TILT IN POKER AND HOW TO OVERCOME IT

There are many concepts to master to become a successful poker player, but one holds the key to your ultimate success and it has nothing to do with cards. The ability to keep your emotions in check – to avoid tilt – will go a long way towards determining how successful you will be.

Tilt is the poker phenomenon of playing poorly due to emotional distress, usually anger, caused by a combination of any number of events: bad beats, bluffs gone awry, long stretches of being card dead, losing a series of coin flips, losing to a perceived lesser player, or just reacting badly to something said by another player. All of these events, including events not even related to poker, can cause a player to start losing emotional control.

Avoiding tilt is important because poker is a game of decisions and, like drugs or alcohol, anger impairs your ability to think rationally and logically. If your ability to think is impaired, then you will not be on your “A” game. Given how competitive poker has become, it is imperative you be at your best when you sit a table – virtual or real.

The spectrum of tilt

Tilt is best looked at as a spectrum of behaviors. On one end of the spectrum is peace and happiness. At the other extreme is uncontrollable rage. In between are the various levels of emotion, starting with sadness and working through disappointment, irritation, frustration, annoyance, anger, and finally rage.

All poker players should aim to be as close to the peace and happiness side of the spectrum as possible. Maintaining that mindset means you are thinking clearly and making the best possible decisions. As you get closer to the rage end of the spectrum, you begin losing the ability for rational thought, which means you are no longer playing your “A” game.

Poker is not a game that can be played by instinct. Poker is a game that is played by intellect and requires a high level of critical thinking.

Check your baggage at the gate

Most players tend to view tilt as a reaction to events that happen exclusively while playing poker, but that is not the case. We're all human, and most of us are lugging around emotional baggage accumulated during the day. We may have gotten a bad review from our supervisor, found out the drive-thru forgot to include the apple pie we had ordered for dessert, or had to deal with an issue from a child or spouse.

All of these things will impact your emotional level when you are ready to play. You might not even realize it, but you may have advanced up the tilt spectrum before you even buy in. This means your ability to think clearly and make rational decisions is compromised before you even see a card.

As a result, it is important to check your emotional state before you begin to play. If you are not in a good mood, take some time to try to find a happy place. Watch some amusing videos on YouTube, check your social media to see what your friends are up to, or take a brisk walk around your neighborhood to clear your mind. Exercise has been shown to release endorphins, a natural drug that elevates your mood, into your blood. The walk will not only burn calories, which will make you feel better about yourself, but it will also improve your play by helping you get into the proper mindset.

Getting in the proper emotional state before you start playing is critical to controlling tilt, which is always lurks in the background just waiting for an excuse to come flying out.

Tommy Angelo: On Tilt

People ask me how to end tilt and I say you can’t. Even a billions dollars wouldn’t do it. You’d still be upset if you were stuck in traffic and late.

Oh, are we talking about poker tilt? And not regular-life tilt? Aren't they caused by the same thing? I think they are. That’s why I like to think of regular life as where I go to practice tilting less at poker. Or the other way around. See what I mean?

Why do we get upset when we lose? Or play bad? Or get sucked out on? Where does frustration and disappointment and impatience come from? What is the cause of our many dissatisfactions?

From wishing things were, are, or will be different than they were, are, or will be. That’s the cause. So even though it’s impossible to do, I try to accept things as they are. A little more today than yesterday. It’s basically like training for suckouts and traffic jams.

To join Tommy’s mailing list and receive updates on his upcoming third book, Painless Poker, plus random musings and advice, click here immediately.

Recognize the cause and the symptoms

Tilt occurs gradually. You don’t generally go from one end of the spectrum to the other in seconds. Most poker players understand their cards are not always going to hold up and can stomach a bad beat or a missed draw. Tilt starts to seep in when a player experiences a series of these events in a short amount of time.

Each player has his or her own unique set of tilt triggers. The most common triggers are bad beats, which can induce anger, and long spells of card dead, which can induce frustration.

To recognize where you are on the tilt spectrum, start watching your reaction when one of the trigger events occurs. If you shrug your shoulders and move on to the next hand when your opponent hits a two-outer on the river, then you're in the right state of mind. If you feel compelled to type a snarky comment into the chat box or criticize the play of the person who sucked out on you, that should be a warning that you are starting to advance up the tilt spectrum.

