So what is a good reason to stop playing?  If you think back to your last twenty or so sessions, you have probably quit for all kinds of reasons.  To go out with your friends, to get some sleep, to spend some time with your wife, you fancied watching a bit of TV.  In fact most of the time you will quit a session for reasons totally unrelated to poker.  I’m not saying if this is right or wrong, as that would be different for each player.  If you are playing professionally, you obviously need to be far more disciplined than if you are a 10-hours-a-week player who plays mainly for fun.  I’m certainly not getting into the argument of whether your girlfriend is more important than poker, which is entirely outside the scope of this article. 

However, what about reasons that are related to the game?  Assuming you have no non-poker distractions to stop you playing, when should you choose to end your session, and when should you carry on?  In fact, there are only two circumstances that should cause you to quit.

• You are not playing your best

   

• You can’t beat the game

   

All valid poker-related reasons to quit a session fall into one of these two categories.  Let’s look at them individually to see what they encompass.

You are not playing your best

 

There are many reasons why your game may be off.  Maybe you have something else on your mind, maybe you are tilting, maybe you are tired or fatigued, maybe for no real reason you just can’t concentrate.  Whatever the reason, very few players have the ability to play their ‘A-game’ all the time.  If you identify that you are not playing as well as you can, then this is a good time to quit the session.  While players will often start off playing well and deteriorate as the session goes on, very few players will start off playing badly and then get better.  Therefore if you find yourself playing badly then your play is unlikely to improve and is very likely to get worse.  Stop playing now before your bad play loses you money.

 

An argument often cited by players to not quit at this point is:

 

‘Even playing slightly off, I can still beat this game’.

 

In some cases this is true, but you must be very careful for a number of reasons.  First, most players overestimate how much they are beating a game.  Even if you can beat a game for 2BB per hour, one or two pots can make all the difference between a good winning session and a losing one.  Taking the money of lesser players is not inevitable in the short term, and by playing less than your best your chances of having a losing session increase significantly.  You may even become a target for the other strong players at the table who are playing their A-game.  Remember, you don’t have to be the worst player at the table to have a –EV.  Because of the rake, average players will also lose.

 

Secondly if your play is off, it is likely to get worse, and you may just not see the point where you can no longer beat the game.  Unfortunately, many of the reasons your game can be off only get worse with time.  If you are tired, you will get more tired.  If you are tilting, your results will start to deteriorate which will make you tilt even more.  Unfortunately, a lot of the worst poker sessions you will have in your life are likely to be when you don’t realise quite how badly you are playing.  You can nip this problem in the bud by quitting as soon as you notice your game is slightly off.

 

 

 

You can’t beat the game

 

Actually, this should be expanded to ‘you can’t beat the game, or find another table within your bankroll which you can’.  Obviously if you are playing poker to make money, the most important thing to do is to find a table where you have a +EV.  If you are at a bad table, and you can’t find a table that you can beat, then there is no point playing as by doing so you can expect to lose money.  Fortunately for competent low to mid limit Internet players, this is rarely an issue.  Between all the sites there are bound to be a number of tables that you will be able to beat, and it’s just a case of finding the best one.  At higher limits it might be more of an issue, although if you are a winning player at that limit you are still more than likely to be able to find a good table.  Note the clause ‘within your bankroll’.  If you find a very juicy table, which is at limits that are too high for your bankroll to support, then ignore it.  You can do a lot of damage by playing over your head, even at a seemingly good table.

 

Knowing when you are unable to beat a table is an important skill in poker.  Ego often gets in the way and sometimes players are convinced they can beat a table, even when they are clearly outclassed.  This is a mistake even professionals make.  While I can’t tell you exactly how to spot if you are at a bad table (which is an article in itself), there is an old adage that ‘if you can’t spot the sucker within half an hour, then you are the sucker’.  There is a lot of truth in this.  If you don’t spot a number of mistakes from your opponents quite quickly, then you are probably at a bad table.  Something you do need to look out for in particular is when a good table goes bad.  At all except the very low limits, there are normally only a few real fish at each table.  You need to be observant, because it only takes a couple of bad players to leave and a couple of strong players to take their place for a very profitable table to suddenly turn very bad for you.  Fortunately, on the Internet this is only a minor setback.  If you find your table has gone bad, wait until the blinds get to you and then get up and sit down at a better table. 

