dealing with tilt...

ditpoker

OK... i need advice... in a tournament on sunday i took a STINKING beat and was left short stacked , but my stack as short as it was remained very playable, yet i through it all in with Q9 or some such rubbish.

tonight, i'm after donking off my entire Stars bankroll cos some idiot got a 2 outter on me twice and he did the old "i'll just move up stakes and win my way back to even" every draw suddenly is worth a call... i can see in my head "i should fold here, BUT IF I HIT im back to even"... its killing me.

i know there'll be one or 2 people who think this might belong in the bad beat thread but its your own fault for clicking aa thread titled 'dealing with tilt' what did u expect?

im particulalrly interested to hear from people who identified their own tilt issues and how they dealt with it and over came it. i know there's many who just dont really tilt that much, HOW DO U DO THAT!?!?!

its mainly an issue online, but ive noticed it creeping into my live play more and more.

The Sheriff 101

I remember reading a few months back that bad beats are my friend ( Yes i know it cheesey) without them poker would not be profitable the day u stop recieving them is the day u should start crying as it is no longe profitable to play poker. i kept reminding myself of this everytime i got a bad beat eventually loosing with AA vrs KK didnt bother me i stoped whining and bitching in the chat after i was sucked out on.

it really did wonders for my bankroll untill i blew it in 3 sitting after not playing for 2-3 weeks (was drunk for 2 of them):o and then sat down at the 5/10 table and lasted about an hour before going broke

All i can say is just keep reminding yourself that when you get a bad beat they are playing bad you are a better player and you will find yourself eager to keep playing well after getting a beat


Now to just create some sort of device to stop me logging into my poker account when drunk ( besides going broke)


I know it may sound a bit foolish but it did work for me.

sikes

play omaha at low stakes. evenutally you will dish out a sick beat. then when you realise he bought in for an odd amount you know you busted the poor fella. thats when you can sit back down to your regualar game.

nicnicnic

IMHO its the one of the prominent things that differentiates the results of players. if you feel its tilt online turn off the game, post, pace, make coffee turn off the pc, live take the mindset that its a challenge, most go broke I'm coming back.

phantom_lord

I got rivered in a pretty big pot tonight, and went on tilt, basically all I do is put on a face, stew quietly in my seat ignore everyone, and listen to my headphones till I get back to normal.

Tonight I took a guys 350+ tank in a set over set hand. That dealt with the tilt pretty well.

bohsman

Punching the wall works - it makes you think twice about doing something stupid when your knuckles are purple. Stop playing and do something else, football manager and PES for me at the moment.

Mr. Flibble

If you are seroius about it you should make your self stop playing all together for 20 minutes if you lose a pot over 100BBs - regardless if you feel tilted or not or how big a fish is at the table who you can't take advantage of for that 20 mins.
If you can make yourself do that every single time I think it will help. Taking the break is one of the hardest things to do though.

Gholimoli

Tilting is obviously a peak in an emotional state.
What you are asking is the same, as “how do I not get angry".
Almost every one gets angry but people have different thresholds and also different way of dealing with anger.
Time is generally required to let that emotional state pass and return to normal. That’s why when people get angry its always advisable to not do anything and take a deep breath blah blah blah and basically take a break to let your emotions get back to normal.
Tilting is the exact same. Most people tilt but it takes different measures for different people to put them on tilt.
When it happens, people have dealing ways of dealing with it, some blow steam by blowing money (playing super aggrro or something) and some punch the wall, or Fuzz likes to kick his cat.
Again what you need is to take a break and let your emotions cool down.
The thing is every one knows this yet most people fail to do it including my self.
i think if you look at it as a challenge as part of becoming a more complete player then you will have a better chance of succeeding at this.
Think of it as a poker concept that you need to master. Like hand reading, knowing the odds, playing the turn etc.
If you think of that way i think you will have a much better chance.

bubbleking

go to the micro limit tabels.

put a cover on the screen to hide your hole cards.

push all in blind for about 10 mins.

amazing relief

BigCityBanker

I had quite a large bet on a horse 6 weeks ago - he was 10 clear, trading at ,1.5 and going strong when he jinked and fell at the 3rd last. I threw my laptop against the wall thinking that would solve my tilt issues. (this story gets worse believe me - i wont go into it).

