2,100 Hands. Battling major tilt right now.
Today was a very horrible day poker wise. You might think, "Wow he lost like 8 buyins!" but no that didn't happen. In fact I ended the day -18. Not bad at all and when you think about it very small in the grand scheme of things. But I was up to +110 before it all came crashing down. And one thing I can say by playing all these hands I know 100% what causes me to tilt ... and I think that's the first battle in me fighting it.
I know I'm tilting and smart enough to know I can't play logical poker right now. The tilt *is* affecting my play so I know its time for yet another break ... so this does put my 20k hand goal in jeopardy but better that then tilting off my entire month of very modest profit.
Here's the kind of stuff that gets my blood boiling:
- Hitting Sets or Straights at the flop in multiway pots and having everyone fold it to you. Today I had 6 sets in 1 session only to see 5 of them gain about +$9 collectively. Very frustrating.
- Getting my money in good against a shortstacker, and seeing it blow up in my face. AA < JJ.
- Hitting a set at the flop, stacking off, and seeing your idiot opponent hit a damn ROYAL FLUSH at the river. Good to know I can be on the wrong end of a 1 in 650k opportunity.
Anyways ... obviously this is a rant post and I do apologize for it. I stopped when I dipped below breakeven and recognized I am not playing right and thinking right. That's the first step in tilt control. The next is to just bounce back for next time.
Positives:
1) I went 2/2 in the 210fpps so the irony in all this is that the $22-$18 = +$4 on the day.
2) I am 1k VPPs now away from GOLD STAR status which is cool and will mean more rakeback.
3) I didn't set fire to my local El Pollo Loco when tilting.
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About Me
My name is Sean Gibson and I am a poker journalist and part time poker player. I work full time at PokerNewsDaily.com where I host a daily news show called "The Daily Deal" and also handle the bulk of the live player interviews. In terms of poker you will find me playing $1/$3 No Limit Hold'em in Vegas or in Los Angeles (or San Diego) and online playing small stakes games.
Ice, losing is something that’s going to happen repeatedly in your poker career. Whether you’re losing stacks, sessions, or months, you need to learn to lose better. Every time you lose a stack realize that you’ll win more than you lose. Every time you lose a session look the number of winning sessions you’ve booked and realize you’re a winning player.
You can’t always be a winner short-term. You will lose. It happens to everyone. The sooner you let these losses go the sooner you can get back to being a winner long-term.
I’d like to recommend Elements of Poker. Tommy has some great prospectives on losing and tilt that I think will help you.
[i]1) I went 2/2 in the 210fpps so the irony in all this is that the $22-$18 = +$4 on the day.
2) I am 1k VPPs now away from GOLD STAR status which is cool and will mean more rakeback.
[/i]
That isn’t “irony” it’s profit!
You are letting bad beats tilt you when you are POSITIVE. STOP!
El Pollo Loco, haha. Good one. It is a restaurant, right? Sorry I don’t know, Im from Germany. Believe me I know how you feel. Bobby Baldwin said Poker is a character builder – especially when running bad. Sometimes that works for me. Good luck!