 

In fact, for all intents and purposes, most Internet players can largely ignore this reason to quit.  The only time it is likely to occur is if you are playing at very high limits or you are a losing player, and if the latter is the case the best move is obviously to not play in the first place.  This basically leaves ‘not playing you’re A-game’ as the only reason to quit a session most of the time.  There are however, two reasons that seem to make sense initially, but on closer inspection actually don’t.  They are both regularly cited by players as a reason for quitting a session, and both are related to how well the session has been going.

 

 

 

Quitting while you’re ahead

 

When I was young, my dad imparted on me what seemed like a great piece of gambling advice.  He said:

 

‘Always quit while you’re ahead’

 

Meaning that if you are gambling and find yourself up a significant amount, you should stop playing.  At first glance this seems like sensible advice, which many players follow at the poker table.  Once they have won a certain amount, they will quit to ensure they don’t lose it again.  Unfortunately doing this may cost you a lot of money in the long run.  If you are winning, it is probably because you are playing well at a table where you have a significant edge.  By walking away from this table, you are forfeiting the chance to exploit your edge even more.  There will be times where you will lose the money you’ve won (poker is gambling after all), but there should be more times where you go on to win even more.  Except in very specific circumstances, quitting when you’re ahead is a bad idea.

 

This all seems quite logical when you think about it, so why do so many people, some of them otherwise good players, follow this ‘quit while you’re ahead’ mantra?  Well, normally it comes down to two main reasons.

 

·         They like to record winning sessions. 

 

·         They know luck evens out in the long run.  They have had good luck or a good run of cards so far, and so they figure now they are due for bad luck or a bad run of cards.

 

The problem is that both of these reasons are severely flawed in their logic.  Recording a winning session does feel good, but how important is any individual session exactly?  Let’s say you begin a session with $100 and by the end have $150; you are happy at having won $50 and so you quit.  For how long though?  Are you never going to play poker again?  If you come back tomorrow night and play again, you still risk losing the $50 just the same as if you carried on playing tonight.  In effect your whole poker career is just one long session, you just ‘take breaks’ at various points.  The point at which you take the break is arbitrary in the long run.  You are no more likely to lose the money now than if you start fresh tomorrow, in fact it is less likely if the reason you are winning is that you are at an especially good table.

 

The second reason makes even less sense.  Not only do you have the ‘one long session’ problem above, but it is also a fundamental misunderstanding of probability.  Cards do not have a memory and they have no sense of justice.  The chance of getting good cards or bad cards is exactly the same regardless of what cards you have had in the past.  For example, the odds of getting dealt a pair of Aces are 1 in 221.  If you get two pairs of aces on the trot (a rare treat indeed), the odds of getting another one the following hand is still 1 in 221.  On the flip side, if you don’t get dealt any pairs of Aces in your first 200 hands, that doesn’t mean you will definitely get one in the next 21 hands, or even that you are more likely to.  While cards and luck do ‘even themselves out in the long run’ this is due to the fact that, as the sample size gets bigger, individual runs of good and bad luck tend to cancel each other out.  There is nothing guaranteed though.  In your next 10,000 hands you will, on average, be dealt around 45 pairs of Aces.  However, you might get 100, or 10 or even none at all (although it is unlikely).  You certainly shouldn’t use good luck in the past as evidence you will get bad luck in the future or vice-versa, and the fact you have been lucky up until now is not a good reason to quit a session.

 

I did mention specific circumstances where you should quit when you’re ahead and they do exist.  The main one is that some players actually play worse when they’re winning.  This is a form of tilt, and usually occurs when players are running well and start to think they are invincible.  This leads to them playing questionable hands and chasing without correct pot-odds.  If you suffer from this kind of tilt then quitting while you are ahead is not a bad idea, although far better would be learning to control the problem.  Note though, that this comes under the ‘not playing your best’ reason to quit above, and has nothing to do with how much you have won, even though this may be the cause. 

 

 

 

Quitting while you are behind

 

This is an interesting one, because many good players, even professionals advocate doing it.  It can be difficult to understand why because, on the face of it, quitting solely because you are behind makes no more sense than quitting while you are ahead.  If you are at a good table, that in the long term you can expect to beat, you certainly want to stay at that table.  In fact, it could be argued that it is more important to stay at the table if you are losing.  In many games, the poor recreational players sit down with short stacks, and often quit when that money has run out.  If you are losing due to taking a lot of bad beats from these players, then it is likely that there is more money at the table in the hands of bad players.  This makes the table even more desirable from a good players point of view.  Also unless you are quitting poker for good, there is no reason not to carry on playing now rather than tomorrow.  The ‘one long session’ principle applies here, just as much as when you are winning.

