Bad Beats and Tilting

[cardartist85]

Ok so its been a while since I have posted a thread, but yesterday I was prepared to make a deep run in one of the Stadium Series Events where it was a $200,000 prize pool. Within the first few hours I had built my stack from 25,000 chips to 150,000. Eventually I took a couple bad beats in a row and found myself back down below 100k I was still fairly patient but my stack was beginning to dwindle as the blinds were starting to eat me up and I could feel myself getting put on tilt. Sure enough within the next hour I found myself out of the tournament and kicking myself for not keeping a level head throughout. My question is when you feel your blood pressure begin to rise after taking some bad beats in a really big tournament do you have any tips or secrets that help you to completely reset so that you can still play at your very best the rest of the way regardless of what happened prior? If so what are your secrets or techniques to get yourself back into the right mental space?

 

[fundiver199]

Deep breathing and other meditation techniques tend to help. Even in a tournament it can also be reasonable to sit out a few hands, unless your stack is very short, and for instance go and make yourself a cup of coffee. It does however sound to me, like part of the problem is, that you rely to much on doing well in a particular big tournament like this. Its a lot easier to cope with the huge variance in MTTs, if you adopt more of a grinders approach and play session of for instance 10 MTTs. Then busting in one does not matter so much, because you still have a chance to cash in one of the others. This is typically, what I do, playing up to 4 and occationally 5 MTTs at a time.

 

[cardartist85]

Deep breathing and other meditation techniques tend to help. Even in a tournament it can also be reasonable to sit out a few hands, unless your stack is very short, and for instance go and make yourself a cup of coffee. It does however sound to me, like part of the problem is, that you rely to much on doing well in a particular big tournament like this. Its a lot easier to cope with the huge variance in MTTs, if you adopt more of a grinders approach and play session of for instance 10 MTTs. Then busting in one does not matter so much, because you still have a chance to cash in one of the others. This is typically, what I do, playing up to 4 and occationally 5 MTTs at a time.

That's very sound advice and yeah I typically only play 2 tournaments at the same time so that I can give them both my full undivided attention. I tend have a better ROI when I do that which is why I stopped playing any more than 2 or 3 at a time. I know what you mean though, when you feel too much is riding on a single tournament. I think that cup of coffee and sitting out a few hands might be the way to go for me though because otherwise it kind of just lingers and begins to snowball. Even if I miss a premium or 2 there is absolutely no guarantee those will hold up and it would be better to reset my mind and come back to it emotionally removed from hands that rattle me. I might look at increasing the amount of tourneys I play at one time again but incrementally. Thank you for the suggestions.

 

[Airles17]

Friend I play listening to music .. you should try, because it helps a lot.

 

[nwhitney118]

I like to pump out a few pushups or dips to blast out the pent up energy Other than that just make sure you're in the calmest mental state before the tourney begins as once you've started it's impossible to avoid tilt if your mental isn't sound to begin with. Maybe spend the 10 mins ahead of starting meditating or doing visualisation, imagining getting the worst beat possible but just taking it on the chin and moving forward.

 

[cardartist85]

Yeah I think the idea of meditating, deep breathing, or pushups would be crazy beneficial to me the times I am steaming after taking a bad beat. Even just walking away a few moments so I can reset and play better again would be helpful but I think I get paranoid that's when i will start catching hands and have a chance to go on my run lol. I also need to learn how to deal with variance better and be able to stay positive during downswings instead of letting them sink me further.

 

[Dhendrixon]

I mostly play cash games, but when I am on the wrong side of a bad beat I usually get up and walk around. Usually will miss a few hands, but lets me regroup and refocus. Also, I try to get up at least every thirty minutes to walk around so my play doesn't seem like it's on auto pilot.

 

[ROYALROAD]

You'd have the experience which gave a bad beat to an enemy, too.

Please remember that case and stand up.