Things it took me a while to learn, Part 11, Time and Tilt Management

[Bond18]

I’ve got some time over the next week before I have to get back to live poker so I thought I’d get back to writing some of these. A lot of people in the ‘what do you want to see from these articles’ thread they were curious about time management (and to a lesser degree, volume) and tilt/emotional management. Neither of these seem like incredibly elaborate topics, so I’ve decided to combine them despite not being all that related.

Time Management: The annoying part about MTT play, is that it’s the most restrictive form of playing poker when it comes to time freedom. Not only do the tournaments go off at a time we don’t decide, but online tournaments often last 5-10 hours and live ones multiple days.

When it comes to live poker we get very little choice in our time management since we can only one table and all breaks/rests are structured for you. The hardest part about live poker in regards to time management, is staying away from the temptations of the live scene in order to get enough sleep at night to play well. On any given night during say, the WSOP, people will be going out for food, parties, strip clubs, bars, and if your not a social pariah you’ll often be getting invites. If you’ve got to play the next day at 12 you should probably be up at least a half hour (depending on where your staying) before so you can shower, get dressed and get some decent food in your system before you have to play. I swear to god if another one of you [censored] heads sits down next to me in a live event without showering and smell like [censored] I’m going to punch you in the throat.

For online poker, time management is a sort of juggling act. My personal process goes something like: Wake up, shower, set out breakfast in front of my computer, fire up 3-6 tournaments (depending on what hour I’m starting on) and continuing to register for the next ~4 hours, with my girlfriend helping me out by making some food about 4-5 hours into my shift. My average day normally ends up lasting within 30 minutes of 8 hours, but some might take under 6 or over 10, depending on which tournaments I go deep in and if I stop registering early. I play around 6-10 tables at a time on two screens, and on truly hectic days it can reach 12, but my average is around 7 or 8, which is comfortable at this point. Over the course of the day I probably play roughly 15 tournaments, depending on which day of the week it is, and 6 sometimes 7 days a week (though I’ll take half days so I get off early and get outside for the rest of the day.)

There are various pit falls of this kind of system. What about when you get hungry? I’d recommend having easily prepared meals around that also aren’t junk food, and staying away from things that will make you feel lethargic (booze, turkey, greasy/fatty food.) When it comes to using the bathroom, it’s nice to play with someone else in the room in this event (though at this point with the one player to a hand/account paranoia who knows, you could be accused of wrong doing here) or have a laptop you can move all your tables to.

As your day gets longer you should likely concentrate on the tournaments you are deeper in, as it seems a lot of players are auto piloting early in tournaments (as I often am myself.) By the time you reach the money, and certainly by the final table, most players are paying to every hand with at least some level of attention. Sometimes maintaining focus over a day this long can be pretty hard, and I can’t fault people who go on semi auto pilot while nine tabling, as long as every time a serious decision comes up you pause and put real consideration towards it. Using PT/PAHUD will also help with this, and I normally prefer to put a couple ‘feature tables’ up in the most convenient spot for me, normally the highest buy in or one’s I’m most deep in, and pay a lot of specific attention to those two and taking some notes. I’m pretty sure anyone who pays attention and tries to take notes on every hand of every table (while 8 tabling) all day is going to drive themselves insane, but if you have no problem with this kind of focus, go for it.

As far as how many days a week you want to play, I find it’s easier for a poker player to play more days since I enjoy my work (some of us don’t) but also since we lose zero time to anything but our work. There’s no commute, no trying to find parking, no homework (I guess reviewing and discussing your game, but that’s hardly homework) and no forced social interaction. If I had to guess, we likely save ~2 hours a day compared to your average worker since we work at home and we can always pick which days to take off or leave early. How many days a week you should play comes down to how much you need the money, how much you like playing, and how many other responsibilities/activities you have in life.

Tilt/Emotional Management: I’ve been lucky in that I’ve never had tilt problems. The last time I can remember really tilting was over a year ago, and I was playing over my bankroll.

The easiest answer to any tilt problem is to play stakes low enough that you never feel a huge pressure to win. Financial instability can be very tilt inducing, and if you really need money playing poker likely isn’t the answer.

Next I’d suggest having a stress outlet. Some people use a stress ball, play with chips in their hand, yell and scream, get exercise, have a cold drink, take some deep breaths, take a break for a few minutes, play a youtube video that cracks them up, etc. Find what works for you, and if it’s a healthy outlet, stick with it. We all have different triggers for our stress/tilt, and figuring out what they are and avoiding them is essential to a level head.

The part I would stress the most though, is realizing how pointless it is to get angry over that which you cannot control. Like I’ve said before, you need to make your peace with variance, since you’ll likely never understand it and it will NEVER be ‘fair’. Bitching about variance is not only counterproductive, but anyone who does more than a little of it will likely be branded as a whiner and a bitch, and you don’t want to be a whiner and a bitch do you?

In the end, all poker that poker winds up being is trying to make optimal decision after optimal decision after optimal decision into infinity, then watching the results. You can control the decisions you make but you can’t control the outcome. Since you’ll always be able to get into another tournament or game fretting about busting out of this one or that one is pointless. Any special importance you give to a singular event is mostly imagined. “Oh but Bond, I busted out of the WSOP ME, how tragic is that?” We all bust out of the WSOP ME (as I find it highly unlikely any WSOP champ is reading this, but just in case, stop being a Dbag Jamie Gold), how tragic can it be if it’s that common? In most tournaments there’s normally only one guy ‘happy’ with how it ended, and that is obviously the winner. If you can’t handle failing at an enormous frequency, then tournament poker likely isn’t for you. It’s okay to tell your occasional bad beat story here and there, but investing a huge amount of emotion into a single tournament is pretty stupid and counterproductive to achieving sick results.

Tilt is simply you being a big baby over variance. Grow up, face the fact that poker will often disappoint you, and do everything in your power to control what you can to reach a favorable outcome.