When you’re winning your flips, stacking chips and running your table, poker’s great. You feel invulnerable, like nothing can burst your bubble. Then suddenly, one hand changes everything. Your top set gets cracked by a backdoor flush draw and you lose a huge pot.
You are in shock. How could he call with that filth? You can barely contain your fury as he types “ty” unbidden in the chat box. The red mist rises and two hands later, you are out, having fired your chips into every pot almost without looking at the cards.
Tilt is the bane of the poker player, and is the biggest leak any player has. What can you do about this?
Fighting Tilt
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to tilt. Everyone has particular pet hates and everyone will have different answers to preventing tilt. But here’s some common reasons for tilt and some suggested ideas for combating them:
1) Tiredness
If you are feeling tired while you play, it will be harder for you to control your emotions at the table. Try and be refreshed and fully awake whenever you play.
2) Sense of injustice
It feels so unfair when someone gets lucky. Where’s the justice?! What you have to remember at times like this is that poker is about the long haul. One hand does not define the game and if you got someone to put their money in bad against you then win or lose, you have outplayed them. Over a longer period, this will equate to more money in your pocket.
3) Being outplayed
You can’t play perfectly every hand. When someone bluffs you successfully, gets you to fold a better hand or call with a worse hand, you’ve been outplayed. This shouldn’t be a cause for you to throw the toys out of the pram however.
Be objective about the situation. Learn from a mistake. Improve your game. Any time you make errors, these are situations you should strive to learn from and play better next time, not tilt off all your chips.
4) Being in the wrong frame of mind
If you’ve just been dumped by your girlfriend, don’t sit down at the biggest stakes you can. You will go broke. If your favourite football team have just lost 5-0 to their biggest rivals, you might want to consider dodging the poker tables until you’ve calmed down. When you sit down at the poker table, do your best to be in a winning and positive frame of mind. This will help you play better. We will deal with this subject in a later article.
5) Abuse from players
In both live and online poker, you will sometimes be abused by other players (probably tilting.) Don’t let their words get to you. Be the bigger person and focus on making good decisions. Emotional control is one of the biggest weapons in a top player’s arsenal.
Tilt can have devastating effects on your poker play and roll, but learning to deal with it and nipping it in the bud will add significantly to your profits. Look to a top player like Phil Ivey and imagine him tilting. He almost never does, and that is one reason for his rise to the top of the poker tree.
It is worth investing time and effort into the cause and solution to your tilt. Wipe it out and reap the rewards.