Identifying the warning signs early is a key, says Jared Tendler, an internationally acclaimed “mental game” coach who has worked with hundreds of poker players and professional golfers. Tendler says it is easier to overcome tilt if you can catch it early because your brain is still capable of logical and rational thought and can activate your prepared strategies for combating tilt. If you don’t figure out you’re on tilt until you slam your mouse down or throw your chips angrily into the pot, it may be too late to get back under control.

When your emotions rise too high the brain is designed to shut off higher level thinking. You can’t think because the brain has shut off your ability to as part of what’s commonly known as the fight/flight mechanism. Nobody has control over this brain function. The only thing you can do is control your anger from getting to the point where your thinking goes away.

From Jared Tendler’s blog atjaredtendlerpoker.com/category/tilt/

Strategies for subduing tilt

Now that you have learned what tilt is and identified your personal tilt early warning signs, the next step is to devise a strategy to help you avoid going on tilt.

If you feel yourself starting to get upset during your play

1. The first thing to do is simply to push back from your keyboard or table, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths while visualizing something relaxing.
2. Another simple step is to develop a phrase that you repeat to calm yourself. Examples are: “Take it easy.” “The cards will come.” “You know what you’re doing.” “I made the correct play and it just didn’t work out.”
3. These phrases should be focused on you and should be positive in nature. Repeating one or two of those phrases can help redirect your mental energy and get you focused again so you can stay on top of your emotions and on top of your game.

If these simple steps aren’t enough, then it’s probably time to take a break.

Get up and leave the table or computer and spend a few minutes doing something – anything – to get your mind off the bad beat you just suffered or the idiot who called your perfectly executed bluff with bottom pair. If you’re playing online, this is the perfect opportunity to utilize your time bank. Get up from the computer and fix yourself a snack, take out the trash, brush your teeth, unload the dishwasher – anything to clear your mind.

When you return to the table, refreshed and ready to go, do NOT go back into your hand history to see what you missed. If you find out you missed a potential big hand your frustration will return, which will defeat the entire purpose of taking a break. In this case, ignorance really is bliss.

Tilt while you playing in casino

If you’re at a casino, tell the dealer you’re going to take a break, then walk to the nearest bathroom and splash some cold water on your face. Preload your favorite video on your phone before you come to the casino, in case there is WiFi problems – maybe it’s your son scoring his first soccer goal or your daughter’s ballet recital or an amusing hamster video – find a chair and sit down to watch the video.

Missing a few hands will not kill your chance to win a tournament or rack up in a cash game, but playing those same few hands while you are in the throes of tilt cause you to bust out of a tournament or lose your entire buy-in.

Check your hands

If bad beats are one of your tilt triggers, consider keeping a window with CardsChat’s Poker Odds Calculator open so that you can check to see how bad your beat really was. Knowing that your QQ will only hold up against a suited KJ roughly two times out of three, or that your pocket 6s are only going to hold up against any two over cards slightly more than half the time, might make it easier to stomach when a loss.

Listen to the music to stay calm and relaxed

Many players listen to music while they are playing in an effort to stay calm and relaxed. A recent study of patients who were about to undergo surgery found that patients who listened to music had less anxiety and lower levels of cortisol (a hormone produced by stress) than did patients who took anti-anxiety drugs. Jazz instrumentalists, like Dave Grusin or George Winston, can provide soothing background music to keep tilt at bay.

Quit for a while

If you have tried all of these strategies and nothing is working, then it may simply be time to call it a night BEFORE you have blown through a couple of buy-ins. Knowing when to quit is one of the most difficult decisions for poker players, whether you are on a hot streak or struggling, but it is never a bad idea to walk away if you recognize that you are in tilt mode.

For cash players, some of the worst mistakes made by players on tilt are to spend another buy-in in a cash game or move up to a higher level to try to win it all back quicker.

For tournament players, one of the worst decisions is to immediately re-enter a tournament immediately after you get knocked out by a bad beat, especially if it is near the end of the late registration window. If you’re ability to play is already compromised, the last thing you need to do is put yourself into a situation where you will be short-stacked right away and feeling a lot of pressure to get a quick double up.

