Poker Strategy: Reducing Tilt
Going 'on tilt' is a huge problem for even some of the best players in the world, so how can you minimise it in your game?
23 November 2007 by Philip Tuck
"The key to it is in reducing the effect it has on your game - not negating it."** Help support Poker Verdict by using one of our links when choosing to download a new site **
It’s a feeling 99.99% of poker players know - bad beat after bad beat, the inevitable rise up the stakes, the awful play, the massive losses. Going ‘on tilt’ is a huge problem for even some of the best players in the world. All players suffer from tilt in some way - it seems to be a basic human emotion when we gamble; the key to it is in reducing the effect it has on your game - not negating it. Here I want to look at a variety of strategies that have helped me, and others, in reducing the amount we lose when on tilt.
Be honest with yourself.
Try and think about what stakes you can successfully beat. Taking your whole account on $10/20 NL hold’em if you are a $1/2 player will nearly always end in tears. If you gamble with everything you have on a daily basis you will lose everything, even if you are playing perfectly. Poker is not a game where skill is rewarded every time.
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This also applies too much greater concepts in poker. Can you actually live with losing thousands on a given day? Many people cannot actually deal with this sort of activity - if your heart is set on being a poker pro this is something you will have to deal with. It will save you a lot of heart break later on if you think carefully about what you really want from poker now. Many of the best players, including Todd Brunson, Dewey Domko, and PokerVerdict’s David Gross, play high stakes poker while also owning or running successful businesses. Having a variety of sources of income will really help you when it comes to dealing with the big downswings. Poker does not have to be everything in your life. Having secondary sources of income really helps reduce tilt.
Set yourself limits.
This basic advice has probably made me more money than any other. As Mike Caro rightly points out, “money you don’t lose buys just as many things as money you win”. Minimising your losses is just as important as maximising your gains. ‘Stop limits’ can really help to achieve this. The idea of the ‘stop limit’ is to have a pre set figure that you leave the tables after you hit. The idea is to take some of the emotion out of tilt and make it a mathematical decision - one you have no emotional control over.
Limits should be geared to your playing style and personality, if you like to gamble hard, extend them a little, if you player a tighter style and care about the money, reduce them. I typically work on a loss limit of three buy ins in NL hold’em or pot limit Omaha, and thirty big bets in limit games. If I reach any of these I leave the tables and have some kind of break - be it a few hours or a few days.
Don’t play intoxicated.
Although I am clearly not here to tell you how to live your life, it is obvious that playing when under the influence of drugs and alcohol greatly increases the chance of you tilting hard - the impulsive and compulsive nature of these substances make for a bad combination at the tables.
This is not to say you should not go and have a drunken game with your friends every now and then; more that you should probably not be playing in your usual stakes games if you are drunk or stoned. This is an area that many of the greatest players in the world have struggled with (Stu Ungar in particular shows a life torn apart by drugs) - these are often demons which go very deep. It will always be up to you to decide quite what you want from life; just try and remember that all these substances impair your judgement - not good when gambling for large sums of money.
Don’t play when emotional.
Emotional? High stakes poker players? Never… the real truth is that all players become emotional when away and at the tables. These things can often impair your judgement just as much as drugs and alcohol. If you’re tired, angry, upset, or hungry, playing poker is probably not the best activity to participate in.
Try and find something else to focus on - computer games, literature, a club or bar, somewhere to go when you have free time but are not in the right state to play. Poker is often as much about reading yourself as it is the others at the table - think hard about your emotional state before each session.
Don’t play outside of your means.
Playing outside of your bankroll (check our guide to bankroll management here), or playing with money that you need to eat/pay rent/feed your cat is never a good idea. When the money means a lot (and the money always means a lot if it’s a big chunk of your bankroll - be it $50 or $50,000) you will tilt much more easily than when it does not. Poker is a game that requires players to distance themselves from the money in play as much as possible. It is nearly impossible to think of money simply as tokens when you are desperate for it.
A final point.
Remember that everyone tilts - it is not an alien emotion. You should not feel self loathing, depression, or weakness because you know you are tilting - it is a natural response to a variety of factors in poker. The key is to be able to take a step back and just be able to focus yourself on something else. The big weakness is not going on tilt, but staying on tilt. You will be amazed what even a short break will do for you when the poker gods start to turn against you...
25/02/08
Going ‘on tilt’ is a huge problem for even some of the best players in the world, so how can you minimise it in your game?