Tilting

We've all been on tilt at one time or another. The problem is that you don't often know you are on tilt until later. And then it's too late.

Tilting can be making plays that you normally wouldn't make, folding hands you would normally call or playing hands you would normally toss. But it isn't always very obvious. Most of the time when you tilting, the change in your play is subtle, and this prevents you from realizing you are tilting.

For example, you take a bad beat, someone sucks out on you bad and you lose a huge pot. If you are in a tournament or at a ring game, that loss of chips is very apparent to you. In a tournament, your chance of placing in the money or winning may be severly jeopardized. In a ring game, you may have just lost money that you spent hours earning. In either case, it is a factor that will have an impact on our decisions.

When you have a really good hand get beat, then it makes you question the quality of your hands. Let's say you flop a set and get beat by runner runner straight. Maybe a couple hands later you flop top pair and top kicker. Whether you think it consciously or not, you are wondering if you can win a hand with a pair when you can't even with a hand with 3 of a kind.

Then there is the guy that took your chips. Those are YOUR chips and you want them back. The next time you are in a hand with him, you might try excessively hard to try to win the hand. You might bet or call hands that you shouldn't because he hit that runner runner to beat you and you want to think he's drawing to runner runner again.

I'll give an example. Last night I'm playing a ring game and doing ok. I haven't been at the table very long and I'm up a little. I pick up AQo and the flop comes AQ5 rainbow. This is a pretty good hand for me and I bet aggressively. I get a couple callers. The turn is another low card matching one of the suits of the flop. I bet again and get a raise and reraise. Still a couple people in the hand. The river comes another low card, matching the suit of the turn. I bet and get reraised, and go into a raising war until the betting is capped. One of my opponents had dropped out and it was just me and the guy who was raising with me. Of course he turns over the flush and all of a sudden I'm down to half of what I sat at the table with.

I say to myself, that was just a bad beat, shake it off. Just play your game and you'll be right back in it. I tighten up, looking for really good hands to play and fold when I miss the flop. The $10 I sat down with at the 25/50 cent table is dwindled down to 3 something after a few rotations of the blinds.

Then the hand comes. I'm in the big blind with ATo. Everyone folds to the guy with all my chips. He raises. Everyone folds to me. I think no way are you stealing my blinds, I have a decent hand, so I reraise. The flop comes 3 hearts, matching my ten and with an ace. I bet and get reraised. I think, no way you have hearts and I've got the ace. The turn and river are not hearts and we reraise each other until I'm all in. He of course has the flush and takes the remainder of my chips.

Now I don't play like that. When there is a 3 flush on the flop and I'm holding one pair with a weak draw at the flush, and someone shows strength, I'm laying my hand down. But I convinced myself that I had the best hand because I wanted revenge on this guy so badly. This caused me to play in an uncharacteristic manner. I was tilting. But I didn't know it. When I look back at that play, I think what a bonehead move that was. But at the time, it seemed like the reasonable thing to do.

That's the problem with tilting, when you are on tilt, you may not realize it. Recognizing when you are on tilt is important to being able to be a successful poker player. Whether you win or lose when you sit down at a table, revisit the hands you played and see if you played them right. Did you get lucky? Did you make the right reads? Did you let your emotions affect your decisions? What could you have done differently? Did you get bullied and lay down the best hand frequently? Did you play your best game? What could you have done to have a better result during that session?

These are the questions that you need to answer every time you get up from the table to improve your game. If you think you are good enough that you don't need to evaluate your game play, then you are wrong. If you have 80 years of experience playing poker, you can improve your game by continuously evaluating your play and finding weakness. Most important is to recognize when you are tilting. Everyone goes on tilt from time to time. Evaluating your game play will help you recognize when you were on tilt and didn't realize it. This will help you identify that later when it happens again, before it's too late and the damage is done.

Winning doesn't mean you weren't tilting. You might be making bad plays and getting positive results. This makes it even harder to identify that you are on tilt. Had I won that last hand then I probably would have continued at that table making more bad plays. Maybe I would have gotten lucky again but more likely I would have lost more.

Poker players must check their emotions at the door. If you let a player get under your skin, then that will cause you to make bad decisions. John Robert is excellent at this. If you've seen the tournament he played in where he was congratulating people on their excellent laydowns every time they folded to him, you know what I mean. I wasn't in that tournament and he had me on tilt. I wanted to see him lose so badly I was willing people call him even when they had hands that were huge underdogs to his so that I could see them outdraw him and shut him up.

If you can identify when you are on tilt, then that is the first step. That's when it is time to sit out a couple hands. Go to the bathroom, get a fresh drink, walk around the house a couple times. Clear your head, get your emotions back in check.

Just as important is being able to determine when someone else is on tilt. Watch for players who take a big hit. See how they react to it. Do they become more timid then they had before? Do they become more aggressive then they were before? Subtle changes in their betting patterns can be exploited for great profit. I am certain that the guy I was up against last night was well aware I was tilting even though I didn't. He used that information to put almost every penny I sat down with at the table into his stack.

Pay attention to your opponents. But pay attention to yourself. Know what your table image is. Watch for changes at the table. You might sit down at a tight table and within a few hands without any change of players, it is suddenly loose. Everyone is raising preflop and getting tons of callers. Is this because someone is tilting? Or are a lot of people catching cards at the same time all of a sudden? Knowing these answers will be make all the difference.