Poker Psychology – Recognising Tilt

The word ‘tilt’ in poker refers to a state of emotional or mental instability which causes the player to play in a sub optimal way. This is a very real problem for many players, even professionals, and is a problem that causes a severe loss of profit, not to mention psychological effects.

Tilt is really a very personal problem to deal with, as every person is psychologically and emotionally different. This means different people get tilted by different things, and different people react to their tilt in a different way. The first key to overcoming tilt is by recognising what puts you on tilt in the first place, and realising how your actions change when you’re on tilt. This article aims to outline some of the most common causes of tilt, and some of the most common ways in which people tilt.

Common Causes of Tilt

• Perhaps the most common causes of tilt amongst poker players is when they suffer a bad beat.
• Being on the wrong end of a cooler can put many players on tilt.
• Being card dead for a long period of time.
• Getting bluffed by a player.
• Missing a lot of draws in succession.
• Playing a hand badly and realising it afterwards.
• Real life issues.

Common Effects of Tilt

• Probably the most common effect of tilt is to start playing very loosely and getting into a lot of marginal situations.
• Playing too tightly because you’re scared of losing more money.
• Chasing draws when you aren’t getting the correct odds.
• Overplaying weak made hands.
• A lack of motivation to play poker.
• Getting angry whilst playing poker.
• Letting your emotions dictate the way you play rather than logic.

Recognising Why You Tilt

Recognising why you tilt is the first step to overcoming that tilt. The best way to do this is to review your play after you have finished playing, reviewing your play from a third person perspective will reveal when you are playing sub optimally. Once you have realised you aren’t playing your best, you can track back through your hands and find where this started, and from there you can pinpoint the exact point, and reason, why you started tilting.

Overcoming Your Tilt Issues

This is largely a personal issue, but there are a few things you can do to help overcome tilt. The first thing you should do is, if the cause of your tilt is down to poker related issues, to truly understand the nature of variance. This helps you realise that there are points in your poker career where you will encounter this bad variance, but it will all even out in the long run.

The next thing that can help is by realising how much tilting can affect your profit. Just think, if you tilt and lose one full chip stack by playing sub optimally, you lose 100BB. If you have a winrate of 5BB/100 hands, then it will take you an extra 2,000 hands to recover this one mistake.

Summary

• Tilt refers to when a player plays sub optimally due to emotional or psychological issues
• The causes of tilt vary from person to person, but can include things such as bad beats, coolers, being card dead, getting bluffed, and real life issues
• The effects of tilt can vary as well, some effects include playing too loosely, playing too tightly, overplaying hands, lacking motivation to play poker, and getting angry
• Conquering your problem of tilt is very personal, but understanding variance, realising how much tilting can affect your profits, and injecting logic into your thought process can help.