Tilting Issues

Hi guys,

I will do a introduction right after the post but I came in first place for one question and see there are a lot of more topics to stay here So let's get started with my question

As the title says I obviously have a tilting issue and didn't know who to ask for the best advice. Although I saw a lot of videos I am constantly coming back realizing that I did not solve the issue.

From 2013 to 2018 I wasn't playing much online (mostly tournaments) and had just the typical beginner downswing to 1,5k. When a friend became really good and started to grind as a stacked player he achieved big results (we are talking about 75k+ profits). I learned a lot from him and started to finally crush tournaments like PKO 22, Big 22 (for 5,5k), BB33 (4,5k) and much more. I also went to a tournament in England organized by 888. All that happened in the time frame 2018 to Februar 2019. After that I went on a huge downswing right now I came from + to -8k overall and I actually feel really desperated because I realize how much money I throw away because after getting suckouts or just when fatique hits me I start to play like the biggest idiot gambler. On big tournament series I know that I throw away like 500-1k $ in just 3 days My bankroll management sucked but the biggest mistake is I always come back to the point where I just make stupid plays although I know I have the quality to do much much much better.

I start every grind motivated but then I have often the moments where I just have some blackout and lose like 4 tables in 5 minutes. Its easy said to just stop doing this things but what is in your opinion the right way to get my mind clear?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not searching for life suggestions (I know there are also areas of improvement). What I really want to know is do you have any kind of lifehacks for this poker issue to stop immediatelly doing this s... in these moments without swearing around? Any advices?

It was such a great time in the upswing. At least i realized that I have gone to stupid and couldn't take the downswing as I should.
I am also considering to be staked soon as I think that I won't be that emotional than and will work much harder than ever before. One thing is obvously. After WCOOP I will definitelly have to manage bankroll as a grown man and stop beeing a p....

That's it. Sorry for the long text as a first post. I hope there are also a lot of other player who went through this or just need also some advices. Thanks in advace guys and gl on the tables!

I tilt with the best of them too! It happens

at least you know what the problem is. That is half the problem but you got me as far as how to fix it. If you know what your mistakes are and continue to do them without making any changes then expect the same results. The only way to get different results is to change what you are doing. Try taking a break or getting something to eat when you get fatigued or anything just to clear your mind for a few minutes at least.

-Always sleep well and be sure that you are fresh and clear-minded every day before each session
-drink 1,5-2 lt of water daily
-completely avoid processed sugar
-have a stop-loss limit

I think, tilt management and bankroll management are closely related. If you lost money in poker, you are obviously regularly making new deposits, and for me the first step is to simply stop that. If you are a winning player or at least able to be a winning player, you should only be withdrawing money and never depositing.

So even if you have the financial means to redeposit from for instance paychecks, just stop doing it. Make one last deposit of for instance 1.000$ and let that be the bankroll, you give yourself to work with. A simple rule for tournaments is to spend no more than 1% of your bankroll on a single buyin. So with the 1.000$ you can play a 8.8$ MTT on 888 Poker but not a 12$ MTT. That will need to wait, until it has grown to 1.200$.

As just as importantly move down, if you lose. If the original 1.000$ has shrunk to 850$, now you no longer play the 8.8$ MTT, you only play 5.5$ MTTs or lower. In this way losing due to tilt will force you to move down, which might actually deter you more than the idea of having to redeposit yet again.

The advantage of using a simple bankroll management plan like this is, that it force you to prove, you can beat the games at a certain level, before moving up to the next. And it force you to move back down again, if it turns out, that actually you were just on a heater. So over time the level, you play at, will automatically be adjusted to your actual skill level, and not to where your ego think, you belong.

Just look at a guy like Gus Hansen. Surely a good poker player, but he lost a record setting 20+ million dollars in online poker, because he stubbornly continued to play in nosebleed games, he was unable to beat.

Thanks guys for the advices although I think that I already know all these things. Maybe I just needed to hear it once again.