Few players realize that mistakes made on tilt, whether strategic or mental, are not actually caused by tilt. Tilt simply reveals them. It’s like tilt strips your skill set down to its weakest point and shows you the areas of your game where you suck the most.

From Jared Tendler’s blog atjaredtendlerpoker.com/category/tilt/

Conclusion

Tilt is like temptation. The best way for some to resist temptation is to avoid it altogether, and the same applies to tilt. If you can learn to recognize what causes you to tilt, devise a strategy to keep tilt at bay and then – perhaps most importantly – execute that strategy as soon as you sense tilt happening, you will greatly increase your chance to have a successful poker session. For more tilt-busting strategies, see our article on 5 Ways to Beat Tilt.

HAND READING

If you start out playing small stakes games, as most poker players do, you’ll likely see a lot of erratic play that is not consistent with what you are learning about good poker strategy. This is because you are playing with a lot of inexperienced players, and also some for whom the money at stake is not significant enough to induce them to put effort into playing well.

Such erratic behavior often leads to the mistaken belief that these players could have anything, and that there is therefore no sense in trying to read their hands or make plays based on judgments about what they may hold. However, throwing up your hands in frustration will mean a quick dead-end to your poker career. Instead, you should take a deep breath and realize that information is everywhere — you just have to know what to look for and what to do with it when you find it.

In this two-part article I will address hand reading specifically and make some suggestions about how you can glean information even from the seemingly erratic and random behavior of your least sophisticated opponents.

A Couple of Misconceptions

I want to begin by addressing two common misconceptions. The first is one at which I’ve already hinted. The fact is, your opponents are not truly random with their play, and it’s not true that they could have “anything.”

Their reasons may not be your reasons and their reasons may not be good reasons, but unless they are literally throwing a die to determine their actions or going all in blind every hand then there is some method to their madness. There are some hands they’ll fold, and there are some hands they’ll never fold. Your goal is to find that method, or at least deduce enough about it to figure how to exploit it. More on that in a moment.

The second misconception has to do with the term “hand reading,” which is really a misnomer. You may have seen Daniel Negreanu on television naming the exact suits of the cards in his opponent’s hand, but that’s not your real goal.What you should be aiming for might better be called “range reading.” Your goal is not to figure out which exact two cards your opponent holds — this is usually impossible even for the best hand readers — but rather to get a sense of the entire set of hands he would play in the way that he’s played so far. In other words, it’s not about “What exactly does he have?” Rather, it’s about “What are all the things he could have?” and — more to the point — “What should I do to get the best average result against all of those possibilities?”

Once you learn to frame questions regarding what your opponents might have like this, a little bit of information can go a long way. Let’s look at an example.

Hand Reading in Practice

Suppose that you raise with  in early position, and several very loose players call you. We’ll stop right there — what can you say about their ranges?

This is a situation that often leads to frustration and complaints about bad play. When your opponents play half of the cards they’re dealt, how can you ever figure out what they have? You can’t, at least not with any precision. But you can probably say a couple of important things about what they don’t have.

For example, most players will reraise with  or better, so the fact that no one reraised means you probably aren’t up against those hands. That eliminates some significant threats for you after the flop. Perhaps you can also say that although these players will play any remotely suited or connected hand, they won’t call with unsuited garbage like . After all, players who will call with half their hands still fold the other half, and what could that folding range look like if not unsuited, unconnected junk hands?

With nothing more than those tidbits of information, you see the flop, and it’s a great-looking , giving you top pair, top kicker. But still, with four or five loose players seeing the flop along with you, isn’t there a danger that someone has outflopped you? Yes, but the situation isn’t as grave as it seems.

Let’s return to the little bit of hand reading we were able to do preflop. Remember: we still have no idea what your opponents have, we just have a rough idea of what they don’t have. You don’t have to worry about overpairs, because we think  or  would have reraised. Likewise with , not to mention that there are only two queens left in the deck.

