Swinging

[Skuzzy]

We often talk about swings. Recently I had a nasty swing right when I moved up permanently (or so I had planned). I experienced a single session that included 11 very similar hands. In each I held AA, KK or AK, in each the pot was reraised preflop and in each I was confident, because of the preflop action, that I had the best hand on the flop. In each case I held either an overpair to the board or TPTK. In each case all the money went in on the flop. In each case when the cards were shown I was ahead with overpair vs overpair or TPTK vs TPGK or overpair vs TPTK. In every hand I lost this match up while being anywhere from 4:1 to 9:1 ahead. Despite this anomalous occurence and a few other BBV worthy hands I managed to curb my losses to just over 5 buyins. Having put over 12 buyins into the pot as a favourite and lost I felt this was one of the best sessions of poker I have ever played in my life.

I had definetly learned something valuable but it took a few days to realise what it was. In sharing here I expect mostly that I will get a kind of "so [censored] what" response. I expect also that most of you will have a sense of this already and this will just be "news to me". I think though from the number of posts concerning swings tilt, dealing with variance etc. and from the responses to such posts that this will be useful to some.

so...

Tilt - what poker is all about?

Online players out analyse, out strategise and out play there live opponents in all but one area, (agree or disagree with this statement but its not relevant - just my opinion and obviously a gross generalisation) live players are in control of their emotions to a far greater extent. This is true because human beings are made to communicate. Whether we want to or not we commuicate all kinds of information to each other. A sigh, a bite of the lip, a scratch, a movement forward or back, a tremor of the hand or the voice, all subtle signals that can be read and understood. Live players take all kinds of steps to avoid being readable by this outward unconcious language. In a live game of poker you would be eaten alive if you acted the same way as you do while sat in front of your laptop or dual 21" LCD monitors. Live players are constantly attempting to control how they feel, so that they do not give away information. Online players, for the most part, do not need to hide their joy when dealt aces or their pain when the villain sucks out to his 2 outer.

Obvious stuff right? There is however a secondary benefit to live players gained from their attempt to avoid having tells. They are controlling their emotions, and emotional control is needed to avoid tilt.

Online when I get dealt AA,KK or flop a set or the nut str8, I tend to express my feelings. What I noticed was that this seemed to result in much more emotional angst when I was outdrawn and often even led to poor play, bad calls and tilt. I noticed that I hardly ever had these swings of emotion amongst the swings of cards in live play. Usually, live, when I get a big hand or even a lock I try to think about it as "this can still go wrong". I think this way to keep from smiling like a cheshire cat. I imagine how stupid I'd look turning over my nut flush in triumph only to have misread the board and be actually holding Ace high with just four to the flush. The result is that when I lose it doesn't floor me. I have never punched anything, screamed or saught refuge with God during a live game, but I have done so with amazing frequency while playing online.

This was the revelation I had during my recent swing. I cannot control the swing of the cards but I can control the swings of emotions. Online I had never bothered and seen no need to control my emotions. Who was there to see? This had been a mistake. Controlling my emotions is what keeps me from tilting. It's what keeps me from making bad calls and bad plays. Emotional control isn't exercised just so I can avoid giving off tells, it is done so I can avoid chasing lost causes and making stupid crying calls. When I play online I need this control just as much as I do when I play live.

It's important too to realise that all emotional responses have a negative impact. Allowing the buzz of winning a big pot to linger into the next few hands of play will effect our decisions as much as the frustration of losing a big pot to a donk catching two pair on the river.

Having this kind of control isn't easy though. Some people can seemingly disconnect and feel nothing at will, others distract their minds from the emotional content of the situation with complex mental tasks or engaging thoughts. The basic common theme in all approaches is that you must first recognise that you have had an emotional repsonse before you can correct it. I really do mean correct it too, it's unwanted and mostly inappropriate. Feeling happy because you got dealt pocket rockets is not an appropraite response to the situation you just found yourself in. The hand is still to play out, you can easily lose a large pot with this hand, it's happened before, it happens all the time, so recognise that your nice warm fuzzy feeling is misplaced and then return to your previous calm, detached state of mind. Similarily, when you've bet your top pair all he way only to get bet into by the chaser when the draw gets there. The frustration and anger is inappropriate, he did what he does and what you wanted him to do, this is where the money is coming from, a win or loss is irrelevant as is any feeling you have about it.

Recognise your emotions, realise they are counter productive and misplaced, let them subside, move on.


Enough rambling before tl;dr is the only response, and England just kicked off against Paraguay in the Word Cup [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[FoldEqu1ty]

Skuzzy, you're posts have been absolutely brilliant of late. Thank you.

[Ratamahatta]

What helps me to stay calm when I get a bad beat is thinking about how much money I theoreticaly won on a hand even if I lost it.

Earlier this weak I been delt KK at 50NL and 80/3 called my b3b ai pf with Q5 and sucked out on me. He had around $40 I think and I had him covered. Now, I was 87% favorite to win the hand, that means that I theoreticaly made $29 profit on that hand and it made me feel very good!

[dboy23]

I've never really thought about it like that but you are absolutely right. In a live game my emotions from one hand manage to detach themselves from the next because I'm not pumping my fist or banging my head from the last hand. This is of course good, because one should be playing each hand in an emotional vacuum. As for how to stop myself from celebrating or feeling pissed off online, I'm not sure exactly how to do it. Usually I try not to play a big pot after a big lose or big win even, unless I have the absolute nuts. That is probably the best I can do. I know I'm more comfortable in a marginal hand after a big one live.

[Rubber Soul]

What a great post skuzzy... Your post about table selection in another thread was great too (especially the part how people who say "any game at level x is good", shows that those people don't know poker)...

I have to admit that a good chunk of what is posted around here is worthless to any player who has gotten 100k hands under their belt (I assume it is that way because just as in the general poker world most players are losers and thus have little to offer a winning player)... But every so often a poster like skuzzy reminds me how these forums can continue to have value...

Emotions may be the single most important part of poker because if you are not in control of them you will lose, and being even minded when winning or losing goes a long way to making solid profits in poker... "Winners tilt" is also a huge problem for many players... Winners tilt is when you start to play reckless after you have had a run of good cards and have won some big pots... It is just as bad as regular tilt because you are not maximizing your profit in your best hands and minimizing your losses with losing hands...

The key is to approach each and every hand individually... Howard Lederer's Zen approach is a worthy goal to achieve...

My goal is to clone the approach used by Barry Greenstein and Chip Reese... They seem to control their emotions better than any other players, and perhaps that is why they may be the two winningest poker players ever...

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[Skuzzy]

Glad someone liked it [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Rubber Soul]

Best initial post in a thread around here in weeks and few have anything to say about it...