Do You Know Your On Tilt?
I asked him the obvious question, if he was tilting and thereby creating a higher likelihood of losing more and more? He said no way, that he hadn’t become hyper aggressive, that in fact, he tightened up.
That’s not what I asked him. There is more than one way to show you’re on tilt than just playing like a lunatic. Another form of tilting is when you play every hand expecting to lose. Being on tilt means that the decisions you make are affected by your emotional state. For most people, this means taking their anger or frustration out on their chips, and playing almost any hand that comes their way. But other players tilt by playing solely to minimize losses. When things are going badly, these players decide that they are obviously going to lose every hand. They get it into their head that even if they have aces they will lose. So these players will play to save bets rather than to win pots. Thus perpetuating even more losing.
Why is this line of thinking bad? Well, poker is about winning pots, not minimizing losses. When you play to not lose, you are often costing yourself whole pots, which is never a good decision for your bankroll or results. Let’s look at an example:
You’re playing 1-2 no limit and you have a hand like J-10 suited. You raise pre-flop from the button and the big blind calls. The flop comes Q-10-3 rainbow. Your opponent checks to you, you bet $15 and are called. The turn is the 9 and, again, your opponent checks, you bet, and get called. Now for the river. There is $105 in the pot. The river is the A., a terrible card for your hand. Your opponent checks to the A-Q-T-9-3. board. On a winning streak, you would bet here, trying to get your opponent to fold a bad king or better ten. And let’s say that 60% of the time your opponent will fold these two hands and you will win the pot with the worst hand. That means that 40% of the time you lose the $20 bet, but 60% of the time you win the $105. Most players make the correct assumption that, if the A made your opponent’s hand here, he or she would bet to get paid off.
Ah, but you haven’t been winning. When on a huge losing streak, some players will be much more likely to check here. Your thinking has been polluted and you think of how bad your luck is and why oh why did an ace have to fall. So you check here and at least save your $20.
But in trying to save $20, you cost yourself a whole pot. Poker is not about making bet-saving decisions so much as it is about making decisions that pick up whole pots. In balancing the two, pot decisions always win. What if you would have bet there and your opponent would have folded a Queen there after the Ace hit? You would have won a nice pot by giving yourself the best chance to win. Instead, you just put the chips in your opponents stack!
Next time, I will continue on this topic and hopefully help you analyze your mindstate.
Until next time, may the chips fall your way.
Play Online Poker
