Tilt Control and Reasonable Future Goals: Your opinion?

Alright everyone,

This will be a fairly thorough post, but I really wanted to see what everyone thought about this. I'll start this off with a little background info.

https://www.cardschat.com/f49/irexes-principle-napoleonic-player-116849/
(This post by Irexes is a great segway into what I want to discuss)

I started playing seriously online right around when I joined CC, in May/June 2007. I picked up Sklansky's two gems and threw a bunch of $100 dollar deposits on a few different sites. It didn't last long as I went outside my banrkoll and didn't play quality poker, expecting things to go my way. After a few more deposits, I started to hit my stride on Full Tilt in August of that year. I took out something in the $300 dollar range, but I still wasn't seeing that consistency. I continued to lose money, even after cashing for $1200 in a large tournament on Absolute Poker followed by a big $900 cash in UB's Sunday Major, the 150k Guaranteed.

Essentially, I knew I had the capabilities to play at a higher level if I played consistently, I would make fairly deep runs later on the 150k Guaranteed, but occasionally I would buy-in straight up, as opposed to satellite'ing in like I had before.

Once again, I'd take money out and spread it around to various sites. To get to the point here, I would continue to exemplify strong play and successfully take $100 deposits near the $1k range fairly easy. Each time though, I tend to suffer a strong set of bad beats and I can't take myself away from the table. This pushes me to play out of my limit, under the angry and misguided perception that stronger play at higher limits with offer me more ample opportunities to display my poker prowess and abilities. Every time this happens, my bankroll goes nearly kaput and I have to build up from square 1.

Fast forward to today: After another downswing on Absolute Poker (after turning $50 into $500 in a week and watching it dwindle away once again), I decided to take a different approach. With nearly 20k FPP's on Full Tilt, I decided to just play solely 1800 FPP $26 token satillites, and after winning ~5 tokens and turning this into cash with more solid play in SNG's/MTT's after that, I managed to build the roll back to $126 or so from nothing. After a really solid week of play with SNG's following this (see: https://www.cardschat.com/forum/poker-goals-challenges-wins-46/definition-running-good-119245/ ), I once again find myself right near the 1k mark, trying to keep it this way as opposed to watching it slip away like it has in the past.

Essentially, I'm going to set solid goals this time (that I actually plan to follow). Why I didn't do this successfully earlier is a bit disturbing and unbecoming of myself:

1) I'm sticking at the 20-30 range for a long long time. Nothing past $33+$3 SNG's until 1.5k-2k.

2) I will stop playing if I lose anymore that $150 in one sitting, if my roll dips anything below $650, this will be pushed to the $75-$100 range)

3) I will stop playing anything more than 3 tables at a time, realizing that SNG's involve more focus (especially if you run deep in each SNG) towards the later stages and require you to be on top of your game if you plan to win it.

4) I want to hit the $2k mark by the middle of August, which shouldn't be that hard if I play within my limits and continue to play strong. It's all about downswing survival and recovery because it's going to happen eventually, I just need to compose myself when it happens.

Here's where you guys come in. A few probing questions:

1) What are your best tilt control measures?

This is my first real stab at trying to set substantial limits on my play and ensure I continue playing successful, I feel like I play really solid poker when I'm focused and playing at comfortable stakes. My ROI is always much higher and I play much smarter, fundamentally sound poker.

2) How do you pull yourself away from a really rough session?

3) How much post-analysis of your play do you after a rough sitting?

4) What other advice would guys who've built substantially large broll's (Chuck, bw, Irexes, etc.) have in terms of pushing their play to a consistently higher level (not necessarily in terms of stake, more regarding consistent quality of play)?

Any input is appreciated. If all goes as planned, this could be a great reference thread because I feel like I'm not the only one whose been in this spot before. Everyone loves the thrill of playing higher stakes, but a lot don't know when they need to play low and when they have the ability to play high (myself included). I definitely consider myself a winning player, yet I know that I have some flaws I need to correct before I can become a consistent and longterm winning player.

In Amazon.com: Elements of Poker: Tommy Angelo: Books , Tommy Angelo makes the case that a major skill need by every poker player is quitting. Knowing when to quit will save you thousands. The way he recommends doing this is by having a conversation with yourself. Asking yourself if you're playing your best, answering honestly, and then acting accordingly.

First off I think playing with the smallest % of your bankroll as possible is a great way to both reduce tilt and to allow you to play your best game rather than worry about the stakes. I think you'll be ok with what you're doing now since you're not putting in massive volume (like 10-tabling for hours daily), but I still think playing with a smaller portion of your roll will do wonders for your tilt control.