BANKROLL MANAGEMENT

Discounting a lack of skill, the number one reason a poker player goes broke is due to poor poker bankroll management. Ask any professional poker player for one tip about how to get started in poker and almost all will advise you to practice bankroll management. That is fine, but what exactly is“bankroll management”?

Practicing sound poker bankroll management involves recognizing that the amount of money you have in your poker bankroll should always be dictating the stakes for which you play. That’s easy enough to understand in theory, but for some being able to put that idea into practice can be easier said than done.

Over the next three articles, I’ll be sharing tips regarding how to think about and manage your poker bankroll, including offering some specific strategies to help you with decisions about game selection, moving up in stakes, and cashing out.

Your POKER Bankroll is For POKER Only

Let’s get one thing straight immediately: only use money that you can afford to lose to make up your bankroll. That is the golden rule. This means that the money in your bankroll is only needed to fund your poker playing. If you think you have a $2,000 bankroll but will need to use $1,500 from it this month or next to pay an important bill, then you do not have a $2,000 bankroll — you have a $500 one!

Your Bankroll Allows You to Play Your A-Game

Another consideration to make is whether or not this particular poker bankroll with which you are currently playing is the only one you will ever have. By that I mean if you were to lose it, would you have to take a break from playing or could you reload your account with another bankroll?

If you have a well-paid full-time job, losing $500 may not be a big deal to you. But if losing that $500 means you will not be able to play poker for a long time while you replenish your funds, then you may want to be a more cautious with it.

One purpose of our bankroll is to act as a cushion for when we lose, which will happen sometimes, even to the best players. If you sit down online at a $0.10/$0.25 cash game table with just $25 as a bankroll, then all you need to do is lose that one buy-in and you are out of the game. Have several $25 buy-ins behind you, however, and you can stay in the game and try to win back your money.

Your Bankroll Dictates Your Game Selection

How much of a poker bankroll you should have depends on a number of factors. These include the format of the game you play, your playing style, and your tolerance for swings (good and bad). For example, a short-handed (6-max.) no-limit hold’em cash game player can play from a smaller bankroll than can a pot-limit Omaha cash game player because PLO tends to have wider swings (or “variance”). Similarly, PLO cash game players can play from a lesser bankroll than can multi-table tournament players.

The table below shows the number of buy-ins I would recommend for the most common game types currently played online. (Note: bankroll recommendations for online games differ from those for live games.)

In the case of tournaments, the numbers listed below refer to the number of tourney buy-ins. Thus if you like to play $5 multi-table tournaments, a number of 100 (as a minimum) refers to having $500 in your bankroll with which to play. Meanwhile for cash games, the numbers refer to the number of buy-ins into the game wherein a buy-in represents the maximum amount allowed in the game. In other words, if the $0.10/$0.25 NLHE game you like to play allows a maximum buy-in of $25, a figure of 100 refers to having $2,500 in your bankroll with which to play.

TELLS IN POKER

Players who are relatively new to no-limit hold'em sometimes overvalue the importance of "tells" in poker.

By tells we're referring to those actions, either physical or verbal, players make at the table that might give away information about the strength of their hands. In any live poker game, especially at the lower limits, it isn't uncommon to see players revealing information via such tells without being aware they are doing so. Players also will deliberately act in certain ways or say certain things to try to deceive their opponents, and thus might give away information to others who are able to see through such performances.

However, new players are probably better off not worrying too much about deciphering other players' tells, but instead focusing on other aspects of poker strategy while trying to minimize their own tells.

In fact, when we offer the following list of "five common poker tells to look for," instead of looking for them in others, you might first look at yourself and decide whether or not others might be witnessing you give off these tells. Then, after you've become more comfortable knowing that you aren't giving anything away, you might begin taking notice of what others are doing.

1. Making eye contact, or looking away

Generally speaking, players who look squarely into your eyes during a hand are conveying strength. Having a big hand often makes players more relaxed, and when they are more relaxed they are more likely to make eye contact than not. Players who are weak or bluffing are usually less comfortable about the situation, and won't be so ready to look directly at you.

The flip side of this are players looking away from you or obviously avoiding eye contact, which often will represent relative weakness. Especially if they have just bet as a bluff, players will deliberately avoid engaging their opponent by looking at them.