If I had a mouse I probaly would have made shìt of that instead - touch screen

slegs

mouses (mice?) are made of strong stuff these days...mine has hit the wall a number of times recently and keeps coming back for more

bops

just smile and say well played (live) or vnh (online) and think to yourself i'll get all the retards stack if i continue to play my game and him his...

revenge is the best cure for your tilt issues

if that doesn't work - leave table and go for a walk/turn off pc

what works best for me is i think of some of the sick beats ive put on people - they cheer me up no end!!

DeadParrot

This might not be the best advice,
but sometimes if you replay the hand in your head or take another look at his betting/calling throughout the hand, it can help you realise if you yourself made any errors.

E.g, last night AA in mid position on 1/2 PPP 2 limpers I raise to 10
muppet on the button calls flop 664, he checks I bet 15, he raise to 35, I hsove and he calls for his last $60 with the monster 96os.
Now though not really a bad bet per se, I should have seen it coming with the shove (though he WAS a muppet), in the past that would have thrust me over the edge and lead to me donking off the remainder of my stack chasing lucky flops/draws.
I have tried to allow beats like this improve my game and give it focus. Pay more attention to the other players game. I'm still new at the whole note taking business and copping on to betting patterns, usually just a 'my cards, he's tight, he's an calling station' type notes in my head. So if you can use beats to improve your own game it can turn out more profitable in the long run than the XBB you have lost in one hand.

Or watch porn, that usually relieves the stress

pokerscene

When you play poker long enough you are going to get bad beats from time to time thats the nature of the game, The best comparison is golf. Players hit great shots all the time but they dont get the break they deserve. The ball lands 2 inches from the hole but sucks back 20 feet. Another guy will mi**** it and end up 5 feet from the pin. What golfers do in their mindset is when the shot is finished or the hole is over they can automatically forget about it and move on. I try to forget the beat or the luckbox asap and move on to the next hand.

If you cannot control your emotions your game is in trouble imo.

Rnger

i play counterstike or day of defeat whenever im tilting. theres nothing like shooting the guy who gave you the bad beat

Mellor

The Sheriff 101 wrote:

I remember reading a few months back that bad beats are my friend ( Yes i know it cheesey) without them poker would not be profitable the day u stop recieving them is the day u should start crying as it is no longe profitable to play poker. i kept reminding myself of this everytime i got a bad beat eventually loosing with AA vrs KK didnt bother me i stoped whining and bitching in the chat after i was sucked out on.

its from Small Stakes Hold'em by Sklansky, Malmuth, Miller.
It does help put tilt into perspective, but rminding yourself of it when fish suck out is hard.
Try doing something everytime you get dished a bad beat. like taking 20 mins, say the alphabeth backwards, or play pro ev. Forget about it and move on.

luckylucky

Dealing with tilt can be a right pain, it's something that you definitely improve upon the more you play but it can rear it's ugly head just after you think you are never going to tilt again.

I think possibly proper preparation before you play a game may help you avoid tilt.

You're less likely to tilt I feel if you play at a level which is neither too hi or too low for you bankroll.

Try not to get excited before you play with the thoughts of all that lovely money you're going to win, because if you go in with high expectations and things start to go pear shaped that's when you can start over pushing and chasing where you normally wouldn't.

ntlbell

Gholi really hit the nail on the head, it's very hard if not close to impossible to supress your emotions.

I think naturally over time each bad beat gets easier to deal with, I don't really tilt much anymore and I use to be _really_ bad I've tried everything but the only thing that has worked is time.

The only thing that puts me on tilt now is my own stupidity.

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

smurph

Its like it comes in waves, and by reading some of the bad beat posts im glad I don't play too much online poker, more hands = more bad beats. I have had Aces cracked about 8-10 times over the last month in tournaments. Worst was 2 hands in space of about 4 minutes. I found that i kept looking over at the chips that used to be mine and fuming more.

