Tilt and Drift Are the Same Thing

Well after losing my entire month's profit in the last 3000 hands I feel that it's time to reflect again and to post a realization I had today.

For poker players arrogance is kind of necessary because you have to believe that your assessment of ranges and reads is correct if you want to play confidently and aggressively. However, it is possible to drift away from this positive arrogance into the negative kind. This is primarily the reason for my downswing. I admitted to myself that I was running extremely well when I was crushing but I was also playing very well.

Since then I started to autopilot because I was confident that I was amazingly better than everyone at 25NL. While that may be true, the only reason that I believe I am better than 99% of the people at this stake is because I was applying myself to every hand. I was playing ranges correctly and paying attention to every hand played while taking notes, color coding players, and legitimately outplaying people. This doesn't happen when you are only paying attention to 50% of what is going on and once your run good runs out so does your ability to beat the games with 50% focus. This drift is essentially the same thing as tilting because it makes you play less than your A or B games and often then leads to tilting because of the frustration of no longer winning.

The sad fact is, that I realized what I was doing this entire time but I continued to keep the TV on and stopped respecting poker as a job/competition. I became an egotisitcal donk just like everyone that I have been sucking money from up til this point. Just because I have a better control on my anger tilt during sessions doesn't mean that I can start taking the game lightly.

I am going to implement a rule that I am no longer allowed to be doing anything except listening to music while playing. No TV, no chatting, nothing. If I am ever to look at poker as more than just a hobby I need to treat is like it's a real job -- because it is.

Need some happy music after that session :P
YouTube - Katy Perry - Teenage Dream (Kaskade Club Remix)