Recognizing tilt before it hits...

I think I may finally be starting to recognize when I am *about* to go on tilt, rather then recognizing "Hey, I am losing cause I am on tilt." so I figured I would post to see if my self-revelation today might help someone else.

I jumped into a ring game today with 2 dollars, after about 30 minutes I was up to $3.82, and feeling good. 45 Minutes later got trip 4s on the flop, and lost to a flush on the river taking me down to $1.25. I took the beat in stride though and slowly built back up to $2.62. After another 30 minutes though I started noticing I was getting nervous, and the mantra in my head had changed from "Stay tight, be patient, get a good hand and drop the hammer." to "Don't drop below $2 again." As soon as I made that realization I left the table with my $0.62 winnings intact. Now I am going to go for a walk, and *maybe* play some more when I get home.

I don't have ESP and say ok a bad beat is going ot happen i am going to tilt. I reconize when tilt is present and am trying to stop playing. I have a very bad tilt problem.

4 keyboards
1 broken monitor(busted plastic)
1 mouse
and a hole in wall.

No joke.

- Soupie told me some advice in vent and i try to control my tilt as much as possible.

Originally Posted by Muxy

- Soupie told me some advice in vent and i try to control my tilt as much as possible.

Please share - I'm sure many could benefit from it. Controlling your emotions is a must if you want to play winning poker.

I lost $180 tonight when TT lost to 85o in HU of my last SnG. My reaction: I made the right plays to get him to put his money in when I was hugely in favor. That's all I can do. The rest is luck. Or as some might say "That's poker." I wouldn't change a thing about my play.

Point I was trying to make is that for me at least, a bad beat is not always going to put me on tilt immediately. As in this case I recovered nicely initially, but it must have stuck with me to some degree. When I realized that my attitude about why I was playing had changed from one of "I'm here to make money." to an attitude of "I don't want to lose money.", it was time for me to get out before I started doing stupid things.

As an aside after I got home from my walk, and determined that my head was right again I got in my first turbo SnG, and took 2nd place.

Originally Posted by Crotalusatrox

Point I was trying to make is that for me at least, a bad beat is not always going to put me on tilt immediately. As in this case I recovered nicely initially, but it must have stuck with me to some degree. When I realized that my attitude about why I was playing had changed from one of "I'm here to make money." to an attitude of "I don't want to lose money.", it was time for me to get out before I started doing stupid things.

As an aside after I got home from my walk, and determined that my head was right again I got in my first turbo SnG, and took 2nd place.

Yeah, sorry I hijacked your thread. I took your point and should have congratulated you on it - being aware enough to note such a thing about yourself before it causes problems is a very good thing.

Nice win too after your return.

I identify entirely with this thread topic, and Crotalusatrox's emotions and reactions. My current tilt habit seems to be to clam up and play only pocket pairs or AQ and better; this is a bit of a problem as I am mostly playing 6max and consistently win when I play a fairly loose, aggressive game, dropping the fucking hammer (TM) on the flop when I hit.

It's exacerbated by multi-tabling - if I have 3 or 4 tables on the go and I go on tilt, I can effectively be letting money drain away over each table until I pull myself together and start playing my natural, winning game.