Tilt

OK after reading an article in a science magazine about stress and how it negatively effects your learning abilities and also after reading the following post by bfizz11, that I found on pokerwit (bfizz11 originally posted it somewhere else but a member of pokerwit copied and pasted it there), I decided to try to not tilt anymore and to not get mad at bad beats or bustouts deep in mtts anymore:


(Bfizz11)

"Poker is a funny game. When you are winning, its is the most enjoyable and easy to win game in the world. When you are losing, it flips that nice life as you knew it upside down, aka tilt. It is no longer fun to grind 12 hour sessions, you stop springing out of bed to get started and start rolling out of bed preparing yourself for another crappy day full of bad beats, and that superman confidence disappears into some unknown galaxy. Why does all of this happen? Several reasons...but the most important reason is experience. I have never experienced a downswing this brutal therefore have never had to deal with this kind of stress, disappointment, and poker-related anger. I'll be honest guys, my life was not near as awesome when I wasn't winning tournaments. This obviously is not good, this means my life and all the happiness in it comes from poker and my success at poker. This made me realize that I am looking at the small picture, which is so unlike me. I have always been a big picture type guy, and never let small bumps in the road slow me down, not for long anyway. I have overcome obstacle after obstacle to get where I am today and I didnt do it by worrying about current conditions and staying stressed about small problems along the way.

Use adversity to help overcome, opposed to letting adversity abuse you into a state that makes achieving the goal at hand nearly impossible. Look at those speed bumps in your journey as ways to prove to yourself and the world that nothing can stop you, and that no matter what this life throws at you....you will prevail. I want to be a top ranked online player and the 2010 PokerStars Tournament Leader Board Champion. Those are the goals, and that is what I am going to do. This downswing was one of many, but due to the severity of it I let it throw me completely off course and my mind stopped working towards the goals and started working on all sorts of other things that only slowed down the overall process. Did this happen for a reason? Was I not mentally strong enough for a downswing of this magnitude, so I had to strengthen my mind and body by enduring the brutal beats and long hours? Maybe so, maybe not. Chalk it up to variance if you want, but variance has nothing to do with how our brain perceives a situation or circumstances. We cant control variance, but we can control our brain and the way it thinks. If all you can think about is bad beats and losing then you are probably just going to continue to lose. If your mind is set ahead on being the TLB Champ at all those 10k events overseas next year, then what the hell does a downswing matter? I am going to win, no matter what the swings are like right now. So im over it. Even though I still have about 15 thousand dollars more to make up before I have totally recovered the losses from the downswing, I am 100% done with and out of the downswing.

How are YOU doing? Answer this question in your head. Then think to yourself for a second about your answer and how results-oriented it was. Did you say good because you got off work early and have a beer in your hand or did you say bad because there was traffic on the way home and you forgot to grab beer on the way home? Either way, your answer was most likely based around the results of today, yesterday, or something that happened within 48 hours. Life is not about what is happening now, and its especially not about what happened then. It is about the future, and that is it. If you are working hard, staying mentally focused, healthy, and positive that you are going to get where you are going....life is always good and so are you.

I rambled on for a while, but I think this is very important for everyone and 100x as important for those of us who play or want to play any form of poker for a living. It is stressful guys, but only if you let it get that way. If you get AA in against KK and someone asks you how youre doing preflop, your answer should be the same postflop even if the guys flops quad kings. You played well, which is what you are there to do and is what is going to get you to where you are going...so dont let crappy SHORT TERM results be the reason for answering the question "How are you?" in any way other than positively. Get on track, and stay track. Make goals, make them happen. Its easy, we just gotta know we can do it. I hope something clicked in someone on tilt, and tomorrow you wake up with a fresh mindset and new way of thinking at the tables. You just gotta play well guys, and you are doing great."