I decided to take a break as I also realized that I am getting fast bored while playing. So the next steps are the following:
- get your things right
- live healthier including more sleep
- focus a few weeks on other things without thinking of poker (poker wont run away and the game wont change drastically)
- save money make a solid deposit
- try it once again with proper bankroll mgmt
- always set a list of tournaments you want to play for the day and don't change your plan after losing

I think everyone should have set their rules. If not doing so it can prevent you from reaching your potentials.

Well.. start managing your bankroll NOW not after wcoop and your problems will solve in time if your bankroll is high enough for the mtts you are playing.

usually a tilt after some really bad beat. like i had the nuts on the flop and runner runner kills me!!! after that usually i gamble more, start playing with hands that i normally would fold. and i guess tilting means not making the right decisions under the circumstance. i do that a lot, even when playing for real money, in house games and cash games. but i think that if your are felling good, no stress on your mind, no problems going on in your life outside poker i play a lot better.

but i would never be able to understand your situation because i would never gamble that much money in any game. i do it more for like a hobby, to enjoy the card game.

good luck

leogetz79 said:

usually a tilt after some really bad beat. like i had the nuts on the flop and runner runner kills me!!! after that usually i gamble more, start playing with hands that i normally would fold. and i guess tilting means not making the right decisions under the circumstance. i do that a lot, even when playing for real money, in house games and cash games. but i think that if your are felling good, no stress on your mind, no problems going on in your life outside poker i play a lot better.

but i would never be able to understand your situation because i would never gamble that much money in any game. i do it more for like a hobby, to enjoy the card game.

good luck

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yes thats what happened a lot of times but i guess its another dimension to deposit another 200 and losing them in the next 2 hours because of tilt when the first tournament gets me again tilting...

i think this was the result of having to big and unrealistic goals or expectations after winning in short time few tournaments out of thousands of players...

i learned from real professionals who did it and i know a few personal but yea as you also said it has something to do with the private life as i wanted more to fix familiar problems, life problems the place where i'm living and much more like my business career which is solid but i still hate my job..

now its time to get a break and come back with realistic goals and take it step by step as i know the potentials and how to work on it

i will try to deal with all that like a professional and see what can happens next year...if its not going on the right way i guess im just quitting because it takes too much time and on the other way if i make huge winnings and feel like this life is also nothing for me than i wont let the money decide over my life...right now i think im just getting nowhere continuing like this

its time to make some changes..thats what 2pac would probably say lol

Gr1ndah said:

i think this was the result of having to big and unrealistic goals or expectations after winning in short time few tournaments out of thousands of players...

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I think, this is a problem for many tournament players, who start with a sunshine run. When you get that big win, your bankroll shoot to the moon in no time, and you feel, you are a poker god and want to move up to make even more money. But the truth is, you just got lucky. And when that luck runs out, you lose it all, and then some. For that reason its not a bad idea to withdraw some of the money after a big win to force yourself to remain, where you are, or at least only move up slightly.

fundiver199 said:

I think, this is a problem for many tournament players, who start with a sunshine run. When you get that big win, your bankroll shoot to the moon in no time, and you feel, you are a poker god and want to move up to make even more money. But the truth is, you just got lucky. And when that luck runs out, you lose it all, and then some. For that reason its not a bad idea to withdraw some of the money after a big win to force yourself to remain, where you are, or at least only move up slightly.

Click to expand...