I now go off and get a mineral with sh*t loads of ice and chew on an ice cube,

There is nothing like the painful realisation that you need a filling to get tilting off your mind.:o

The horrible thing is when I am playing at a table and a player gets a major suck out and is steaming, and puts his "im on tilt" head on I cannot wait to get into a pot to get his money.

Nature of the game I suppose

ArmaniJeanss

To the best of my knowledge I've never been on tilt.

I played a lot of snooker growing up, and snooker can be very swingy luck-wise, much like poker.

I think I mastered being able to focus on the current situation at the snooker table as being a unique set of problems to be solved, and not let the goodluck/badluck of how this situation developed bother me.

So in poker terms, if I am currently short stack with 4BBs on the bubble, then thats an interesting situation to be played to the best of my ability - the fact that 3 hands ago I was chip leader with 70BBs is no longer relevant.

I think that people who regularly play sports (both team and individual) will be used to this continually having to adept to changing circumstances (hey we're 2 goals up and cruising, oh no, we're level and down to 10 men) and will find tilt easier to control.

con_leche

LuckyLucky you said:

"I think possibly proper preparation before you play a game may help you avoid tilt."

Can you be more specific here?

mewso

I think many folks suggest walking away for a while which I agree with but I think the first problem anyone has is recognising tilt. The damage can often be done before you realise it. Walking away after a bad beat is not necessarily the solution because sometimes the bad beat won't affect you but the next one will or the next one. There will be a magic number of beats that will cause you to go on tilt and no certainty it will be the first one.
To me there are 2 types of tilt. The first one is glaringly obvious where in say one session you go off on one after a few beats. This kind should not take too much mental exercise to habitually spot and discipline yourself to either stop or if you work at it to move back down to playing a proper game. I find it's about mentally repeating something to yourself like "stop tiliting", spending that extra second on a hand to conciously ask yourself why you are calling/raising with it. Is it what you normally do.
The second type is the one that affects me the most and is far more subtle. A good example would be STTs. I can go for a month ITM in STTs and thinking man this is a breeze and then out of the blue I've played 5 in a row and not moneyed in any of them. No problem I'm playing within my bankroll which covers this. But now it's on your mind and suddenly you have played 10 with no cashes and you know somewhere along the line you mentally changed your play as the donkeys got lucky and your play suffered in response. Spotting this slow degredation is harder but the second I spot it I stop playing for at least a few days and once I go back again I play one level below which helps me to relax a bit and ease into it.
To each their own I suppose but essentially for me it's about spotting it quickly and coming up with a good mental exercise to deal with it.

Glowingmind

There's a number of very good points above - particularly musician's, as the slow degradation in decision making caused by a run of small losses can be much worse than anything brought on by one huge one.

With me, it comes and goes in phases - sometimes i tilt really hard and have the propensity to piss away lots of cash. Other times, it just goes over my head and i can keep going.

Lately i've just been doing other things. I've had a pretty weird last month or so where i've been doing well live, but playing horribly online.

Currently i have a pile of unwatched dvds sitting on a shelf that i can make a grab for anytime i need a break and that 90 mins or two hours tends to do wonders.

I've also started playing razz and 7 card stud instead of holdem online which has been a really nice distraction.

jbravado

Raise evey hand for the next tweny minutes,abuse the dealer-blow every single penny you have left on you-ask someone for a lend of taxi money-put that on red.Walk home.Youll be less like to steam next time.

In all seriousness though try and take a break for a few minutes.It helps.

luckylucky

con_leche wrote:

LuckyLucky you said:

"I think possibly proper preparation before you play a game may help you avoid tilt."

Can you be more specific here?

What I meant here was that it's important to have a good mind frame before you play, try to remain neutral, neither being over optimistic or pessimistic, knowing that before you enter a game you could play the best poker of your life and still come out losing badly and be ready to accept this.

