Poker Table: Easy Ways to Stay Off Tilt
Going on tilt at the Poker Table is pretty much the last stop on the way to disaster. If your opponents can tell that you’re getting angry and distracted, then your play is going to start turning into a dumpster fire of disastrous proportions. The principle of every poker game is to win, and while losing the grip it’s sometimes understandable, getting mad isn’t going to help you win real cash at the poker table.
Of course, if someone else is on tilt at your table, you are probably going to love it and use it in your advantage. When you cause other people to fall off the table, you can rake in pots left and right. If it hits you, though, you are likely to leave empty-handed. So how can you avoid it?
Don’t stress over what you cannot change
Guess what? Even the best poker players suffer bad losses now and then. That’s why what you’re doing is called “gambling.” There is always a risk when playing real money poker— and with reward also comes the chance for failure. You know that losing is just a part of it, because you’ve taken your own lumps in the past. Even after a lot of practice (and after learning from your mistakes) there is just no way around the fact that you will occasionally take the big loss. The stronger a player you become, the fewer times this will happen, but it will happen to you now and then, no matter how big your shark fin has become. So when it happens, just grin and bear it, and get ready for the next hand.
Know when it’s time to sign off for some Z’s
A lot of the time, if you sit down to play and you’ve had plenty of sleep; it’s a lot easier to stay off tilt. People who are tired have higher levels of cortisol (the hormone that triggers when stress comes). This hormonal shift can make a loss you would normally shrug off into a catastrophe. If you’re playing short on sleep, you won’t make decisions at the same level of quality anyway, so you will lose more — and you’re more likely to find yourself on tilt.
To go up, you have to come down
There is no one who has seen their account balance simply climb up and up throughout their poker career. Even the sharks don’t win all the time — if that were true, tournament play simply wouldn’t work. This game is a marathon, and as long as you can come out ahead every now and then and slowly build up profit over the long haul, you’re doing well. You can’t worry about the progress in each and every poker game. If you just think about the bad situation going on right now, you will go nuts over time, and you won’t be able to play the way you want to. Instead, look at your poker career — not just this game — and the losses will fall into perspective instead of seeming like bottomless pits.
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