 

If this is the case then why do so many great players (Howard Lederer is an example) advocate quitting after losing a certain number of big bets?  Are these players just wrong?  Well not exactly, let’s look back to our two good reasons for quitting.

 

·         You are not playing your best

 

·         You can’t beat the game

 

While the fact that you are losing is not a good reason to quit in itself, it can be a good reason to assess if the above factors are an issue or may become an issue.

 

·         Losing can cause you to tilt.  Once you are tilting, you are not playing your best game and you should quit.

 

·         You may get obsessed with ‘trying to get even’.  This can cause you to start playing marginal hands to achieve that goal (a form of tilt), and also may cause you to keep playing while you are tired or fatigued.  In both of these cases you won’t be playing your best game, hence you should quit.

 

·         It may be that the reason you are losing is because you are at a bad table and just don’t realise it. You can’t actually beat the game, hence you should find another table, or quit if none are available.

 

·         Because of the losses you have sustained, you may now be playing above your bankroll. You should leave the table and find one at a lower limit, or quit if there are none available.

 

The advice to set a stop loss limit is not bad advice; it is just an application of the two reasons I have already given.  In fact, it is good advice for a lot of players, especially relative beginners who do not have full reign on their emotions or the experience to objectively decide when they are out of their depth.  However, if you are losing but still playing within your bankroll, and you know you can beat the game, then should you quit?  No way!  Keep playing and exploit your edge.  A disciplined, winning player should know when the game is good and their own game is good and be able to keep playing.

 

In summary, most sessions you will end for reasons completely outside the realm of the game.  However, if you are in a good game and are playing well, then don’t quit for the wrong reasons.  The only valid poker-related reasons for quitting a session is you are off your game or are in a bad game with no others available.  Don’t let insignificant details like how much you have won or lost affect your decision.

 

Ian Taylor, aka Piemaster

 

 

While many players will tell you that they never go on tilt, this is rarely (if ever) true. What they probably mean is they never notice they are going on tilt and/or they don’t tilt very badly. Very few people have the ability to play their A-game all the time and in all circumstances, even professionals. If you notice you are tilting in a ring game, or even that you may be about to, the best response is nearly always to stop playing. While you may be able to control and beat it, if in doubt it is far better to go for a walk, watch some TV or take your frustration out on the pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto. Your bankroll will thank you for it in the long run. Tilting in a tournament is a far trickier proposition. Here there is no value at all in quitting and you must adopt a more hands on approach to tilt management. That however is a topic for another article.

There are many different forms of tilt, and the only thing they have in common is they cause the person tilting to play at less than their best. This article will identify and explore the most common forms of tilt, while next month the second article in this series will look at some of the rarer forms.

Loose Tilt

Loose tilt is probably the most common form of tilt, and causes you to continue with hands you should be folding. Pre-flop this will translate as playing bad or mediocre hands out of position. If the tilt is only slight, it may just be that you start calling with KJo from early position or ATo in middle position to a raise. However, when on a bad loose tilt, you may find yourself playing all kinds of garbage from any position. Post flop, loose tilt will result in chasing draws you don’t have the pot odds to chase, and calling down with clearly beaten hands.

Cause

Loose tilt is so common because it involves a reversion to something that most poker players want to do by instinct, i.e. stay in the hand. All poker players enjoy winning pots, and you can’t win a pot once you’ve folded, which is why most beginner’s biggest mistake is to not fold enough both pre and post-flop. Any event or chain of events that makes a player more desperate to win a pot than normal, or makes them feel they are more likely to win a pot than they are, will leave them more vulnerable to loose tilt. Unfortunately there are many events that can do this, of which the main ones are.

· Trying to get even, while ‘stuck’ for the session

· Overconfidence caused by a good streak of luck or playing with bad players.

· Frustration due to bad beats (steaming)

· Impatience and frustration due to not getting a playable hand and/or winning a pot for a long time.

Detection and Prevention

Anything similar to the following thought processes may lead to this kind of tilt or be the first signs of it.

‘I’m almost certainly beat here, but if the river is (insert miracle card here) then I will be almost even for the night.’

‘I’ve got to call here, I’m running hot at the moment; all my draws are coming in’

‘These players are terrible. I can play more hands here and outplay them after the flop.’