Bankroll management is a function of both the stakes you're playing at and your comfort level, ie how confident you are at your current stakes and how much your bankroll means to you. I don't know what the money means to you, but in general the more it does, the smaller of a % you should play with.

So that's part of 1) for you. The other part would be to simply practice controlling your tilt just like you would practice being more aggressive on the bubble, or tightening up early in the game. If you're the type to quickly make moves and decisions without thinking while you're on tilt, then learn to literally take your hand off the mouse, and take a few slow deep breaths. If that doesn't work, finish the games you're in and don't play any more for the next few hours/rest of the day/however long it takes you to clear your head. Get outside, do some exercise, make lunch, whatever.

I used to go apeshit with tilt and still do once in a blue moon. I had to tape a huge "STOP AND THINK" message right under my monitor, but that didn't work too well. Then I taped a 20 bill to remind me what my clicks would result in. Nothing can guarantee you'll actually stop and read that message/see that bill, so what I do now is just take my hand off the mouse and take deep breaths. Kind of resets your brain and lets you think clearly.

2) I think I already answered.

3) Just as much as I spend after a good session. I don't really set an amount of time I'll spend, but I usually just review my sessions until I figure out what I did wrong/could have done better, or until I realize I can't figure out what to do and post it on the forums.

4) It's just like anything; work hard and the results will come. Reading books, discussing in forums, putting in high volume of hands/games, tracking and reviewing your play and just eating up any resource on poker you can find. Cardschat has been the #1 catalyst in my improvement, but reading books and getting a subscription to a coaching site were both huge for me too.

I'm by no means a great player or really talented or a mentally strong person for that matter, but hard work and perseverance has brought me great results with poker.

Sounds like you're pretty motivated which is great. Never give in to the tilt and variance and I can almost guarantee you'll see success your poker venture.

oh, another thing you should look at if you're playing a lot of STTs is an ICM calculator. They're basically essential for a full-time STT player.

ChuckTs said:

First off I think playing with the smallest % of your bankroll as possible is a great way to both reduce tilt and to allow you to play your best game rather than worry about the stakes. I think you'll be ok with what you're doing now since you're not putting in massive volume (like 10-tabling for hours daily), but I still think playing with a smaller portion of your roll will do wonders for your tilt control.

Bankroll management is a function of both the stakes you're playing at and your comfort level, ie how confident you are at your current stakes and how much your bankroll means to you. I don't know what the money means to you, but in general the more it does, the smaller of a % you should play with.

So that's part of 1) for you. The other part would be to simply practice controlling your tilt just like you would practice being more aggressive on the bubble, or tightening up early in the game. If you're the type to quickly make moves and decisions without thinking while you're on tilt, then learn to literally take your hand off the mouse, and take a few slow deep breaths. If that doesn't work, finish the games you're in and don't play any more for the next few hours/rest of the day/however long it takes you to clear your head. Get outside, do some exercise, make lunch, whatever.

I used to go apeshit with tilt and still do once in a blue moon. I had to tape a huge "STOP AND THINK" message right under my monitor, but that didn't work too well. Then I taped a 20 bill to remind me what my clicks would result in. Nothing can guarantee you'll actually stop and read that message/see that bill, so what I do now is just take my hand off the mouse and take deep breaths. Kind of resets your brain and lets you think clearly.

2) I think I already answered.

3) Just as much as I spend after a good session. I don't really set an amount of time I'll spend, but I usually just review my sessions until I figure out what I did wrong/could have done better, or until I realize I can't figure out what to do and post it on the forums.

4) It's just like anything; work hard and the results will come. Reading books, discussing in forums, putting in high volume of hands/games, tracking and reviewing your play and just eating up any resource on poker you can find. Cardschat has been the #1 catalyst in my improvement, but reading books and getting a subscription to a coaching site were both huge for me too.

I'm by no means a great player or really talented or a mentally strong person for that matter, but hard work and perseverance has brought me great results with poker.

Sounds like you're pretty motivated which is great. Never give in to the tilt and variance and I can almost guarantee you'll see success your poker venture.

oh, another thing you should look at if you're playing a lot of STTs is an ICM calculator. They're basically essential for a full-time STT player.

Click to expand...

Great advice Chuck, I'll definitely heed your advice. I've actually never even heard of the ICM calculator, definitely something I've missed out on. I'm reading up on it right now and I'm shocked that I didn't stumble upon this earlier.

I have a fairly disposable income and I'm still in college, so my financial needs aren't too pressing. This is one of the reasons why I'm comfortable risking a fair amount of money, which actually might be one of bigger downfalls. If I was more conservative about the situation, I would probably be nursing and protecting my bankroll much better than I have in the past.

Again, I appreciate your 2 cents on the matter and will definitely adopt some of your strategies in the future.