As with all tells, though, in order from them to be reliable, they have to exist as part of a larger pattern of behaviors that have proven to be reliable as indicators of hand strength. The action also has to be distinct in some way, and not part of the player's usual routine. Some players — like Mike McDonald, pictured above on the left with the tell-hiding Orpen Kisacikoglu — will always stare right at you, or will always look down at their chips or community cards as hands play out. For those players, you probably won't be able to use eye contact or the lack thereof as any sort of tell.

2. Taking extra time to act, or acting quickly Sometimes players who are otherwise very good at hiding tells will give away a lot of information simply by varying the amount of time they take to act according to their hand strength. These "timing tells" tend to work a little bit differently given the situation and the action the player ultimately makes.

Players who take extra time before checking often really are thinking through a decision between betting or checking, an indication they "have something" — perhaps a medium-strength hand or even a strong hand, or a draw and they are considering semi-bluffing. Meanwhile those who check quickly often really are weak.

Calling bets quickly often also indicates relative weakness, although not complete air. Such players making quick calls after the flop frequently have drawing hands or middle- or bottom-pair type hands with which they don't want to bloat the pot. On the other hand, taking some time before making a call is less clear-cut as a tell — sometimes these players will also have medium-strength hands or be on a draw, something you already probably suspect simply because they are calling and not raising.

Finally, players who bet quickly are usually thought to be on the weak side, the rapid action intended to seem intimidiating and encourage a fold. Players who take their time before betting are generally stronger, in part because they have to think about how much they want to bet to elicit a call and extract value.

3. Handling chips and/or cards

"When playing hands, watch their hands" is an easy-to-remember phrase reminding you to look at how opponents are handling either their chips or their cards while they play.

Once in a while you'll see an inexperienced player's hands actually trembling when looking at cards or handling chips. For most that's a true sign of nervousness — and frankly it's almost impossible to fake "shaky hands." More often than not the new player who gets deep into a big pot and has shaky hands is going to be very strong, although this isn't necessarily a foolproof tell. (Some people are just nervous all the time, and the hand shakes are a constant.)

How a player handles chips can also occasionally give away hand strength. Some with strong hands will grab chips well before the action reaches them, indicating a desire to bet, while players with weak hands will leave their stacks untouched. Occasionally you'll encounter players doing the opposite of this — grabbing chips in postflop situations in order to give the impression they want to bet, but only doing so in order to discourage you from betting because their hands are in fact weak.

Before the flop, many players will signal their intention to fold well before the action reaches them by holding their cards rather than leaving them face down on the felt. Sometimes they'll be obvious about it, readying to muck as soon as it's their turn. If they use a card protector, they might neglect to place it on their cards when they intend to fold. This tell can even happen in multi-way pots postflop as well. The key, as always, is to look for a pattern in the behavior so as to make it a more reliable indicator of what the player is going to do.

4. Level of attentiveness

In this era of smartphones and tablets, many players bring distractions with them right to the table. Especially before the flop, when everyone is still technically in the hand, you might take a look around to gauge the level of interest players are exhibiting and whether or not they are finding scrolling through Twitter or checking Facebook more interesting than the cards they have been dealt. Like the players holding their cards aloft in a folding position, these players may well be less likely to get involved.

Even after the flop, some players will betray their lack of interest in the proceedings in other ways, seemingly more intent on flagging down a waiter or following the game on a nearby television screen than paying close attention to the action in the hand.

While recognizing a player's level of attentiveness may not necessarily be a good indicator of that player's specific hand strength in that particular hand, it can often tell you something more generally useful about the player's skill level. If someone isn't paying attention at the table, that player is missing out on all of that information that you, the attentive player, are constantly gathering. Such players operate at a disadvantage, often without even realizing it, and might be worth targeting.

5. Table talk

Talking at the table covers a huge category of potential tells. Indeed, PokerNews strategy contributor Zachary Elwood has written an entire book on the subject of Verbal Poker Tells. We'll limit ourselves to three short points about verbal tells here.

One is the general observation that a player who is talking during a hand is often conveying how relaxed he or she is, which is usually interpreted as the player having a strong hand. This is especially notable if the player isn't normally talkative. Again, such a strategy can be used as a "false tell" with a player who is weak chatting away as though to give the impression of strength.