‘They keep winning with awful cards, so I can too’

‘I know I shouldn’t play this hand from this position but I’m desperate to get back on track after that beat’

‘K-5 suited? Compared with what I have been getting, that’s practically a pair of aces!’

Preventing this kind of tilt is nearly always a matter of discipline. If you follow a list of starting hand charts (from Internet Texas Holdem or another source) then you will be far less prone to pre-flop loose tilt, as it will be stated in black and white that you should fold. The same can be said of people who religiously calculate pot odds and apply this to post-flop call or fold decisions.

The problem comes when you are one of those players who play from ‘feel’. These players will create a justification in their mind for their actions, and will often not even realise they are tilting until they look at their hand histories. If you are one of these players, you need to identify your individual triggers that cause you to make loose calls. All players are different and, for example, some players are great at handling bad beats but their play always deteriorates when they are winning. If you look through your hand histories and notice loose play, try to remember what you were feeling at the time. This should provide some clues as to what triggered the tilt, and if you find yourself in the same situation, you can quit the game before it starts costing you money.

Passive Tilt

Passive tilt will cause you to check and call when you should be betting and raising. As a result, you will not be getting value out of your good hands and will not protect your hand properly, causing you to get drawn out on more. This can potentially be very damaging to a player because it can be a difficult type of tilt to detect and will normally kick in when you are already losing.

Cause

Passive Tilt can have a number of triggers but all normally come down to you being overwhelmed or scared by the game you are in. The particular trigger might be playing at a new (higher) limit, playing in a game where you think you are outclassed, playing above your bankroll or losing confidence after taking a beating. As a result, you may find yourself playing more passively for either of the below reasons:

· You will tend to assume you are beaten in the face of any aggression unless you have the absolute nuts.

· You are scared to put in too many raises, because you are worried about how much money it will cost you if you lose.

Passive tilt can be a vicious circle. If you start to play more passively, this may give your opponents an opportunity to draw out on you. This may, in turn, cause you to play even more passively for the second reason above.

Detection and Prevention

Anything similar to the following thought processes may lead to this kind of tilt or be the first signs of it.

‘A raise would cost me $10. That’s a lot of money!’

‘I have a good hand but there is a chance he may have me beat. Had better just call it down’

‘There are a lot of dollars in this pot, I’d be happy just to win it as it is, no need to raise’

‘I’m just going to call it down and hope for the best, I don’t want to tangle with this guy.’

Given that this type of tilt is nearly always caused by a loss of confidence or intimidation, the key to prevention is not playing in games in which you feel outclassed, intimidated or out of your depth. If you are prone to this, make sure that you leave games where you don’t feel comfortable and always make sure you have a large bankroll for the limit you are playing. Maybe instead of 250 big bets, you should aim for 300 or 350. This will ensure that you have enough money that you won’t be scared to put in a raise when a raise is called for. Also, when you do move up a limit, don’t be afraid to move back down again if you don’t feel comfortable. While jumping around limits too much isn’t a good thing, there is no shame in dropping back down if things don’t go well immediately. You can ruin a hard-earned bankroll by playing at a limit where you are not comfortable, and this is often caused by playing too passively.

Formulaic Tilt

(Thanks to the ITH off-topic forum for this name)

A player on formulaic tilt will play almost on automatic without really paying due attention to the specific state of the game. The result of this is not usually catastrophic, especially in low to mid limit hold’em. In fact, many players have found it profitable to play formulaically on many tables at once rather than optimally at just one or two. It is however also a form of tilt, and can affect all players from time to time. It will cause you to play ‘by the book’ even when this is not the best way given the specific players involved.

For example, you may fold A-J pre-flop to a raise, even though there are no other callers and the raiser has raised 8 of the last 10 hands. Alternatively you may re-raise with JJ even though the raising player is a rock, who only raises the flop 1% of the time. Post flop you will make similar mistakes, folding to players who bet with nothing and calling down with a marginal hand against a very passive player. The situations in which you are badly hurt by formulaic tilt will not occur often, and the decision will often be marginal, but it can cost you bets and will sometimes cost you a pot.

Cause

Formulaic tilt generally occurs when your attention is not entirely focussed on the game. This is often unavoidable when playing four tables (or more) but can occur needlessly for other reasons. Maybe you are distracted by something else (especially poignant when playing on the internet) or maybe you are just bored. Tiredness/fatigue is also a big cause of formulaic tilt, as it will lead to your mind working less than optimally even when you are doing your best to concentrate on the game.