I wouldnt say I just got lucky. I was never winning before I took professional coaching and than i started to crush not just one tournament at least 5-10. The thing was I played like 70k in a not so long period and had awful bankroll management with a lot of tilting which caused a downswing but explaining it was just luck winning all those tournaments is for me not reasonable. The loses were mostly from higher tournaments (all the 215$ tourneys). Im still in big profits playing the <55$ tourneys

I'm guilty of saying that I've posted many times on here but never taken the time to respond to anyone else, so this is a great first post

I highly recommend the book 'The Mental Game of Poker' by Jared Tendler. It will absolutely revolutionise the way you think. I know from the outside in it seems like it would be really cliche, typical advice, but it's not. In fact, the first thing the book addresses is that it's not about giving you advice to overcome tilt, but makes you look deep into the issues of why you tilt in the first place. Personally, I found that I had a tilt issue when getting repeatedly 3-bet due to a bullying issue I had when I was younger. I hadn't even considered it until I read the book. It also gives you great steps for normalising the issues that happen at the table and looking at them in an objective way.

Second bit of advice - I read a chapter in Jonathan Little's 'Excelling at No Limit Hold'em' by Elliot Roe, who is a hypnotherapist that specializes in poker and works with Fedor Holz among others. He has a couple of free mp3's floating around which are great to use before a session or mid-session. One is a 15 minute warm up and another it a 'tilt buster' which you can listen to when you feel like you are heading the wrong way. If you drop me a PM I'd be more than happy to send them over to you.

Luvart said:

-Always sleep well and be sure that you are fresh and clear-minded every day before each session
-drink 1,5-2 lt of water daily
-completely avoid processed sugar
-have a stop-loss limit

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This is very good advice. Also try meditating, going for a walk, hang out with your pets/family/friends, and get yourself back in a positive mindset. Once you're there, then you can play poker with a clear mind.

It sounds like you're quite an emotive personality. Poker is about maths. If you made the right play, you should be pleased whatever the outcome. If you struggle to control your emotions after a bad beat, you need to take yourself away from the table. 5 minutes, half an hour, a day, a week. Whatever you need to get your head straight so you can start playing good solid poker again.

You're obviously a very good player, but your tilt control and bankroll management is causing you to be a losing player.

Gr1ndah said:

I wouldnt say I just got lucky. I was never winning before I took professional coaching and than i started to crush not just one tournament at least 5-10. The thing was I played like 70k in a not so long period and had awful bankroll management with a lot of tilting which caused a downswing but explaining it was just luck winning all those tournaments is for me not reasonable. The loses were mostly from higher tournaments (all the 215$ tourneys). Im still in big profits playing the <55$ tourneys

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Of course its not ONLY luck to win a tournament or multible tournaments, and likely the coaching did make you a better player. But its very easy to overestimate the influence of skill on short or even medium term tournament results and underestimate the influence of variance.

If you play 2.000 player tournaments, where 15% of places pay, even a crusher with a 30% ROI has 25% risk of loss after playing 1.000 of these. And on the other side of the coin even a player with a negative ROI will have a significant chance of winning even over as many as 1.000 tournaments.

So for sure there are many players out there, who THINK, they are long term winners, but actually they are not. They just got lucky. Not saying this apply to you, but I think, a lot of players dont truly understand, how much variance there is in especially large field tournaments.

https://www.primedope.com/tournament-variance-calculator/

yea thats true...no matter if i win or lose i feel like playing really good for the first hours but i dont have the concentration to stop tilting so i guess on the long term im playing like 70% of the tourneys with real skills and the rest of the time im throwing money away and this is leading to a bigger swing...im still taking a break..it was too much a time

im aware of the variance but sometimes i just cant handle it and start losing track of bankroll mgmt and all the other important things

1. BR management - however is best for your personal situation.

2. Are you being distracted by anything? Possibly - getting out of your head and not focusing on the play? Possible gazing at the pretty women in the area? Possibly getting distracted by certain songs or some peoples personalities?
Just a thought I didn't see mentioned above.

To relate - As a professional artist/animator I am often intrigued by people, their personalities, anatomy, mannerisms, and quirks. Translating this interest onto the poker table - I don't think this is a distraction - actually - probably a net +EV positive - because I pick up on certain things. But at times - I can say certain 'stereotypical' people can grate on me. So that is probably distracting - and takes my focus off of the game, even if its just slightly.