Now that the nuts and bolts of the game are in place, let’s get started on some of the more philosophical stuff. One of the biggest problems for people who play poker on a regular basis is the danger of going on tilt. This is when you play different than your normal solid game and seem to hemorrhage cash at the table. It is an expensive problem, and potentially fatal to the career of an aspiring professional player.
I don’t need to tell you that going on tilt is a bad thing, but it is important to really grasp what it means. Different people “tilt” in different ways. Frequently a change in playing style is the result of a bad beat or two. This opens the door for two distinct play changes. The first, and more common, is that the superior player who has just been outdrawn three hands in a row, begins to aggressively play every pot, and becomes reckless and wild with his chips. The reason for this is that the player is steaming from the bad beats and is trying to get even, both monetarily and figuratively.
The other form of tilting is when a player ceases to play his normal aggressive style. This form of tilt can be caused by the same circumstances, but is typically found at higher stakes where a player is potentially overextending his bankroll a bit. He is distraught about his bad luck, but not wanting to lose even more money, he begins playing scared. This form of tilt is the most deadly. When a player begins playing “weak-scared,” he has no chance of winning money, and is doomed to watch his chips slowly dissipate around the table.
So how do you tilt? I believe it is important to examine the way we played after a dreadful losing session. How did you react to the bad beats you received? Did you become bitter at the “inferior” players and try to run over the table, or did you tighten up so much that the other players began to run over you? In order to prevent yourself from falling victim to tilt, you have to identify it in your game and eradicate it.
Also, I believe that it is impossible for a player to be totally free of psychological setbacks when playing poker. No matter how disciplined and practiced you are, everyone gets swayed a bit by some of the events which transpire at the poker table. There is an old poker concept that applies perfectly to this very topic.
Playing poker is one long game, each session is just another step in the process.
If you lose $200 tonight and win $300 tomorrow, you are a $100 winner. It’s the exact same as if you had won $50 each night. So if you find yourself stuck for a heap of dollars, it’s important to remember that there will be another day. Don’t dig yourself in so deep that you cannot recover with one or two reasonable wins. In fact, that is my best piece of advice. Don’t be too proud to walk away from the table when you are down. The biggest losses always occur after a long session where “the game was just right, but I just kept getting outdrawn.” Typically we tend to neglect how our own poor reactions to the first couple of bad beats dragged us down even further when we refused to quit.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve been playing and found myself down a bit and decided to keep playing until I was back to even. A few times this strategy has turned into a bankroll disaster, and I blew through in just one sitting the stake which had taken me weeks and months to accumulate. So what could have been a small, manageable loss turned into an all-out money management catastrophe. Learn cheaply from my costly lessons. Also, don’t play Pot Limit Omaha, but that’s a different (and ongoing) story…