Detection and Prevention

It is difficult to list the particular thought processes that lead to this form of tilt, as it is generally caused more by a lack of thought. I suppose the closest we can come is to say that if you are thinking hard about something other than poker and specifically the game in front of you then you are probably suffering from formulaic tilt.

What is easier however, is spotting when you are suffering from this form of tilt. Look for the following as signs.

• You have been playing with one or more opponents for 50 hands or more, yet you don’t know anything about his/their play-style without looking at Poker Tracker.
• You just responded to a bet without looking where the bet came from and who made it.
• You have no idea who at your table has won or lost money since you’ve been at the table.
• You are playing on multiple tables and still trying to surf the net, read your emails or watch TV.

To prevent this type of tilt you really need to be disciplined about how you play the game and not allow yourself any distractions. Turn the TV off, don’t have any programs open on your PC other than poker software, switch your phone onto answer-phone. If you are tired or can’t concentrate for some reason then take a break or call it a night. When you are not involved in a hand, rather than letting your mind wander, watch the other players and see if you can pick up any tendencies. Look at not only what hands they show down, but think back to see how they betted with those hands on all streets. Make detailed notes using the in-game notes feature and don’t just rely on information given to you by Poker Tracker.

That wraps it up for the most common forms of tilt. Next month we will look at the second article in this series which takes a closer look at more uncommon forms of tilt you will need to be aware of. Until then, make sure you don’t ruin your hard earned bankroll with half an hour of madness.

Ian Taylor (aka Piemaster)

Tight Tilt will cause you to fold too much, turning down situations where you have positive expectation from a call or raise. While the cliché often used for this type of tilt is ‘waiting for aces’ it is not normally that extreme. Normally it will be the only slightly profitable hands such as JTs from middle position, 88 from early position, and middle pairs on the flop (obviously situation specific) that the player will muck. Because of this, the lost value as a result of this form of tilt is generally marginal and your win rate will not suffer much because of it. In fact, occasionally players will intentionally start to play too tight in situations where they might normally be prone to a more destructive form of tilt, and this can be a money saving solution. Remember though, that leaving the table is nearly always the best solution in ring games when you find yourself on tilt.

If you start to play tighter, it is usually for one of two reasons. You have either become more scared of losing, meaning you are willing to sacrifice value for lower variance, or you have lost confidence in certain hands (either a particular type of hand or just marginal holdings in general). Unfortunately, there are many psychological reasons why either of these may be the case, the following are the most common.

· You are playing above your bankroll

· You are playing at a new higher limit and are determined not to lose heavily.

· You have won money in the session and don’t want to lose it again.

· You have taken a number of bad beats

· You have had repeated failure to win with a certain type of hand (such as suited connectors, small pairs, straight draws, top pair weak kicker etc)

Detection and Prevention

Anything similar to the following thought processes may lead to this kind of tilt or be the first signs of it.

‘I’m not putting money in with this hand when I will probably have to fold on the flop’

‘I can’t afford to lose a lot of money here, so I’m only going to play with the very best hands.’

‘I’m $100 up in this session. I’m only playing premium hands from now on so I don’t blow it.’

‘May as well fold. The way my luck is going, he’s bound to have me beat.’

‘I’ve missed with my last 10 flush draws, I think I’ll just fold this one before it gets expensive.’

The key to preventing this type of tilt, as with many other kinds, is to treat each hand as a completely separate game, forgetting anything that has happened so far that evening. The fact is, playing a hand when you are on a tear and up 50BB has exactly the same chances of developing in any given way as if you are on a 50BB slump. As soon as you find you are playing a hand differently because of how a session is going or how previous hands have gone you are tilting.

On the other hand, if you are going to tilt then playing tightly is probably the best way to do it because what you are giving up in value is very marginal. It can be potentially dangerous if you realise you are on tight tilt and try to correct the problem, only to overcompensate. In fact, if you are playing in a tournament where quitting the session is not an option, you may want to continue to play especially tight until you are sure you have your emotions under control.

A player on an aggressive tilt will regularly bet and raise when they should be checking and calling. The problem usually manifests itself in the overplaying of marginal hands (such as bottom and middle pair on the flop) or trying to buy the pot too frequently or when it should be clear your opponent has a hand. Severity is obviously related to how much you do it, and it is most dangerous when combined with loose tilt. This form of tilt can be very costly, because it can cost you many big bets in a single hand. Good players will wait for a good hand and will then bleed you for large pot after large pot, while folding when they don’t have a hand. On the plus side, sometimes you can go on a tear, making the rest of the table scared of you, and actually win money. Don’t count on it though.