If you sit down at a game and are over confident, or just simply too exuberant, then when things go wrong, the emotional turmoil is worse than it would have been if you thought about all that could realistically happen beforehand, realise and be prepared to accept the worse that can happen before you log on to play, then when things go wrong as they inevitably do from time to time it still won't be nice but at least it willl be something you have braced yourself for beforehand, all easier said than done I'll admit.

Also it helps if you're not boozed up .

The Sheriff 101

luckylucky wrote:

Also it helps if you're not boozed up .

Now u tell me:eek:

luckylucky

The Sheriff 101 wrote:

Now u tell me:eek:

yeah stating the bleeding obvious I know, soz, my only excuse is that I am boozed up , least I'm not playing poker, well not except for 1 sng earlier.

ditpoker

thanks, there's some good stuff here. i find myself sitting there KNOWING that i should step away from the computer, or i should take a few minutes. I've also read the stuff about appreciating bad beats cos it means your playing well and your getting your money in good.

im reluctant to put money back online in case i just blow that, and i'd want to put up (what would be to me) a substantial sum, say maybe $500 to have a decent bankroll for .25/.50 or so as i find the micro limits so frusttraing, i.e. you play great poker for ages and are up a tenner! if (when) i do put money back online i'm going to enter a 10c SnG whenever i get badly outdrawn, as i still get to play cards, but the 10c+1c wont do anything to my bankroll but i can tilt away for abit if i need to! i figure that might work...

on a similar note... i think what sets me off very quickly is that i am playing ALOT of cards at the moment... does anyone here do anything like "well i if play a tourney on friday, i am DEFINATELY not playing again until next wednesday at the earliest" or anything similar, like if i play online cash games on a tuesday, i wont play online until thursday?

The Sheriff 101

luckylucky wrote:

yeah stating the bleeding obvious I know, soz, my only excuse is that I am boozed up , least I'm not playing poker, well not except for 1 sng earlier.

Sorry wasnt meant to come across as like that
Just ive done alot of damage to my bankroll lately actually its gone except for a bonus ive just recieved on party

My biggest problem is playing when im drunk:o

NickyOD

Everybody deals with tilt in their own way. I think there's very little you can say to someone that will help them deal with it. Some people are just very tilty, some are inexperienced and some are always just very calm. Some people have been playing for years and still can't stop themselves from tilting. Look at the "buddhist" Andy Black. Tiltiest ****er ever.

I think I've calmed down a lot in the last year. I remember a hand DITPoker dealt me at the IPT where I took a horrible beat and let off some steam be kicking the **** out of a chair. That was the 3rd tourney in a row that weekend where I'd busted out with over 50% of the field gone getting my money in postflop as a 8-1 favouriite. I might steam a lot but I don't think I ever let it effect the way I play anymore. Sometimes I pretend to steam and use it to my advantage.

Goodluck2me

NickyOD wrote:

I think I've calmed down a lot in the last year. I remember a hand goodluck2me dealt me at the IPT where I took a horrible beat and let off some steam be kicking the **** out of a chair. That was the 3rd tourney in a row that weekend where I'd busted out with over 50% of the field gone getting my money in postflop as a 8-1 favouriite. I might steam a lot but I don't think I ever let it effect the way I play anymore. Sometimes I pretend to steam and use it to my advantage.

FYP I remember that hand in the side game getting towards the bubble you had 2 pair on the flop with J5 iirc, and the other guy rivered his kicker. i also remember the chair!lol good to see youve calmed down since!

The Sheriff 101

NickyOD wrote:

Sometimes I pretend to steam and use it to my advantage.

:rolleyes:

carfax

The way I deal with tilt is (and this is with varying success) to just remind myself that cards are inanimate objects. Just because something is 20/1 against happening its still going to happen every once in a while (and amazingly enough its usually not one in 21 times)......
Getting annoyed at an object that falls or gets turned over is pretty dumb.....but when you think about it thats where most players derive their tilt from.

IMO;
If you can't beat a game, even with all the bad beats in the world, you need to examine your game. (Pretty preachy coming from one who is playing some terrible stuff at the moment but hey).

fiddlesticks

jbravado wrote:

Raise evey hand for the next tweny minutes,abuse the dealer-blow every single penny you have left on you-ask someone for a lend of taxi money-put that on red.Walk home.Youll be less like to steam next time.

