Tilt: Bad Beats and Variance
My emotions don't care
For poker players, bad beats and high variance are unavoidable and very real, and nobody with at least some knowledge of the game will deny this.
The PokerStrategy forum is full of bad beat stories and reports of "brutal" variance, which go hand in hand with familiar automatic replies along the lines of 'That's completely normal', 'Playing this hand like this is profitable in the long run', 'variance is part of poker', etc...
The original posters are usually already aware of these facts, but this doesn't improve the situation. We know the facts, but swings and continuous bad beats still annoy us so much - that we are often no longer capable of playing our A game.
Why is this? We understand what is happening on a rational level, but we are still shaken on the emotional level. I am trying to use my intellect to stay in control, because I can rationally understand what is happening, but my emotions don't care about this. They pull me down and crush my spirit.
Therefore, I can tell myself that the downswing is completely normal hundreds of times, but, due to tilt and my bad mood, my play won't improve, not to mention that I also have the monetary losses.
The Psychological Point of View
Let's take a quick look at how our perception works. By means of our five main senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste), stimuli are sent to our brain. Complex neural processes occur, resulting in the transformation of the stimuli into sensory impressions in our consciousness. These sensory impressions are called 'submodalities'. They are impressions like hot, cold, bright, dark, rough, smooth, sharp, sweet, bitter, etc...
Please notice that when talking about these concepts we are already confronted with a first hurdle, namely having to describe sensory impressions using words and language. Since it is impossible to adequately describe sensory impressions using our language, there will inevitably be a lot of misunderstandings and superfluous phrases when we attempt to do so. We will however ignore these problems for now.
 |
| The voice of reason says, 'everything is OK!', but the negative emotions remain |
When we get the usual continuous stream of bad beats at the tables during a downswing, we continuously receive negative signals like needle pricks from our brain. Our reasoning may say 'stay calm, everything is fine', but the damage is being dealt on a deeper, emotional level that can't be controlled by reason.
This is why we can rationalize as much as we like (try to fit the things we experience into a sensible, understandable structure), but the bad feelings remain and can't be dispelled.
But it doesn't stop there. Due to certain couplings in our brain, stimuli will trigger certain reactions which take place unconsciously and automatically. In a form of conditioning similar to the famous Pavlovian dog conditioning, reactions which are often disproportionate and unreasonable are triggered in our brain. These can be things like thinking 'My god, here we go again...'.
This can be a certain sentence or word, like in our example, or even just a certain tone of voice or a certain situation or a touch which is taken in in such a way that it acts as a negative stimulus. It can be any kind of visual, kinaesthetic or auditory stimulus that is coupled to a negative event and triggers negative reactions. It goes without saying that there are also positive stimuli like certain pieces of music, photos, memories, or the sight of the colourful chips moving toward our direction, and that these positive stimuli can trigger positive feelings.
If one of these negative stimuli occurs repeatedly, then a repeating negative experience, e.g. getting a bad beat, is aggregated, so that the effect each occurrence has increases with each additional occurrence. We will usually laugh off the first bad beat of a session, but when the third bad beat arrives, we start to feel slightly less happy, and after the fifth or maybe tenth bad beat of an evening, our good mood will have evaporated completely. After a couple of days or weeks on a downswing, some of us will be starting each session as a *conditioned bundle of nerves*. For our game to be completely destroyed, we won't need several consecutive triggers as we did at the beginning of the swing. Instead a single negative situation will be enough, as the total damage of all the recent bad beats is coupled to it.
Watch yourself
These processes act as a kind of consciousness filter that skews our objective view of the game and what's happening at the table. We can't objectively judge situations at the tables as isolated events, and we can't classify and react properly to situations.
 |
| Try a change of perspective: How do you really feel? |
Instead, we find ourselves in a *stuck-state*. We stagnate and have completely lost the ball, we can't change the way we play.
If we were computers, then we could react appropriately to each situation and we could objectively judge each situation from a mathematical point of view, without being affected by past experiences. Of course, we aren't computers and have to admit that emotions can compromise our ability to reason.
But wait! Maybe there is a way of making ourselves aware of these processes and reducing tilt. In the following, I will give some advice which you may already have heard, but which can nevertheless be effective if you follow it.
Watch yourself and ask yourself questions like:
- How do I feel right now?
- How good is my actual condition?
- Does my condition really correspond to the way I feel?
- Am I fit enough to play?
- Am I still able to play my A-game?
Your own capacity for introspection, i.e. the ability to look into yourself and watch yourself, is often overestimated, and can be impaired by stress. Your consciousness focuses on the stressful situation, which may obscure solutions and alternatives (much like a deer caught in the headlights ).
An Exercise
Picture yourself sitting in front of the monitor, not from the ego-perspective, but as if you were watching yourself, maybe from a couple of meters away and from a slightly raised position. You look over your shoulder: Look at the way this player is sitting there. How would you judge this player?
- Is he still playing well, or is he making obvious mistakes?
- Do you think this player is still in a good psychological state? Or does it look like he is already on tilt? Or maybe exhausted and tired?
Imagine being a friend or coach who's job it is to help the player who is sitting there:
- What mistakes is the player making?
