Question For Top Players

[theBruiser500]

Hey guys, hopping some of the top players (Ray Zee, Flynn, etc.) will weigh in here. If I didn't go on tilt and always played my A game, I'm guessing and this could be way off but my guess is my bankroll would be a lot higher, like 60-90% higher than what it is now. My winrate right now is good but in my game I still make tons of mistakes.

People sometimes try to throw numbers out there about how many BB/100 hands is a good winrate but winrate is a weird thing, it seems to me that if a person played their best all the time their winrate could be double what people think a good winrate is. When I used to make mistakes I'd say "that's okay, I'm just at 1/2 NL and I'm still learning, this mistake will make me money in the long run cause I will learn from it." Now though when I make mistake I get too annoyed with mysef I feel like I shoudl be done learning now and ready to start making serious money all the time without the mistakes.

Do you really good players like Ray Zee still go on tilt? How often do you make bad plays that you are upset with yourself after made it, is this a problem all palyers have no matter how good and will always have? I'd really like to hear how good players would evaluate themselves about tilt and how oftne they play A game or C game and any thoughts on the subject. Thanks.

[jay b.]

I found the fact Barry G. rated players for steam control interesting, I was naive enough to assume these guys didn't have much of an issue with tilt at that level.

[aggie]

I was going to reference the same link so i'll just give the link...Seems that eveybody has at least some problems with tilt / not playing their A-game.....Show me somebody who says they play their A-game at all times, and i'll show you sombody who is lying (although they might believe that temselves)

greenstein player analysis

[LarsVegas]

"Show me somebody who says they play their A-game at all times, and i'll show you sombody who is lying".

One thing we must remember is that this might not be down to failure to control the emotions of losing heavily, maybe feeling "unfairly treated" by the cards.

It could just as well being a failure to cope with the actual changes of correct play that some real bad steams (particularly live) demand.

For instance, if a usually very honest guy is turning over winners, winners, winners, winners against you (against certain players this could be the case for VERY long periods).

What should you do, given that for instance:

a) He always bet/raises if you check or bet the river
b) Usually or virtually always has what he is representing

Assuming this still is a thinking opponent (many thinking opponents are far more "honest" than people give them credit for, particularly on the river).

If you start giving him rope by folding consistently against this guy, you are now running the chance of being both out-lucked and out-played, and before you know it, maybe out-lucked has been replaced by out-played.

So there are factors and considerations during a bad run, ESPECIALLY in high limit games with much the same line-up. People reacting the changes in style their bad run requires for image and game theory reasons, might appear like tilting. They might also react in a non-correct manner, and yet they don't "tilt", they are simply TRYING to conciously change their game accordingly.

Another excample is if you semibluff raise with the correct frequency on the turn. When the 12-outers hit with perhaps a slightly greater frequency than normal, this coupled with all the flushes, straights, sets, two pairs and overpairs you will show down up on raising the turn, will make people uneasy about calling you down all the time.

Suddenly you go on a run of missing 15 3-to-1 draws on the trot. Additionally, people are hitting 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, 8- and so-forth outers against you whenever you raise a real a real hand on the turn.

Suddenly, people are calling your raises and bets down in a heartbeat every time. Should you continue with what you theoretically know is correct, solid, superior poker with roots in strong game theory, or do you alter you game in the face of the bad way you have been running and how your opponents are reacting to this?

See, change of play after running bad isn't neccesarily an emotional tilt.

lars

[AZK]

Flynn says that when you get to a certain level, you aren't making "mistakes" it's really more just making sure you stay on your A game and don't start playing a C game. You are at a level where I'd like to think you don't make many fundamental mistakes. The fact that you are playing 25/50 and I can only imagine being successful says this. Your mistakes are no longer I backed my stack with AA postflop, rather yours come down to player betting patterns, reads etc to decide whether or not a specific player has it. If you misread a player and lose your stack, sure you can be upset but you learn from it. It's not a mistake per se, more like misinformation, how can you be upset for putting a player on one thing and him showing you another. You learn the read, you apply it and move on, having a better read the next time a situation develops. If missing a read or losing a huge pot upsets you, and you tilt off a ton of money, then this is lowering your game to a C level and not being in a good mental state. I would imagine you should leave the table when you feel this happening and come back when you are back in the zone. There is nothing wrong with this and it isn't a sign of playing above your roll or anything like that.

For example, the diablo hand where he lost to a rivered higher boat and left, some idiot told him he shouldn't play that level if he gets upset. [censored] that. We aim to play perfectly, to have perfect shania against a given opposition each time we sit down but we are also playing for money. whether you are playing .25/.5 or 25/50 there is nothing wrong with being upset if you lose (be it bad beat or bad play) Money is money - and whether we like to admit it or not, it is one of (if not the) primary reason we play this game. No one would care to study, read 2+2 or do anything else to improve ones game if this were played for peanuts, so I think it is completely natural to be upset about lost money.

I'm sort of going off, but in short I think everyone to a certain extent tilts (which obviously depends on your definition - I'd define it as anytime you play a hand in a less than optimal way that you would normally play it given image, opposition etc - pretty vague I realize), the key is recognizing when/why you are tilting and not letting it affect your game.

Personally, I tilt when I don't get playable hands for an extended period of time, it leads me to start generating my own action e.g. raising 83s UTG, this obviously has mixed results. Other players tilt over lost pots/bad beats/bad play - I try to look at those situations as ways to improve it if I had to repeat it in the next hand. The key is controlling it. I'm sure every player tilts, the difference is that Flynn, Diablo, Zee etc are much better at assessing it (that is realizing you are playing sub-optimally), controlling it and moving on.

There are a ton of other thoughts I have on this, but I've wasted enough of everyones time and my ride is here to go to greektown anyway. I'll post more later.

[-Skeme-]

Good post, AZK.

[Loci]

Good one stud. Hope the geeks paid you off.

[Ghazban]

I can't directly answer your question as I'm certainly not a top poker player. However, perhaps I can contribute something by way of allegory.

I'm a freelance classical musician and, if I go to an audition for a big job, there will probably be at least 100 other players there. Of that 100, there are probably 30 that are good enough players to win the job. Playing their best, they will all be technically proficient, expressive, musical, emotional, and all the other things you want from a musician.

However, in music, as in poker, not everybody plays their best all the time. The guy who wins the job is going to be the one who plays great music even on his bad days.

I could be wrong, but I think there's a lot of that in poker, too. People who can play well even when they're a little on tilt, or a little unfocused or a little tired (etc. etc.) are going to have great long term success while those who can only play profitably under ideal conditions will have significantly less.

[KaneKungFu123]

Great Post!

You have to differentiate between the best player and the guy who wins the most money. There are probally players making more money than you in the game, but if you fixed those errors, you'd be way ahead of them.

[J.A.Sucker]

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You have to differentiate between the best player and the guy who wins the most money

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Not in my book. Not in my income tax return, either.