Help with Tilt
Posted by RagingPillow
Posted by
RagingPillow
posted in
Low Stakes
Help with Tilt
I am a winning player that struggles with episodes of emotional tilt/rage, and I am looking for advice for what you all have previously found that helps you. Below is my current plan of attack for improving my emotional control while playing cards. Anything you would add to it?
-- Exercise 30 min / day. I used to be an athlete and I don't think I have done anything physical straining in 10 years.
-- Improve diet.
-- 8 hours sleep per night. I feel sluggish even if I get 7 hours.
-- Play set hours of each day. Stop when time is up. This is essential to managing the many competing responsibilities I have.
-- Biweekly check my bankroll status. (I habitually check my progress during a session. Watching it go down will produce a very negative response, and I am very confident that my bankroll management will not put me at risk if I check every other week)
-- Read Peter Clarke's Poker Therapy, diagnose my tilt type, and put in a proactive means of addressing.
-- Commit to studying and implementing a specific poker topic each week.
-- Thorough hand history review of the topic I am learning at a set time on Sunday. this would be a significant increase and would be more beneficial when it is focused on a specific topic.
Loading 15 Comments...
I think your list is already on point.
What helps me is always grinding in the exact same time slots, makes me feel like I am "in control" and then you only need not to be tilting in these particular time frames.
Also meditation can help a lot for letting go and non-clinging (both in real life and poker-related). HeadSpace and 7Mind are great general meditation apps. Fedor Holz's Primed Mind will have some specific poker-related meditations, some of them are for free.
I used to meditate when I was golfing seriously. It helped to recover from a bad shot. I'm going to have to get back into it.
Agree with whiteshark on the time frames or set nr of hands to play, set them up and keep a strict schedule. Dont just play saturday at 10 AM because you ve got nothing else to do.
- Keep the Sundays for playing and Mondays and Tuesdays for learning. IME the players are online more and more towards the end of the week.
- Check very carefully in your DB what tilts you and avoid those spots as much as possible.
- Table count is important, play what you can control and have the best decisions possible at the same time.
- Have a very good understanding of bad beats and variance (this helps tremendously).
exactly this.
found myself leaking a lot by doing so....
I will definitely set up a regimented schedule.
What is the downfall with playing because you have nothing else to do? Is it deviating from the normal prepared play.
In response to the don't play Monday/Tuesday. I am playing Pokerstars Mi right now. There is some unique phenomenon that happens on a Tuesday or Monday every week like clockwork where a massive number of fish hop online. It is never both days, always one or the other. I am convinced it correlates with payday for some massive company. For example, I had a table where the best villain was playing vpip 40, pfr 4.
I know what tilts me, and they are the most profitable scenarios that you never want to avoid. I hate losing to inferior opponents. I am used to athletics where the best player almost always wins when they play well. Then to play near perfect and lose is something that is difficult for my mind to wrap itself around. Then if I start watching my bankroll go down by 3 buyins or so I lose control. I played last night without ever once looking at my bankroll, didn't check my stats in PT4, and blocked out where PS displays your current funds. It actually worked quite well. I'm not sure if I made money last night, but I played very well.
RagingPillow
The downfalls of playing weird hours is that our brain is mapped to a limited amount of good decisions you are able to take during let's say 24h period, you can easily burnout without realising when you are multi-tabling for 3/4 hours straight. I personally fancy those sessions during the peak times because I make more profit. Poker is about both good decision making and volume and you want to put both when you feel at your best and the rooms at also at peak (this depends on each site, region etc. PS Europe runs well in the evenings for example).
On the athlete part, sadly you need to stop making this comparissons because poker is a game where you can do everything right and still might lose, and you have to accept that, its part of the game. What I can say is this, next time you have AA vs KK all in pre and you hold AA think of it like this "In this spot, I am supposed to lose 1/5 times".
Hope this helps!!
if you have serious tilt issues, you might also check your game-selection. in my personal experience, im more tempted to go on tilt playing zoom due to the fast pace.
So switching to regular tables helped me a lot.
And I can also add to avoid close calls. If you feel that a call is close between calling and folding, just fold, because if you have tilt problems a call that is proabably close to 0 EV will become clearly -EV. Play short sessions also can help.
I think this may have merit for me with overbets on the river. I convince myself sometimes that I am ahead when the player profile I am up against supports that the aggression is a nutted hand. Not a frequent occurrence, but is something that exacerbates my already fragile mental state.
The Second Noble Truth of Buddhism ~ Suffering arises from attachment to desires.
The cause of suffering is called samudaya or tanha. It is the desire to have and control things, such as craving of sensual pleasures. For example, if you desire fame and fortune, you will surely suffer disappointment and perhaps even cause suffering for others.
Attachment to material things creates suffering because attachments are transient and loss is inevitable. Thus suffering will necessarily follow.
The Third Noble Truth of Buddhism ~ Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases.
The end to suffering is called nirodha. It is achieving Nirvana, which is the final liberation of suffering. The mind experiences complete freedom, liberation and non-attachment. It lets go of any desire or craving. IT IS ATTAINING DISPASSION.
Nirvana means freedom from all worries, troubles and ideas. It is not comprehensible for those who have not attained it.
If your site supports it, switch to BB instead of $.
Recently sat @ Blitz50 mistakenly and didn't realize my mistake due to everything being in BB instead of $. Played solid , and relaxed because in my mind i was playing blitz10.
Good call with the BB change. I just recently changed my setting as it was hard for me to get used to the bet sizing as i moved up limits.
The Buddhism Noble Truths are interesting. I think above all else I desire winning. Certainly don't desire fame. Fortune is desirable, but poker isn't going to change my financial situation.
I accidently jumped into 100nl, and only figured it out because my hud wouldn't work.
Jalo very nice summary of the Noble Truths and it makes me very glad to read this here :-)
fleshlight(s)
Solid!!!!!
Also, embrace the variance.
Look at this site and you will see just what can happen over smallish samples. 10bb crushers drop 10+ buy-ins in a session. They are crushers because they know this is going to happen and they don't care. They play their game, constantly try to find their own leaks, accept the luck factor and don't let it effect them mentally.
Below is a 10bb crusher, 10,000 hand sample. His worst run has him losing 20 buy ins in 10,000 hands.
2nd link is 100,000 hands, he will still break even sometimes over 100,000 hands.
3rd line is 1,000,000 hands. You will see what I am getting at
Variance Calculator
Variance 100,000 Hands
Variance 1,000,000 Hands
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