- What advice would you give the player sitting in front of the monitor? What should he do?
- If you were in his position, what would you do?
This short exercise can help you to observe yourself in a dislocated way from a certain distance, and thus more objectively. Don't underestimate the effect of this change of perspectives. This counterfactual, hypothetical situation is real for your brain and lets you gain new impressions.
The Interrupter - A Safety Switch for Emergencies
If nothing is working anymore in the game and you have no other means of keeping the situation under control, then you need a stop-and-go-trigger, an emergency switch. What you need is a sudden interruption. The point is to interrupt the processes that were described above. A break from the game can fulfil this purpose, but what's much better is starting a completely different activity that stimulates you strongly enough to focus your attention on something else.
 |
| You've got to say 'stop'! Do something else! |
A simple break often isn't enough, as you will just stay in your seat or skulk around your flat, still thinking about the negative situation. Instead, look for an activity which you perform in a less automated way.
If, for example, you regularly go jogging, then going for a jog won't help much, as there's little point in performing a largely automated, routine activity which requires little concentration. You won't be distracted enough unless the activity in question has very positive connotations, which is unusual for routine processes.
In this case, it may help to do something like going bowling instead of practising one of the sports you regularly practice. Further alternatives could be going to the cinema, a leisure centre, having a day out, driving to a different town, drinking with friends (please in moderation, and not as a permanent solution with other poker players...), etc.
Think about possible activities and people who could join you before you play. You can then use this mental or physical list if the need arises.
Muster the discipline to say 'Stop!', just as you have already found the discipline to invest thousands of hours of work into your game, patiently sitting in front of the monitor and painstakingly acquiring your proficiency in countless sessions. Realize that working on the psychological side of your game is just as important as working on the technical side.
Being convinced that you can somehow turn things around despite being on absolute tilt is a huge leak.
We like to believe that we are still in control of the situation rationally, but, due to the aspects described above, this is just an illusion of our consciousness that leads us astray. We simply can't play well anymore, no matter how much we want to. Our reason is just a small part of what goes on in our minds. Most of our what goes on is unconscious. This means that we cannot perceive or grasp it. Just a very small part, like the tip of an iceberg, shows itself through feelings, dreams and memories. Our reason sits on the tip of the iceberg like a ship-wrecked sailor, thinking that he can navigate the iceberg.
Dry Run - Visualization
Our unconscious mind doesn't distinguish between past, present and future. In dreams, our experiences are direct, instead of being filtered through our reason. This is what makes the visualization techniques that have been used in sports for decades work. When bobsleigh riders suddenly started swaying around at the start of the run with their eyes shut sometime in the 70s, people thought them mad. Today we know that what they were doing can be very useful as preparation for certain situations in Tennis, Golf, Formula 1, etc.
An Exercise
Make yourself comfortable before or during a session, close your eyes, and try to visualize, as clearly as possible, yourself standing up and leaving the room when the session is going badly.
 |
| Look at yourself from outside! |
Don't picture yourself in the first person view, picture yourself from the outside, as if someone had taken a photo of you or you were on a postcard.
Imagine simply standing up, leaving the room, and leaving the situation behind, both physically and mentally. Repeat this visualization, for example, as part of the preparation for a session. In the same way that some actions have to be repeated over and over again before having the desired effect, visualizations will often have to be carried out more than once. The effect of repeatedly carrying out a visualization is that your consciousness registers the pictured action as being real, and in a sense conducts dry runs for the action.
Caution: Don't imagine the session running badly, instead just imagine having freedom to leave whenever you like. That is the important difference.
Of course, you can also visualize staying perfectly relaxed and calm, continuing to play your A-game with a smile on your face despite the session running badly. Or you can visualize not tilting at all and simply making the moves necessary for the situations in an unperturbed, neutral way. However, I would recommend starting small, expanding as you start trusting the technique more and become more familiar with it. Don't start with your biggest problem, but work your way up.
This technique requires practice, just like anything else. At some point you took a starting hands chart and practice using it for days and weeks. These techniques work in the same way. The more familiar you are with them, the more effective they are.
Try to create images in your mind that are as colourful and attractive as possible. Also, don't leave it at a short visualization, but rather try to maintain it for some time, maybe three to five minutes. If you have difficulty concentrating on it for that long you can make a small *film* out of it and picture, for example, what you do after ending the session. Let yourself be guided by strong, positive feelings for this. Feel the strength and satisfaction you get from having the inner freedom to stop whenever you think you should.
Summary
-
Learn to observe yourself and train your ability for introspection. Poker is a game in which you not only have to observe your opponent carefully, but yourself as well.
-
You should develop a fixed plan for situations in which you are losing control, i.e. tilting, that corresponds to what you have learned about reacting correctly in certain situations.
-
Think about what can help you to accept tilt as an unavoidable part of your game, and try some things out. This way you won't be struggling against it or fooling yourself, but rather will learn to deal with it, protecting yourself and your bankroll.
About the author: Robert Langer is a psychological consultant, coach and trainer with a practise in Saarbrücken. He also teaches Psychology at a large German school for alternative medicine, and holds lectures and seminars in NLP, conflict solving psychology and psychological typology.
| LINKS | ||||||||||
|
||||||||||