In all seriousness though try and take a break for a few minutes.It helps.

Something tells me Sam, that this has happened before...;)

Ste05

I've actually been thinking alot about Tilt and all it's various forms lately, and I'm starting to come to the decision that all it really is, is just an excuse that all Poker players use (and is accepted) for bad play.

I do it myself, so I'm not saying anything about anyone here, but I'm really trying hard to stop using it as an excuse for playing badly. I'm just trying to make sure my thinking is clear and if I'm making a call/fold/raise for a reason I know is a bit mad, I'm trying not to do it. In my case this is usually raising just because i think he *might* fold, and sure you never know he just *might* fold. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: But it's basically just a stupid play.

I'm trying to get in my head that there's really no excuse for playing badly. It's just bad play and if we all keep allowing it and accepting it as an excuse for playing badly then I don't think we can never truly eradicate it from our game.

Obviously Tilt is recognisable on a table and what I'm trying to do lately, (with absolutely no success!!!) is when I'm "supposed" to be on tilt, play up to it a bit (like Nicky says) but just try and adjust to the new table dynamics where people will play differently against me. I honestly think this is the main difference between really good players and good players. I think everyone can develop their game to a certain (fairly high) level and then it's all about discipline and tilt control that seperates the players.

Thoughts??

luckylucky

Ste05 wrote:

I've actually been thinking alot about Tilt and all it's various forms lately, and I'm starting to come to the decision that all it really is, is just an excuse that all Poker players use (and is accepted) for bad play.

I do it myself, so I'm not saying anything about anyone here, but I'm really trying hard to stop using it as an excuse for playing badly. I'm just trying to make sure my thinking is clear and if I'm making a call/fold/raise for a reason I know is a bit mad, I'm trying not to do it. In my case this is usually raising just because i think he *might* fold, and sure you never know he just *might* fold. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: But it's basically just a stupid play.

I'm trying to get in my head that there's really no excuse for playing badly. It's just bad play and if we all keep allowing it and accepting it as an excuse for playing badly then I don't think we can never truly eradicate it from our game.

Obviously Tilt is recognisable on a table and what I'm trying to do lately, (with absolutely no success!!!) is when I'm "supposed" to be on tilt, play up to it a bit (like Nicky says) but just try and adjust to the new table dynamics where people will play differently against me. I honestly think this is the main difference between really good players and good players. I think everyone can develop their game to a certain (fairly high) level and then it's all about discipline and tilt control that seperates the players.

Thoughts??

Yip, I think everything you say here makes perfect sense and as you say it's one of the main things that seperates the really good from the good. I certianly haven't developed my game to the point that I can absolutely say I never tilt, as one other poster said here tilt can take various forms as well, the most dangerous one is where you don't even recognise you have gone on tilt.

TacT

I'm not so sure Ste but it's an interesting point. I had my last tilt session about a month ago and dropped €500 in a week. Obviously it was mostly down to bad play but as usual it stemmed from a couple of monster suckouts in a short period of time that made me get very angry and started chasing ridiculous cards, calling raises with cards I wouldn't even deem call worthy preflop but I did it in a very angry state.

Personally, I get it from playing too much moreso than anything else. What happens is instead of laughing my ass off at some gimp that just got it all-in against my set with an open ender and hit or alternative for the 3rd+ time in a day, I get mad. That's where I identify it. As soon as I get mad in anyway then it's time to stop playing and do something else. If I can't laugh at a bad beat and tell myself that the money I just lost is out on a temporary loan to the fish that sucked out on me then I stop playing until I can laugh again. Tilt has been a big weakness in my game because I'm quite emotional but I always bounce back fortunately.

