Just finished writing a blurb in my blog about tilting. Thought it might be semi-interesting for some readers so I'm posting it here. Sorry if it feels "dumbed-down" at all but I try to keep my blurbs somewhat understandable for non-poker-playing readers. Feel free to disagree/comment/question as it was difficult to formulate what I was trying to say.
"I wanted to start off this thread by admitting that I "tilted" last night. For the first time since I can remember, I was well aware that I was playing bad poker due to running bad from taking beats and coolers. This is not because I haven't "tilted" in the past, but rather, this is the first time I've done it since the epiphany I had the other day. (Just to clarify, the "tilty" session only lost winnings from earlier in the day.. I didn't lose my bankroll or anything..)
Here's the details on my epiphany... I used to be a firm believer that players who truly believed they had an "A game", "B game", "C+ game", etc. were being extremely naive. It used to drive me nuts to read players saying "well I wasn't playing my best" whenever they posted a bad session. I used to believe that a player was either playing consciously and thus applying their given knowledge to each situation, or on stupid monkey tilt. How could there be an in between? You're either paying attention and playing to the best of your abilities, or you're being dumb because you're hot under the collar, or drunk, or high, or whatever. Well earlier this week, I found the in between stages. I realized while at the tail end of a session that I'd played the entire time without music playing. I ALWAYS play with music. This means that my subconsious mind was so busy making decisions that it couldn't even bring to my attention that I'd been playing musicless. This is going to be hard for me to translate into words, but I'll give it a shot...
When me or any other decent regular online poker player is playing a session, our minds are thinking a million thoughts a second. Because I've played so many hands, many situations are very elementary and I just do what comes natural. But if the subconscious is not free of emotion and other obstacles, it can't filter through your giant memory bank of "easy situations" like it normally would. Sure, you may think you made the right play... but you may be completely unaware of the fact that if you were not slightly distracted, your subconcious would have popped a different thought bubble into your head. The subconscious doesn't explain to you what its doing, or go back and analyze it afterwards, it just spits out the information to your conscious, thinking, mind. It has no interest in bringing to your attention that it's not functioning at 100%. This concept is emphasized in post-flop situations players may call "tricky". When given a river decision (ie. to call or fold to a bet) against a capable and not entirely predictable player, a ton of logic is filtering through a thinking player's mind. Its difficult to describe... but essentially you are considering all of the types of hands he could potentially have, and quickly filtering each one through his "story" of plays that he's made during previous crucial times in the hand. Its like his river bet represents a potential group of actors all looking to play the lead role in a movie. You, the producer, must make your decision by picturing each actor in the movie as the main character, and choosing which one "fits" best... and you have 15 seconds. When described this way, its easy to see how a "cluttered" sub conscious might not be in the right frame to be sending the most accurate thoughts to the forefront of your problem solving situation. It was only after becoming aware of my different levels of sub-conscious concentration that I was able to identify my poor play last night. I wasn't on complete monkey tilt to the point where I was consciously making wrong decicions. However, I had been playing well enough recently that I knew I was not gaining the usual information throughout hands from my subconscious data storage. Decisions were clearcut, because I was making them clearcut. So next time you're playing and things are not going your way, don't simply accept the fact that you must not be tilting because you are consciously aware of your decisions. If your decisions seem to be very easy and without much thought necessary, there's a good chance thats because some of your thoughts are being suppressed by the steam blowing out your ears.
One last thing I wanted to add about this subject is that I still believe most people are quite often being naive and results-oriented when they describe how they played in a given session. People often fail to realize that variance inhibits itself in all aspects of poker, not just your results. In any given session sample of 1000 hands, the number of tough decisions you encounter can vary greatly. I've had 1000 hand sessions where I played so robotically that I considered hiring a monkey to do the work. This is not necessarily because I wasn't thinking clearly, (although, it could be), but often because their simply weren't many tough decisions to make. Then other times, a 1000 hand session will lend itself to many difficult situations. When encountered with such situations, one must make a bold decision for alot of chips, and face the consequences. Quite often these situations are "close" where the wrong decision is not all that bad compared to the right decision, and regardless of what you choose, the results are very reliant on luck. When these sessions happen with lots of "tricky" hands and a player has good results, it is easy for him to assume that he is playing his "A+ game" as all of his intuitive "guesses" are "right". And conversely, when things don't go well for the player, they will almost certainly believe they are "not playing their best". "
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