There are two real causes for this kind of tilt. The first is when you simply lose it. You have taken one bad beat too many and emotion takes over causing you to lose all objectivity, you just want to shove all your chips in the middle and hope for the best. This is a situation where your bankroll can really be at risk if you’re not careful. The second cause of aggressive tilt is a little more subtle. Somehow you will get it into your head that you need to be more aggressive. Maybe you have been drawn out on a few times, or maybe the few times you have shown aggression, your opponents have folded. Whatever the reason, you make an ill advised deviation from your normal game, and before you know it you are piling chips in the middle, while your opponents re-raise you with superior hands.

Often your misplaced aggression will be directed at a particular player. This can be a legitimate tactic when you have identified that player as weak or a habitual bluffer, but too often ego will get in the way and you can find yourself frequently raising a particular player just because you don’t like them for some reason. Obviously this is just playing into the hands of your nemesis if they are smart.

Anything similar to the following thought processes may lead to this kind of tilt or be the first signs of it.

‘Sod it, I’ve lost $300 tonight already, what does it matter if I lose more’

‘My opponents are playing with worse hands than me on average. I should always raise for value’

‘If I keep raising, they’ll have to put me on a big hand and fold’

‘My hands never hold up in these multi-way pots. From now on, I’m going to raise even with marginal hands pre-flop’

‘I raised with Aces and everyone folded, they might as well have been 7-2!’

‘He keeps raising me! From now on I’m going to raise him back.’

The reason this type of tilt is rare is because aggression is generally a good thing, and for most players the problem is not being aggressive enough. To prevent this type of tilt, you need to remember why aggression is good so you can spot the circumstances in which it isn’t. The purpose of raising as opposed to calling is the following.

• For value when you have a pot equity edge
• To protect your hand against draws
• As a bluff or semi-bluff

Therefore you should only raise if you feel one of these is applicable. If you think there is a good chance you are behind and there is no real chance of forcing a fold, then you normally have no business raising. In a lot of hands, all the aggression in the world will not win you the pot and you just have to accept that.

FPS is an acronym for ‘Fancy Play Syndrome’ and is a term used to describe when a player makes a tricky play when a more straightforward one would be better. While everyone is affected by FPS occasionally, it is also a form of tilt, and players can find themselves making a string of ‘FPS plays’ without realising they are tilting. The two main examples of FPS are sandbagging with a big hand and playing aggressively with a marginal holding (or even nothing). Note that is not to say that these two things are definitively bad, just that often players do it when they should be making the more obvious play. Sometimes a player will lose sight of his primary goal (maximising profit) completely and will make plays because they ‘look good’ or similar.

Cause

It is sometimes difficult to see why players fall victim to FPS, but it is generally either because they are having a bad time at the table and are trying to ‘make things happen’ or they are having an especially good time and get overconfident. Either can cause a player to completely forget or ignore what kind of players they are playing with, and attempt the sort of fancy moves that are either lost on them or they can see right through. Playing at lower limits than usual can often contribute towards FPS tilt. At the low limits you should usually play more straightforwardly, yet the comparatively low stakes may actually cause you to play trickier as you are less concerned about losing.

Detection and Prevention

Anything similar to the following thought processes may lead to this kind of tilt or be the first signs of it.

‘I’m not getting good value out of my premium hands, I need to disguise them more.’

‘These players are rocks, I’m sure I can get them to lay down a lot of their hands with some tricky play.’

‘If this works it will be the sexiest play ever!’

This type of tilt is rare, and preventing it is often just a case of training yourself to keep it simple. At the lower limits of poker, the obvious play is very rarely wrong. To clarify this, there is sometimes a better play based on astute readings of the particular player or situation but by making the ‘by the book’ play you are rarely giving up much in value. Consider these two examples:

1. You hold 33 in the big blind. An EP player raises, there is one caller, and you call. The flop comes 995r. You check, the pre-flop raiser bets and the other caller folds. What is your play?

2. You hold JJ in the cut-off. An MP player limps, you raise, the button, the big blind and the limper all call. The flop comes down AJ6r. The big blind checks and the MP player bets, what is your play?

