularly during 'Vendetta Tilt' episodes.)  Aside from making me seem like an utter buffoon, it draws everyone's attention to me, and the way I am playing.

This, when combined with the most awful illogical, stupid poker that naturally accompanies an episode of tilt, means that - even after I have donked off a pile of chips - I can sleep safe in the knowledge that people have attached little tags to my poker 'identity' that say such things as "Terrible player, will raise UTG with J-4o and then call pot-size bets on the turn and river with nothing but a gutshot straight draw" and "This guy is capable of moving all in from an early position with A-2s" ...

And so the tilt, while expensive, does lay the foundations for future victories!

[tikay]

Good post!

I have noticed an unexpected, positive side-effect of tilt, however:  When tilting (I suffer from all of those varieties described above), I tend to get very 'vocal' in the chatboxes - I'm not one of those fools that types in such illuminating comments as 'fuk of retard' and 'u gayboy' etc, however I do occasionally rant and rave at anyone who cares to listen.  (Particularly during 'Vendetta Tilt' episodes.)  Aside from making me seem like an utter buffoon, it draws everyone's attention to me, and the way I am playing.

This, when combined with the most awful illogical, stupid poker that naturally accompanies an episode of tilt, means that - even after I have donked off a pile of chips - I can sleep safe in the knowledge that people have attached little tags to my poker 'identity' that say such things as "Terrible player, will raise UTG with J-4o and then call pot-size bets on the turn and river with nothing but a gutshot straight draw" and "This guy is capable of moving all in from an early position with A-2s" ...

And so the tilt, while expensive, does lay the foundations for future victories!

There is NO positive side-effect to tilt! Tilt is a bad thing. Always. The weak tilt, the strong just get on with it.

[AndrewT]

Excellent post. had a few wee chuckles to myself reading that as I recognised almost all of those forms of "Tilt"

One I'd like to add to the list is what I call "positive Tilt" for want of a better phrase.

An example would be in a cash game you started out with $100 and now have $450 after 2 hours of playing good solid poker. You haven't put a foot wrong. You have played perfect and your hands have held up when they had to. You start to feel that you can do no wrong and that you are in fact a poker genius

But now when someone raises UTG and you are sitting with J7os you call his raise just to see the flop I mean after all "it's only $6 and I'm still $344 up if I totally miss the flop". Even If I do miss the flop I have position on him and I playing so well today that I'll be able to outplay hm and take the pot off him on the turn or river etc.....

But before you know it you have frittered away $50-$100 of your profit in the space of half a dozen hands.

Beware of "Positive Tilt"

I'm someone who thinks of himself as not getting tilted when playing online, but I recognise this tilt completely. It's something I'd noticed me doing when I'm up on a cash table, and I know to watch out for it now.

Cheers Johnbhoy.