tilt questions

craigcu12

When tilt happens to myself it can mean serious trouble and i'm not the greatest one to avoid tilt what's worse is my temper control is a difficulty in general and for this reason I view phil hellmuth as my poker icon.

How troublesome has tilt been for yourself:

do you get tilted often and what is the most likely to cause tilt?

What has been you worst period of tilt and have you needed to take a serious break away from the game?

NChanning

 Hi Craig, thanks for the question...avoiding tilt is probably the single best thing you can do to lose less and win more. Some people are very bad at poker and some people are very good but most people are in the middle and there isn't much in skill between them when they are playing their best. If you are one of those people then imagine how great it would be to play at your absolute best at all times and think of all the money you could make from the people who are slightly better than you who are playing worse than they are capable of.

 I have never had a massive issue with tilt. I think playing a massive number of hands is a really good way of "curing" yourself as after a while you've seen it all and you realise it's just poker, sometimes you are the windscreen and sometimes you are the bug. I think it's important to remember pots where you have got very lucky and also to be clear in your mind that getting someone to bet all their money when you are 80% and they are 20% is a great thing in the long run but it doesn't mean they are 1% or 0% and if they NEVER won then they might not play. Without luck poker would be like chess...a game which you can't really make money gambling for a living on...because the best player always wins.

 If I do feel myself tilting it's way more likely to be because someone at the table is rude, annoying, slow, boring or smelly and I if it's a cash game I always leave if I'm not enjoying it. Obviously you can't just leave in the middle of a tournament so usually if I feel myself tilting I will be aware that others will be able to see that and they may suspect I'll play loser, bluff more, push edges and play a little poorly so in order to stop them benefitting from any of that I just rock up and play only the really top hands for a little while. I fold all small edges and don't open to steal for a bit. Hopefully it doesn't take too long for me to pull myself together.

 I think when you play for a living you soon realise that you are simply exchanging time for money in the way any employee does. On the losing days you have given up your time and not only have you not got paid but now you'll have to work all day tomorrow just to get back to where you were. That should make you massively determined not to simply give money away and that's why most long-term pros don't have tilt issues.

 I've never really taken a long break for tilt reasons but occasionally I have taken the odd day off or skipped an event because I feel a little off-balance. It's definitely not a bad idea but a better one is to pull yourself together and play to win at all times.

 One tip I would have for online players is play more tables even if that means slightly dropping your stakes. If you are involved in ten tournaments all the time you'll soon learn to not really care about 99 losing to 88 on one table as you won't really have time to think about it and you'll be less emotionally involved, plus there is bound to be a table where 44 beats JJ coming up soon.

 Good question, hope you get yourself cured.