Coping With the Poker Tilt
It is difficult to cope with a tilt spell once it has started because it is the nature of a tilt to disable control. Like aggression in everyday life - it is genetically coded into us and is often beyond our control. But nobody runs amuck without reason - catalysts always precede a fit of aggression: an insult, bad news, a bruise, and other like unbearable "fardles," as Prince of Denmark would say, playing with his bare bodkin. The main catalyst which triggers direct aggression is the organism's discomfort, like hunger or pain.
Everyday life does not necessarily require you to know your aggression triggers by heart and be able to curb your fits of mild rage against poorly placed items of private furniture. Poker does. To be a self-possessed cucumber-cool poker pro, you must be closely familiar with the circumstances of your personal reactions. You must literally be able to list your triggers, from the minor to the major.
If you can do this as a matter of course, you can catch yourself and say to yourself, even out loud: "Okay already, this is the type of serious good luck on the part of my moronic opponent, which pushes my tilt button - beware. Should that idiot do it again, I will not tilt, I will understand and calm down. I will not lose my cool and I will play the best poker I know how."
Every player needs to be able to admit that poker is not a game where you will always have full control, so you must learn to maintain control as best you can. Good poker players do not expect to win every single hand, this blind belief leads to feelings of inferiority, general disillusionment, and depression no matter what the endeavor. What the good player does expect is to enjoy the challenge of the game and be challenged himself to constantly learn how to more keenly observe his opponent's behavior and level of skill and how to further sharpen his own technical skills.
If you concentrate on the type of behavior as explained above, you will direct your energies toward the positive and keep in control to the extent that you can count to ten when that ultimate button is pushed instead of flying off into the irrational.
A few common triggers are:
An overall feeling of discomfort. Perhaps you haven't eaten in hours and you slept lousy last night. We are not talking torture here and both of these conditions can be dealt with by confronting what the problems are and focusing on the present. Hunger and lack of sleep can be solved in the near future. Your poker hand is now.
Bad mistakes: poker is a highly competitive sport, which perhaps makes it hard for players to forgive themselves; artists, most of the time, it seems, are somehow less hard on themselves, perhaps because to any practicing artist rough drafts and revisions are an obvious and necessary part of the otherwise more or less satisfactory creative process; any good artist will proudly admit that before they managed that amazing line they had to erase and rewrite pages'-wroth of limp, turgid verbiage or that before they had finally written that one true masterpiece of their career they had to write a series of "serious" well-meaning flops. You should not numb yourself to self-criticism, but you should be sufficiently immune to it to learn and improve from you own mistakes without plunging into despair.
There are plenty of others, any of which, if you only take the time to think about them, you can learn how to deal with on your own: stupid (as opposed to bad) mistakes, quickened pace (as sign of early phase of a tilt), loss to a maniac fish who then goes on to lose everything to another regular, bluffing against nuts, fatigue, boredom, inability to concentrate, a series of undesirable and otherwise unlikely events, too much or too little alcohol, etc.
About the Author:
The author of this article plays online poker and gets Rakeback at Action Poker where they offer the highest Action Poker Rakeback.
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