Hellmuth Syndrome: Handling Bad Beats

only advice i can really give which probs isnt that useful or new to ya is just focus and getting your money in good and playing well, then its up to the poker gods, nothing yu can do, just laugh and say ahhh dont do it to me this way when they hit their set with AA vs. QQ or whatever, the main thing is you played the hand right

Don't think that every big winner in poker have completely dealt with tilt caused by bad beats and so on. Losing 80% is annoying no matter what. However this thing happens over and over and when it does it is all about damage control. In my opinion rage quitting is waaaay better than rage... anything else Chasing loses kills winrate and bankrolls. So if your natural reaction to a bunch of consecutive bad beats is to instaquit you are already far ahead of the average player in terms of mindset. After all we are humans and humans can only take this much. I mean we are still trying our best to achieve this botlike aproach to the game but we should also keep in mind that poker is emotional game - whether we like it or not - and that's why it is fun and potentialy profitable.

Originally posted by awesomeo
In my opinion rage quitting is waaaay better than rage

+1

The best way to recover game-wise is to have a laugh with someone, smile and just enjoy real life. Then you come back with a lot of positive energy, ready to crush it! Bring those 54's to my kings!

Hi guys,

I've moved your thread to the relevant board.

Ingrid

well after a break even day @ limit poker or even small loss, i also do stupid things sometimes. But much more rarely.

Try play 7k hands or just 5k hands every day for 2 weeks or a month, then u will see impressed handling of tilt, especially if you play lots of tables at once, and actually dont care about outcome, only the decision, and after that the next decision on the next table.
Then you dont have that much time getting mad of a beat.

Just never look at your roll while playing. Sometimes i dont even look at it after i finished maybe 7k hands, and just play on the next day og the day after.

However, i never get pissed when loosing an ai with AA. Im actually only tilting if i make a wrong bluff, and because i probably played it bad. I actually try to bluff a lots of flushes ;p
Just keep folding, its actually pretty easy when u get some xp.

I only allow myself two buy ins on a table, If I lose both of them I immediately quit and go do something else for an hour or so.

I think maybe smokers have the edge over non-smokers when it comes to tilt, a smoker can just get up and walk away straight away after a tilting bad beat, have a smoke and curse then come back less steamy.

A non smoker does not have that natural break. ♦

So kids if you tilt really bad, take up smoking, it will help ♠_cool:

i agree that the more hands you pay the more numb to bad beats you become. When I first started playing a single table at a time badbeats/variance used to hit me big time. When I started to multi table and play for longer periods I just accepted this was part of the game.

Dont get me wrong I still get steamy ears when they hit the miracle one outer on the river but I know now over time as long as the correct decisions are made the overall outcome will be in my favour.

So with this knowledge them bad beats become that less painful so my advice play more hands!!

and take up smoking

you need to realise and accept that its part of the game, it happens and it will always happen, there is a lot of luck in poker and a lot of hidden luck that you may not be aware of at the time

How you deal with this is up to you, when i take a bad hit i just remember all the times i hit my two outter getting it in bad vs overpair and running dumb bluffs and getting there runner runner so im like yeah nice hand and move on

Anyone can win at poker when running hot its easy, but when you run bad its about damage limitation as mentioned by a previous poster

guys, i dont understand u. u suggest just to quit the game for the day and then come tomorrow in hope that the run is better? And when u recognise tomorrow that the run is still bad u suggest to quit the game and continue on the day after tomorrow and so on ??

what they are say is: dont run bad and play bad
if running bad makes you angry then its not a good idea to play so take some time out to re focus

Originally posted by nefarious26
what they are say is: dont run bad and play bad
if running bad makes you angry then its not a good idea to play so take some time out to re focus

and how much time out u suggest?

superranger i think you have a good point. it's better to learn to live with it than to run away and rage quit. you can be pissed off or annoyed and still try and stay level headed and play the best you can. i think the concept of tilt quickly becomes an excuse for bad play and it turns into a self fulfilling prophecy when really a bad mood doesnt have to = tilt/spewing

@DrDunne . yepp. when i hear a lot of people, i am confused cause i think they think they have just to quit the game and just play tomorrow because they think luck will be probably better tomorrow. i am so confused. it is possible u will not run good also tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow and so on. just because someone is running away does not mean he can wait out the bad run by quitting, and continue after the "bad time" is over. if this is what they suggest, they just should describe me their strategy how to do it well.

yeah guys i understand your points and whats good for one is not necessary good for someone else, everyone has different ways of dealing with things,

one of my biggest problems no my biggest problem was this very thing, i used to get in a downswing and just supertilt and play through it playing bad and i would lose like 10/20 bis in one session its was like madness

i couldn't control my emotions it had nothing to do with the money the problem was i hated losing i was under some delusion

so i learnt about stop loss and i learnt many lessons about myself which have made me a better person and player, yeah i learnt the hard way but i don't think i learnt the easier way

Originally posted by nefarious26
yeah guys i understand your points and whats good for one is not necessary good for someone else, everyone has different ways of dealing with things,

one of my biggest problems no my biggest problem was this very thing, i used to get in a downswing and just supertilt and play through it playing bad and i would lose like 10/20 bis in one session its was like madness

i couldn't control my emotions it had nothing to do with the money the problem was i hated losing i was under some delusion

so i learnt about stop loss and i learnt many lessons about myself which have made me a better person and player, yeah i learnt the hard way but i don't think i learnt the easier way

so u insta quit as soon as u think it isnt good for u too play longer? without any exception, u are always disciplined to doing always that approach?

stop loss is very important obviously, i just think it could be good to make a conscious effort to at least try and keep going and practice shrugging it off. if it is a downswing that is. but if tilting is likely then definitely quitting a no brainer

Originally posted by DrDunne
stop loss is very important obviously, i just think it could be good to make a conscious effort to at least try and keep going and practice shrugging it off. if it is a downswing that is. but if tilting is likely then definitely quitting a no brainer

all i can tell u is that mr david sklansky critisizes the stopp-loss strategy and calls it "silly".

the key is to quit a game because u are probably tilting and cannot play well any more, and not because u lost x buy-ins. if u are a good player and u still know u can play well after some losses , there is actually no reason to quit the game. u probably have to play lower games (instead of playing nl100 u play play just nl50) because of the bankroll management. but, u dont have to stop playing poker for the day just because u lost amount x.

i only quit if i think im not playing well, if i feel im playing really well and running really bad i just change tables or play a different site, on that basis playing stop loss is silly but if im tilting and playing bad then stop loss will protect my winrate and bankroll so thats smart