Mental Game Forum

Here is a recent situation that occured in my game.  How should I approach my improvement in the context of your book?

I called a tag down 3 streets with my TPGK; I didn't even look at the stats of the villain, I didn't even consider his range.  I just called down without thinking. I was in auto-call mode.

And I know why now (but didn't know then). Because I was on tilt. Just a few hands earlier on another table, I cold-called a nit's UTG raise with AJhh.  The flop was 7hTsTh. I called a cbet and turned a flush (Kh). The nit bet half-pot. His holdings were likely AA, KK (putting me dead) and ATs, and AK.  This nit is not contuing with much else and he is not starting with anything else (for example, he is not likely opening with 8h9h.  I made a small raise on the turn, prepared to call a shove, but he called. The river was a K, probably the worst card in the deck for me as it filled his AT and AK.  He checked and I checked behind…perhaps I could have bluffed the river, but anyway, he showed AT.  The point is I was PISSED.  This was the second time in 4 minutes that a horrible river caused me to lose a nice pot, so this hand compounded my frustration.  So when I got TPGK on the flop in the hand in question, I was toast. I had already sunk into the world of tilt…and you know what is scary?  I didn't even REALIZE it.  I mean, I knew I was frustrated, but I had no idea I was going to suddenly – after what was otherwise a very calm, intelligent session – let two hands derail my entire ability to think. Seriously, my mind was literally BLOCKED from thinking by the emotion that was running through my head, and the thing that amazes me is that now that I look back on it, I didn't know what was happening to me.

How should I improve?

Thank you, this does help.  I have been logging my emotions as I play.  The following is an excerpt and my resultant root cause derivation:

1) Why do you get angry when you play poker and certain things don't go correctly?  

WHY do you get angry?  (The answer is NOT because you lost…I am looking for a REASON that you get angry that is unassociated with the result.)  The reason I get angry when bad things happen is because the MONEY MATTERS.  And money matters because it is – correctly or incorrectly – the measure of success.  And I want to be successful.  But what if money was not the measure of success?  What if some other statistic was the measure of success?  Because money is related in large part to variance and is not the
TRUE reflection of success.  If we are properly measuring success, money gained is only a side-bar to that success, but is not the true reflector of success.  In other words, the money can go up or down, and have nothing to do with your skill as a poker player. You can get lucky and win money, you can get unluckly and lose money…but your skill can still be the same in either situation.  So money won or lost is the worst measure of skill that you can use, yet, since it is what everyone sees, especially you, it becomes your measure. What you want to do is play with optimum skill and let the money happen or not…and usually if you play with optimum skill, money does go up, but it's not guaranteed to do so, except in the very, very long run. You need to measure your success in other ways which have little to do with money.

For example, your all in equity pre-flop, on the flop, and on the turn are excellent measures.  Other excellent measures are the profitability of your bets on the flop, on the turn, and on the river.  The other measure you should use the expected value of your calls.  When you call a bet on the flop, does it result in you winning?  

So, effective immediately, we are going to develop a set of measures of success that are not related to money won or lost.

These will be your measures from now on:

1. Preflop all-in equity.
2. Flop and turn all in equity.
3. River call efficiency.
4. Flop cbet success %.
5. River bluff success.

_____

In the interim of curing the root problem, I have drafted the following statement to read when I recognize my frustration occuring:

"Recognize that stress and emotion can block your analytical capabilty. Conduct your stress-relieving regimen now to remove stressors and open the lines of thinking."

I have a stress relieving regimen bassed on some BrainGym self-training I am doing.  Have you heard of this and if so, what is your opinion of it?

Am I on the right track to improving my mental game?  Please make further suggestions, if any.  Thank you.

I want to understand this so I don't mess it up.

The premise behind identifying mistakes when I am playing my worst is so that I can eliminate these mistakes to the point where I am unconsciously competent in these areas…is that correct?  Because if I can do this, these mistakes will be eliminated from the group of mistakes that occurs when I am playing at my worst, i.e. when I might be on tilt or tired, or whatever the situation may be.  Right??

Assuming this is correct, let's say I eliminate or improve upon a leak when I am playing at my worst. By definition, my inchworm has moved its left side further to the right, BUT I am still susceptible to the mental issue that was causing this problem in the first place. Therefore, it is still "available" to cause other problems.