In both hands above there is an obvious play, fold in the first hand and raise in the second. In both hands there may be a better play depending on the reads you have on your opponents and the specific situation. In the first example, if your opponent is a solid player who can lay down a hand, a check-raise may work, and if your opponents in the second hand are especially tight and/or aggressive then you may smooth call here. However, in both hands the obvious play is not far wrong and will often be the best play. Except in very extreme circumstances, you will not be giving up much by making the obvious play in the above examples, and this is true for most hands until you reach high limits.

Because of this, the best way of avoiding strange bouts of FPS tilt is by making the obvious ‘by the book’ play as often as possible. Protect your hand and build a pot when you think you are ahead, fold if you suspect you are behind and drawing slim and call if you have a good drawing hand and have the pot odds to do so.

Remember that all forms of tilt exist only in the mind. By being disciplined and prepared, and by playing within a sensible bankroll structure you will help protect yourself from most forms of tilt. Play for the long term and don’t let any hand get inside your head for too long. And remember the golden rule. If you feel yourself beginning to tilt, get up from the table and walk away.

Ian Taylor (aka Piemaster)

He stayed on the team, because here in the UK we don’t let a small thing like lack of talent get in the way of a man’s dreams, but even with our liberal Wide Receiver rotation, he didn’t get any play time to speak of and spent all his time on the sidelines as effectively as cheerleader in full kit.

2005 - Poker is going through a huge boom. More people than ever are playing both in card rooms and on the Internet, and it has become not only socially acceptable but also ‘cool’. In the last year, I have had lots of friends and work colleagues asking me about online poker and how to get into the game. People who five years ago would never have considered playing poker are now taking up the game and that’s great.

Most of the time

But a poker player, like a football player, requires certain skills and traits to be successful. For the most part poker is a very inclusive sport and most of the skills to become a successful player can be learned through teaching or through practice. However, there are certain people who will never become successful poker players not through lack of effort, but because something about their personality will forever hold them back. These players may still be drawn to the game like moths to a flame, lured by the money that their friends are making (or at least claim to be making), but they will end up disappointed.

The following is a guide to the mental traits that are most likely to hold you back in your quest to be a successful poker player. If you identify too many of these traits in a friend, don’t encourage them to play poker. If you identify too many of them in yourself, reconsider whether poker really is the game for you.

1. A Clinical Aversion to Math

Poker is at base level, a game about numbers. How many outs do you have? What pots odds are you getting? What is your pot equity? How much should you bet to make it unprofitable for draws to call you? What are the chances of being dealt a particular hand? What is the probability of making your hand by the river?

It is not necessary to be a maths genius in order to be a successful poker player, in fact you don’t need any qualifications at all. What you do have to do is at least pay lip service to the numbers. Can you work out how many outs you have? As a result can you work out if a call is profitable? If you can’t then you are going to have huge leaks in your game. Nearly all successful poker players, whether they admit it or not, will use a lot of rudimentary maths in their game. People who get a headache trying to calculate a 15% tip need not apply.

Ask a winning poker player what the most important attribute is in order to be successful and discipline nearly always crops up. These days it is easy to get information on how to play well or at least competently, but this is no good at all if you don’t have the patience and discipline to make the plays you know are right. Most winning players only beat the game by a few big bets per hour. A –EV hand played here, a loose call there, a minor bout of tilt somewhere else and you are no longer a winning player. People who are easily bored, action junkies or impulsive are likely to bring these habits to the poker table and are unlikely to be able to adjust to the grind of being a winning poker player.

3. Myopia

Playing successful poker is all about the long term, and it is all too easy to forget this. The fact of the matter is your results over 100 hands, or 500, or 1,000, or even 5,000 are almost irrelevant. Most good players argue that it Is not until you have played over 10,000 hands that you even have a good idea whether you are a winning player or not. While most players suffer from myopia (or ‘short-sightedness’) occasionally, if you are the type of person who is not willing to look beyond your last session you will have big problems as you progress as you will not be able to put your downswings or indeed your upswings in proper perspective. You will find yourself making ill-advised decisions such as moving up a limit too early, changing your game unnecessarily and over or undervaluing certain hands or holdings based upon your short-term results.

4. Emotional Imbalance

Tilt is a very real danger for the poker player. Literally months of hard work can be undone by few hours of tilting. Few players have the ability to play their A-game all the time, but it is important to be able to:

a) Recognise when you are tilting

b) Not let your emotions affect your play too much and

c) Know when to walk away

There have been too many tragic stories of otherwise good players who have gone on tilt and wiped out their bankroll.