Things I do to avoid it now are as follows:

tell myself it's a game and not take it too seriously.
force myself to laugh when I lose a big pot to a monster suckout and if I can't, stop playing.
never play more than 5 days in the week or 6-8hrs in a day depending on my level of tiredness.
get up and go for a walk about or go watch a film after losing a 100BB+ pot.
understand why I am losing these big pots and ensuring it wasn't just a bad decision on my behalf.
steer clear of tables with 10ft barge pole after a few drinks or when in anyway tired or irritable.
force myself onto a break if I feel any degredation in my game/decision making.
Don't get excited/chuffed when winning big pots or after having a good day/week/month because when I have a bad one it ultimately leads to the exact opposite (exercising indifference but it's hard to do).
Go to the micro limits and LAG it up in a major way (thanks to HJ for this piece of advice, it's very medicinal on occasion).
play a different game like omaha etc.

opr

Its something which i suffer from really badlly. Only a couple of weeks ago i donked away 2k in a 2 hour tornado of madness.

It was by far and away the worst loss i have ever had from tilting. One thing which really struck me was how calm i was externally but all rational and consious decision making seemed to have left me. Like the Duck and the feet under the water analogy.
So i decided it was a about time i addressed this problem properly. Since then
i have read and reseached tilt and its causes alot.

Most of the following stuff and concepts are from Zen and the Art of poker but i think it really explains tilt , its cause and how to cope with it really well.

P.S. - I didnt write most of this stuff ..... thought it would be helpful to put some of the best bits together.

Try to think of poker in this way: Luck is a mountain, poker is a big boulder and you are skill, running along the boulder trying to move it to avoid smashing into trees as it rolls down the mountain. No matter how hard you try, you can only adjust the boulder so much to avoid hitting trees. Sometimes the trees are just ahead and there's nothing you can do, while other times you can barely avoid a hit if you try with all your might.

If you finally mastered this boulder game, you would eventually realize that there is only so much you can do, while the rest is up to fate. It's futile to try and control that which you can't. All you can do is position yourself in the best spot possible and hope for the best.

Try to think of this analogy the next time you feel you are on tilt to help your brain realise how futile tilting is.

When you try to get over tilt, you are basically forcing your left brain (logic) to tell your right brain (emotion) why it shouldn't be pissed off. But no matter how much you mentally fight yourself, you're trying to surpress emotions instead of addressing them. What you really need to be doing is stopping your emotions at the source.

Your emotional center acts up as a response to a need. If someone punches you in the face for example, your reaction goes along the line of:

1. Physical: Flinch, close your eyes
2. Subconscious: Recognize a threat
3. Mental: Analyze how to respond to threat
4. Emotional: Become angry or fearful
5. Biological: Adrenaline rush, get ready to fight or run

The way this applies to tilting is poker, is by understanding the order in which tilt takes place. By taking time to examine your own thoughts (thinking about how you think), you can use Zen principles to break down exactly what you are going through during tilt:

1. Mental: Observe opponent rivering you
2. Mental: Realize you had a better hand than your opponent before the river
3. Mental: Realize you played correctly, while your opponent played incorrectly
4. Subconscious: You are accustomed to being rewarded when you do things correctly
5. Subconscious: You were not rewarded
6. Subconscious: This is not normal
7. Subconscious: This is not 'fair'
8. Subconscious: Unfairness is resolved through conflict
9. Emotional: You need to prepare for conflict
10. Emotional: You need to become aggressive
11. Biological: Increase heart rate, release adrenaline, tense up the body
12. Mental: TILT
13. Mental: Recognize that you are getting angry
14. Mental: Realize that you need to stop getting angry
15. Mental: Fight against emotion and subconscious for control

We can see by this deconstruction that tilt comes up because of how an your subconscious reacts to an 'unfair' situation. This reaction is literally ingrained in most of us, as our biology, society and economy is based on reward conditioning. Everytime you are rewarded, our brain maps out a path on how to receive that reward, so it's really inescapable. So, when you don't get rewarded when you expect to, the brian sees this as an uncertain situation or situation that appears to violate the mental rules you have in place. Thus, the brain sees this uncertainty as confusion, which leads to a reaction of anger or fear.

To make yet another analogy, if your work suddenly decided to dock your pay for no reason, you would be up in arms because it's obviously uncalled for (unfair). Unless you are a weak or timid person, your body will react in the appropriate way to deal with the situation. Just like most guys need a beer or two before hitting on a hottie at the bar, you need to get a bit riled up before you go mouthing off at your boss.