Now, I understand (from your book) all of the various mental game issues. But I am a little unclear as to how I go about elimating them completely…i.e. how might a player stop feeling angered when he suffers a bad beat? I mean, just knowing the root cause can't really stop this. Emotion can't just be turned off…or can it?  How do we eliminate the emotions that are detrimental to our game…because if we can figure this out, we can improve every facet of our lives! We can become robots! (ha ha)

2/18 angered by the fish that donk led two streets; did not know what he was donking with and I made an A-high bluff on a 42477 board.  The thing is, I could have an should have folded way earlier in the hand, but for some reason, I was angered that this fish was doing this.  In fact, I tilted right in the middle of the hand.
It was "you can't do that to me tilt".  So I fought back and this was the result.  In fact, I think most of my tilt is anger that is encountered right in the middle of a hand.  This makes me want to bluff the guy out.

Why do I get "you can't do that to me!" tilt?  Because I don't like it when someone is trying to get over on me. I am by nature a suspicious person and I know that people, especially fish, don't have hands most of the time, so when I raise get played at in what seems like an improbable situation I get angry…and it is not anger that has accumulated from other hands, it is anger that occurs like the flip of a switch, right then and there, so honestly, I have no time to apply tilt removing or tilt-minimizing techniques; I am basically screwed right in the middle of a hand and I stop thinking!  

So what is the cure for this insta-tilt? Three things: recognition that I am susciptible to it so that I am on the lookout for it; 2) learning to play against people better when I am played back at so that I my unconscious skill level is what is driving my reaction and not tilt; and 3) resolution of the problem through analysis of my mental weakness in this area by finding the root cause.

To find root causes, we continually ask, "why?".

Why did I get upset at a guy playing back at me? Because I react poorly when I feel someone is trying to fool  me (because if I knew he had, for example, a set, I would insta-fold).  I think, "bullshit, you don't have anything, you donkey, you're full of shit."…then I devise a plan to bluff him out of his bullshit.  Why, then, do I get angry when people are trying to fool me when I know that is an integral part of the game and I do it to everyone else?  Under many circumstances I play this hand correctly and fold either the flop or the turn with minimal loss. So why did I suddenly become angry against this particular person or at this particular time?  It wasn't because he was a fish, because I have done this same thing against regs.  Because I take the move they are making personally.  I feel like they are trying to make a fool out of me and this angers me.  In fact, I feel assaulted and that produces a fight response from me. Calling them down or bluffing is my way of throwing a punch back at them.  And that is it.  In conclusion, when I am played back at, at certain random times, I feel as though I am being assaulted or violated and that I must swing back.  It is as if the bully was picking on me and I snapped and trying to knock him out.  But in poker, everyone is swing at everyone. No one is trying to attack me personally; they are trying to win an intellectual battle (even though they may not really know how) just the same as I am.  It is wrong to take things personally, but I know I have this issue because I am the same way on the basketball court when someone talks trash to me.  When this happens, my addrenaline rushes and I become a completely different player.  I get aggressive and my hustle increases 10-fold.  It is the same when someone tries to push me around in the paint.  When this happens, I fight back and I fight back hard.  But in poker this is so wrong! It is the wrong way to try to win the battle!  In poker, you don't win the battle with your fists – you win the battle with your wits and your intellect.  When I played chess seriously, this never happened because people can't poke at you and push you and throw swings.  It is purely intellectual.  Poker has an element of fighting in it and my response to that element must be intellectually based not physically based.  This is the resolution of my problem.  I have to view poker as more of a chess game than a basketball game, but I never realized I was doing not doing that. I can't just snap and fight back like I can on the basketball court.  

The reason this problem is more debilitating than other types of tilt is because if it happens in a hand, there is no short term recognition and minimization of it. It would be incorrect to say I am just going to fold every time someone attacks me.  So what I have to do is realize that I am indeed susceptible to it and when I am attacked, I need to make it an unconscious competence to relax and intellectually decide what to do, rather than react angrily.  The process would be: 1) I recognize throughout my sessions that people will be attacking me and that this is a natural part of the game; 2) I get attacked or played at; 3) I focus on my opponents' range and make the best mathematical choice given the available information.