Mersenneary's ebook and some videos taught me quite a bit about tilt. My worst enemy in husngs.
Having more information about it, knowing where it comes from, and knowing what kind of variance to expect in some games helps me a lot. But from time to time it still happens that I lose focus on EV, even take shots at higher stakes to make up for a loss (knowing that it is suicidal in husngs). I know that you shouldn't be result oriented in the short term but at the end of the month you do have bills to pay. I can't help looking at my roll and have the desire to see it go up every day. I am traveling in Asia, planning to pay off bills with husng profits. It's the first time I am doing this and sometimes I fear that by the end of the month the profits may not be sufficient to maintain this lifestyle. Ending up back in Europe would be a nightmare for now, so therefor I force myself not to give in to tilt when I start getting irritated.
my tilting tendencies are: trying to bluff calling stations, barreling on boards where it's obvious I will get called down, never folding to 3bets pre. Calling down knowing that I am almost always beat
I noticed that when the tilt creeps in, I take far less time for a decision. Like 0.5 seconds, I become some button clicker.
So here is a list of things I have invented to do, trying to avoid that tilt affects my play. Feel free to add advice to this
- Force myself to take at least 3 seconds for any decision, whether it's an easy one or not
- Tell myself at least 2 reasons for the decision I make on any street
- Have a stop loss when I lose 3 games in a row (quitting when I'm down is hard for me)
- stay away from hypers (!!)
- organise social activities as a distraction. There's other and more important stuff in life than poker
- Try to stay in shape
- Not playing when I am tired. I'd rather watch a video
Ironically 20 minutes after this post I have lost the battle
ran up in stakes AGAIN, 3 times, 3 stake levels and lost all with the best hand in hypers on pre flop all in
4 days of grinding profit (20 buy ins) gone, and another 7 on top
I can not predict how it will evolve
I have over 10% ROI at low stakes, blow up sooner or later and then all the work, investments, training was for nothing
This is the problem with poker, esp. HU poker, and esp. esp. Hyper turbos.
The main determinate of outcome, imo, is concentrated self discipline. Actual skill is a prerequisite as most of our opponents have this. Because we can play so many hands we know the maths and the odds. Infact we know it so well that to quote someone (I can't remember who) we have internalised the maths so that we can play mathematically perfect poker with feel rather than having to do sums as we go.
This is good because we can play more for less brain power but it is also bad because we can actually play good poker without concentrating that hard and we know it. This means we can justify/convince ourselves to play when we are tired or to continue playing when we are running bad.
But to play actual winning poker we need more than the maths. We need to be alert to when to bluff and when not to. We need to be following his interpetation of our gameplay while following his gameplay. Both of which require significant concentration.
To overcome variance we are taught to play more. But the more we play the less well we can concentrate.
Sooner or later we slip into the 'just get it in when you are ahead' mode which requires the least thought possible. But often when we have the best hand preflop the edge by the river is small and it was mathematically wrong to get it all in with the best hand in the first place.
So we are running ev -ve, so we play more, we get tired, so we just get it in with the best hand, we lose more, we tilt, we start getting it in with worst hand because it can't be that much worse and we are due some good luck now. And we destroy our bankroll while knowing we are a good player.
Winning is not easy.
If you don't have the discipline to stick to the BRM you set, let the software do it for you, block yourself from higher tournament buyins
Playing Hypers you need a lot of discipline. I crashed my bankroll twice. To avoid my biggesst leak, playing to hight , to get the money back, I restriced my buyins. Pokerstar offers in his software under Request- Responsible gaming-Restricted Tour. Buyins. Great to have. If you play Hypers als a beginner, big swings even crashing your bankroll is a part of the learning process. Its important to recognice where are you leaks.