Overcoming Tilt at the Table

"Bluff for the win [3]" (CC BY-SA 2.0 [4]) by Biker Jun [5]

Tilt is poker jargon for letting your emotions get the better of you. It might manifest as frustration or anger and simply result in a few bad decisions – or it might wreck your whole night. Either way, it’s not conducive to good poker and playing through it might hit your confidence at best and your wallet at worst.

It’s also a universal thing – we’ve all had bad days. It doesn’t matter how far up the poker ladder you’ve managed to climb or who you’ve taken out on the way up, you’re never totally immune to tilt. But it’s how you react to bouts of tilt that determine how good a player you can be in the future.

It’s important to understand that tilt is more of a process than a sudden phenomenon – imagine a jug filling up with water until it overflows – and might not start to appear until two or three games after you’ve sat down. However, everything that happens before, during, and after a game can be a factor.

If you’ve had an argument at home or received an unexpected bill; if you’re concerned about a family member’s health or have a work deadline looming, you might not be on your ‘A’ game in all aspects of your life. However, poker has a knack for punishing players who aren’t concentrating, and playing on tilt isn’t all that different to playing after a few drinks.

"Mets Poker Set [6]" (CC BY 2.0 [7]) by slgckgc [8]

Dealing with Tilt

Perhaps the best advice of all if you’re struggling with tilt is to take a break. Don’t fall for the old gambler’s fallacy – just because you’ve lost a few hands, it doesn’t mean that the universe owes you a win. It doesn’t. And, in all likelihood, you will just keep losing until you can get your head on straight.

In fact, that latter point bears repeating - good opponents will be able to tell [9] when you’re tilting, and will make things worse for you.

Managing your expectations can help keep you on an even keel. American poker player, Jonathan Little, notes that most players will only find success in one in every ten tournaments, and going twenty tournaments without cashing isn’t all that bizarre. Accept it. It’s a part of the game.

Look for things that annoy you and remove them from your game. You can’t do much about the cards you’re dealt but you can take steps to eliminate some negatives. Don’t sit at tables with people you don’t like, ask yourself why you come home from work in a bad mood every day, or play games with low stakes for a while so that a bad beat really doesn’t matter as much.

Finally, learn more about the game [10]. Studying previous hands, watching YouTube videos, playing casually, or talking to poker friends about their game can help you unpick flaws in your strategy and reduce the number of times you fall into a tilt trap. It may simply be that you’re too predictable and a regular opponent knows how to press all your buttons.

“If you diligently study the game, you will eventually get to the point where almost nothing tilts you, and when something does, you will possess the tools necessary to keep tilt under control,” Little explains, on the 888poker blog [11].

Tilt is an experience that all poker players go through but it can be a valuable lesson if you choose to learn from it. After all, poker is all about the long game, and a few bad starting hands aren’t going to change much in the grand scheme of things.