1+1+1=Tilt

Tilt. We’re all susceptible to it, whether we want to acknowledge the psychological weakness of our psyches or not. There are many different forms of tilt (such as loss of pain threshold, getting mad at a specific opponent for sucking out, trying to get even by playing SnG after SnG trying to book a win, jumping up to limits too big for our ‘rolls, or even success syndrome that can cause erratic play) but they all lead to the same basic thing: bankroll meltdown. And believe me, the meltdown will happen at some point in your poker career. In fact, it will happen on an occasional basis. It’s really just a question of how far you fall whenever it decides to rear its ugly head.

I just experienced one of the worst weekends of my poker career. It started well enough, with my ‘roll up $20 or so Friday afternoon. I had just gotten above the magic $500 threshold and was feeling really in control of my game… but then a series of bad beats hit later that evening when I decided to sneak in 100 hands while waiting for my wife to get ready to go out to dinner.

Actually, it wasn’t just a series of bad beats. No, it was more like a seemingly never-ending succession of horrible brutalizations and incredible suck-outs that continuously clubbed me over the head. In the span of 45 minutes, I had pocket Kings cracked three times, pocket Aces cracked twice and the nut straight on the flop lose to a runner-runner flush. In a couple of those instances, the losses were “reasonable;” i.e., I lost to sets that I had no way of seeing and simply chalked it up to “that’s poker.” In the other cases, however, the opp was playing incredibly bad hands and getting incredibly lucky. I was down over $50 by the time the bloodshed ended. Talk about going out with the wife for a night on the town in the wrong frame of mind. Not a good idea.

Okay, so we went out and I managed to be a good husband and compartmentalize the bloodshed from the poker tables. Had a nice time, then later went to bed feeling good. I woke up Saturday, intent on putting the previous day’s losses behind me and working on playing solid fundamental poker. Well, that was the plan, anyway. Right off the bat, I suffered three awful beats again, and dropped a quick $25. Again, it was pocket Aces and Kings, but this time Anna also joined the party. I should have walked away from the game at that point, but instead tilted a bit and lost another $20 with stupid play, trying to get even. At this point I did take a break, vowing to come back later that day and play good poker. Yeah, right.

Well, I did come back later that day, but I certainly did not play good poker. Instead, I went into “bug-tilt” mode, playing at limits that were higher than my bankroll could support. Of course, I went card dead at that point, too, and lost more money. So what did I do? Jumped into some stud hi/lo and donked off more money, of course. Then I played some Pot Limit Omaha (yes, PLO; a game I have no business playing) and—miracle of miracles—actually won a few bucks. This temporary euphoria sent me back to the hold’em tables, where I basically had a meltdown, playing something like 40% of the hands dealt to me. The swings were incredible, but in the long run I was going to lose. The question was how much. The answer: a lot.

The Guru likes to talk about 1+1+1=Tilt. One bad beat, followed by a suck-out, followed by something else going wrong is enough to push most people over the tilt edge. Early in my poker career I sneered at this concept. I didn’t understand how anyone could go off the deep end and tilt away so much money. Aren’t they rational human beings who can see what’s going on? Why can’t they stop it? What the hell is wrong with these people?

The truth is that there is nothing so unusual about this type of behavior. It can and will happen to even the best players in the world. The real question to ask yourself isn’t if tilt will ever hit you, it’s this: how far will you fall when it does strike? I fell pretty far this weekend. Lost a total of $150, or nearly a third of my bankroll. About $50 of it was the result of plain old bad beats and suck-outs, the kind of thing you have to expect in this game. The other $100, however…. Well, that’s a whole ‘nuther story. A tilt story, to be exact.

1+1+1 = -$150. Ouch.

All-in for now…
-Bug