On a related issue, you have to be able to separate poker from the rest of your life. While poker players dislike bad beat stories, non poker players dislike them even more. If losing at poker makes you so miserable it starts to interfere with work and your personal life then it is probably not the game for you. There are far less stressful ways to make money.

5. Inability to Handle Large Losses

Playing poker is an emotional rollercoaster. Often you will be dealing with winning and losing large amounts of money, which even if you are properly bankrolled, will often be difficult to handle. A 3/6 player can easily lose $500 in an evening without really doing anything wrong, and this might be a month’s rent for some people. Once you are into the realms of 15/30 you are looking at maybe $2000 for a bad session. If you are the kind of person who can’t handle losing these amounts of money then you may want to stick to the low limits, as these kinds of losses are inevitable and unavoidable. Some people can’t stand the thought of losing money at all, and to these people I recommend a different hobby.

6. Dislike of Randomness

Some people like to be in control, and have predictable results to their actions and unfortunately poker is the antithesis of control and predictability. The cards you receive in any given hand, session or even series of sessions are random. So are the hands you are up against, the flop, the turn and the river. This is the games appeal for some and it’s turn-off for others. Because poker is so random, the results you will get are also random. You can play extremely well and win, or you can play extremely badly and lose. Sometimes you can play well and lose more/win less than you would have done by playing badly with the same cards.

To be a good poker player, you need to accept the randomness of the game and make decisions that will most likely make you a winner in the long term, not allowing yourself to be deterred when short-term results do not go your way. If you can’t accept that you can be the best player at the table and still lose, then you would be better off with a game like chess. Otherwise you will become a player who is forever loitering on the rail and on poker forums boring people with bad beat stories.

7. The Need for Instant Success

People are always looking at ways to get rich quick, and to many people poker looks an ideal way to do this. Online poker sites use clever marketing to convince new players that the keys to being successful at poker are not maths, discipline and experience, but bravery, guts and an ability to read people. Because most people think they are brave, gutsy and good at reading people, lots of people assume they can be successful at poker, and get rich quick.

They won’t

Very few people achieve any kind of success at poker without putting a lot of work in. Starting of at the lower limits until they build a bankroll, reading and understanding poker theory, reviewing and scrutinising their play to find out how they can improve and playing through the downswings in order to hit a long term aggregate win rate. It is a long journey, and if anything is harder work than trying to get rich through a regular career.

People who start playing poker in the hope of achieving overnight success inevitably leave broke and disappointed. They will play above their bankroll, play loosely and overestimate their own ability. In short, all the things that will make them sitting ducks to be beaten by the real successful players.

8. Ethical issues

One of the side effects of poker coming into the mainstream is that it is becoming more widely accepted (or at least tolerated) by groups that previously thought of it as shady or even evil. However, the game itself has not changed in this time. It is still gambling and still has the same moral implications as it ever did. If you have moral objections to gambling, then poker is obviously not the game for you but it doesn’t stop there. Before you start playing poker, ask yourself the following question:

‘Could you bust your opponent if you knew the money in front of him is all he has and he needs it to buy food to feed himself and his family?’

If the answer is no then don’t play. It sounds harsh but playing winning poker is a very marginal proposition. If you go soft on an opponent you are wiping out your profit margin. Even good internet players generally only win around 2BB per hour, and so even something simple like not raising the river when you are almost certain you are ahead will cost you at least half an hours play.

For some people, playing on the Internet makes this ethical conundrum easier to handle. They can’t see their opponent and so they don’t have to think about who they might be playing against and what their circumstances might be, but this is really only putting the problem to one side. When you reach the higher limits and see someone blow $2,000 in an hour how will you react? What if they leave the table with the comment ‘damn, that was my entire pay-cheque’? How will that make you feel? Unless you are thinking something like ‘I don’t care’ or ‘It’s a shame but it’s not my problem’ you are probably not well suited to being a poker player.

Conclusion

Things worked out okay for my football buddy in the end. He made a few friends, got some exercise on a Wednesday afternoon and had something impressive to tell women in the bar, because a bad football player just has to put up with the frustration of not getting on the field. A bad poker player has to cope with financial losses, often large ones. It is just as important to know what makes a bad poker player as what makes a good one.

Ian Taylor (aka Piemaster)