Secondly and more specifically, players will often make what Elwood describes as "disclaimers" or statements that are usually in direct opposition to their actual hand strength. An example would be a player exhaling and saying "Well, I guess I have to play this hand" or something similar before calling or betting — kind of the verbal equivalent of a shrug. Often this is an attempt at appearing weak when the player is actually strong.

Finally, be aware that when players talk somewhat specifically about their hands, they are very often more likely to be telling the truth than to be outright lying. This isn't always the case, and some players are very skilled at being verbally deceptive. But you'll often find most players are more comfortable saying what is true than what is not — so when they start talking about their hands, listen up!

Final Thoughts

These five types of tells all come from live poker, although you should know that tells can sometimes be worth seeking out when playing online poker, too. For some examples, see Nathan Williams' article from earlier this week titled "7 Ways to Get Better Reads When Playing Online Poker."

As we noted at the beginning, some players give off tells unwittingly, but there are also players who will deliberately "act" at the table in an effort to deceive opponents with "false tells." That means with all of the tells discussed above, you might encounter players exhibiting the tell in an effort to indicate the opposite of what it normally might signify. For instance, a player might hold his cards in a way that makes it look like he's about to fold, encouraging you to bet, but then stay in the hand and put in a raise.

Also, take heed of that point about looking for patterns first before jumping to conclusions about an apparent tell. Have you seen the player making eye contact on multiple occasions, then showing strong hands each time? That might make the eye contact tell more reliable the next time you see it. But if there's no pattern against which to compare the action, be careful not to overvalue the tell.

Finally, especially for new players, it's probably much better to pay attention to betting patterns than behavioral ones — those tend to be much more dependable indicators of players' relative hand strength.

MATHEMATICS IN POKER

Using mathematics for drawing hands

Mathematics can be used in many different situations; however, they are most commonly used when a player is on a draw such as a flush or straight draw.

If an opponent makes a bet and you are on a draw, you are faced with the decision of whether or not you should call to try and complete the draw by the next card, or fold and let your opponent take the pot.

In this situation a player that has good knowledge of poker mathematics will always know whether or not to call, whilst a player that has no knowledge of mathematics will be unsure.

Players who are unfamiliar with poker odds will make an educated guess on whether or not they should call. If the bet is large, they may feel that it is too expensive to try and catch the right card, but if the bet is small they will be more inclined to call.

On the other hand, a player that can use poker mathematics correctly will be able to work out the pot odds they are getting on the hand and act accordingly. Pot odds take into account the amount your opponent has bet in relation to the pot, and the likelihood of completing your draw to inform you about whether or not you should call or fold.

Expected value.

There are other situations that incorporate mathematics a little more loosely, but still incorporate them nonetheless. The following situation is an example of ‘Expected Value’.

Say for example you are on the river holding bottom pair and your opponent bets $4 into a $10 pot, what should you do? If you have no concrete evidence from the way the hand played out about whether or not your opponent has a better hand than you, you can use mathematics to determine whether or not you should call.

Example of using mathematics in poker.

First of all you should estimate that probability that your opponent is bluffing and holds a worse hand than you. Lets say that:

• Our opponent is a little tricky and bluffs 1 time for every 3 times he has the best hand on the river.
• This means that there is a 1 in 4 chance that we will have a better hand than our opponent.
• Therefore there is 3 in 4 chance that we do not have the best hand.
• So for every 3 times we lose, 1 time we will win (3-to-1).

Thus if we call and have the best hand we will win $14 once, but if we call and have the worst hand we will lose $4 three times. As a result if we called every time, we would lose $12 (3 x $4) and win $14 after 4 hands. This means that we would be making a net profit of $2 if we called on the river every time, therefore we should make the call.

The above paragraph probably didn't make a lot of sense the first time you read it, but trust us; it isn't as hard as we made it sound. A simpler way to interpret what we just said is that you should have better odds of winning than the pot is giving you. In the above example we had to call $4 to win a $14 pot, which is $3.5-to-$1. Our odds of winning are 3-to-1, which means we have better odds of winning than the odds in the pot.