So, they key point here is that by analyzing your own mental train of thought and subconscious train of thought, you will realize that your body is reacting in a way that it is designed to. What you need to do, is intercept your thought processes at #4 and realize that you will not be rewarded in the same way in poker as other activities in your life. By reworking your thought processes at steps #4 and #6, you will stop the progression toward tilt and keep the game solely mental, instead of emotional.

To deal with #4 - you need to toss out the window your expectations of being rewarded in poker. You need to realize that there is no guarantee of being rewarded when you do things correctly in poker. Lose that mental hump you have where you are actually expecting something for doing things the right way. It doesn't always happen in poker.

In any game, you will find that the best players get angry just like everyone else from time to time. The thing that is different from the elite players however, is that they will always analyze their own play over and over, asking themselves "What did I do wrong?" or "How do I prevent that from happening again?". It's a different mentality than the average player, because the top players always put the blame to themselves first, rather than their opponent. The reason they do this is because you can't improve on yourself if you're not willing to admit fault first.

In many cases, you will find that you did play correctly of course. But in those times where you played incorrectly, if you cannot figure out that the problem lies with you, then you will never be able to mature as a poker player (or in any other of life's endeavors) for that matter. Self-reflection is one of the key principles to Zen.

Opr

opr

I think its amazing how much are subconscious can infulence us all while playing poker.

Its intestesting for exmple how many poker players will say that they made a "Gut" call. This can be qualified in terms of if you're an experienced player, with tens of thousands of hands played, chances are your brain has picked up on or encountered a certain situations over and over and subconsciously makes the decision.

Again the below is not me its taken from a book called "Blink, the power of thinking without thinking" - by Malcom Gladwell

An example in the books is an an experiment carried out on people given four decks of cards.

Two are blue, and two are red. Each card either wins you money, or loses you money. The point of the game, then, is to try to maximize your winnings, drawing the cards one by one. To put it in a way that most poker players will understand, the blue decks are +EV and the red decks are -EV, but the red decks also have greater winnings on the "win" cards.

How soon does it take someone to figure out that the red decks are bad for you? Well, in this experiment, it took the "gamblers" (on average, I presume) 40 cards before they said that they had "a hunch" about what was going on. It took them 70-80 cards before they stated that they had understood what the difference was between the decks.

Okay, so that's all and well. But the highly interesting part is what happened to their hands. The Iowa scientists had hooked each gambler up with sensors on the palms, to measure the activity of the sweat glands. Hands, and I'm sure most of you can identify with this, start to sweat as a reaction to stress, even if it's ever so little. Why is this so interesting?

Because the players starting showing signs of stress to the red decks after only ten cards.

It took the conscious part of the brain another 30 cards to figure out something was not right. It took it another 30-40 cards after that to formulate what was wrong. But after only 10 cards, the hidden motor in the brain had noticed that the values coming up on the red decks were scary.

The entire book contains lots of examples like this, and although it's in no way trying to claim that thinking consciously is a bad thing, it does show that our brain operates on a subconscious level with patterns and cognition that our conscious mind has yet to pick up on.

Opr

opr

Oh and i think it was HJ who suggested dropping down to the lower levels and like 1/2 cent and going all in every hand its actually works and is very therapeutic.
I think on a subconscious level its satisfies the need to get angry and play badly while helping your conscious mind regain control of the ship as it realises the futile nature of playing badly.

Opr

Doublezero8

opr wrote:

Oh and i think it was HJ who suggested dropping down to the lower levels and like 1/2 cent and going all in every hand its actually works and is very therapeutic.
I think on a subconscious level its satisfies the need to get angry and play badly while helping your conscious mind regain control of the ship as it realises the futile nature of playing badly.

Opr

And its great for us poor guys at 1/2 cent learning the game

opr

Doublezero8 wrote:

And its great for us poor guys at 1/2 cent learning the game

Where do you drop to when your tilting ?

Opr