Back to those nine guys in that smoky room (I’m just gonna assume that you read my last article), they continue to dance with each other hand after hand. It’s getting monotonous, and then all of a sudden a loud cry from one of the players, you’ve heard it if you’ve ever been on a poker table, “how could you call that!?” followed by “unbelievable!” and the little more imaginative “you are a luck-suck artist”. This player, let’s call him ‘Big Daddy’ (an obvious reference to his size and not his origins from the Louisiana swamp lands), decides to make mistake after mistake for the next half an hour and lose all his money. He buys in for more and without wasting a breath loses that as well, eventually leaving the room in a huff. Big Daddy, a perennial winner in the game, just lost his mind and every chip under his chin in a matter of minutes. What the hell just happened? This phenomenon is commonly known in poker circles as Tilt. Tilt is a term for a state of mental or emotional confusion or frustration in which a player adopts a less than optimal strategy, and this results in disaster for him and a windfall for whoever was around at the right time. This is not a new concept; it’s been around a long time.
Some of you might have read the great Indian mythological epic Mahabharatha, most of you would have seen it on TV, and those of you who aren’t Indian or have been living in a cave all their lives, I suggest you go get an abridged version. In the Mahabharatha, Yudhisthira is known for his unflinching adherence to satya (truth) and dharma (righteousness), which were more precious to him than royal ambitions, material pursuits and family relations. Yudhisthira was unable to refuse when Duryodhana's (his cousin and arch-enemy) maternal uncle Shakuni, challenged him to a game of dice (might have been some distant cousin of Back Gammon). Thanks to Shakuni's mastery of the game (some believe he cheated by using loaded dice), Yudhisthira lost each game, eventually gambling away his kingdom, his wealth, his brothers and finally his wife. Owing to the protests of Vidura, and Bhishma, (the respected elders) Drona and Dhritarashtra returned all these losses. However, Shakuni challenged Yudhisthira one more time, and even after realizing that he just had a lucky escape Yudhisthira accepted and once more lost. This time, he, his brothers and his wife were forced to discharge the debt by spending thirteen years in exile, with the condition of anonymity in the last year, before they could reclaim their kingdom. Now Yudhisthira was known to be an extremely intelligent, righteous and calm man, yet this wise man fell into the trap that tilt creates and lost everything. The point is that it is an age old problem and that the best of us (even mythological heroes) aren’t immune to it.
Tilt can happen in many situations in life. Ever wanted to do something stupid after someone cuts you off in traffic? How about at work, when you feel you have been unfairly treated by your boss? Or have you said something ridiculous to the girlfriend/boyfriend during a fight (well, that might not be tilt but we’ve all been there). But in poker it is most apparent due to the transparency of the game. There are many factors that can induce tilt, some intrinsic (psychological) some extrinsic (social).
I'd rather not go into the deeply psychological factors like self-sabotaging personalities and other Freudian complexes because I don’t know enough about that stuff. The one that I will mention is the imbalanced pleasure pain principle. This principle claims that the pleasure you get from a win is less than the pain of a loss of the same amount. Some studies have shown (I can’t believe I used that phrase, it’s usually followed by some made up bull, so here is mine), that pain of a loss of Rs. 100 equates to the pleasure of a win of Rs.250. The excessive pain caused by this imbalance often results frustration and desperation which leads to poor decisions, a ride on the tilt train. There is another psychological factor that bears mention, Post-facto rationalization. I made that term up, just because it sounds well researched, but it is very real. It is our ability to come up with a seemingly valid reason for our inane actions once the results of those actions are in front of us. Yudhisthira was criticized by Draupadi (his wife) for succumbing to temptation and playing dice, an art he was absolutely unskilled at, making the Pandavas prey to Shakuni and Duryodhana's evil designs and at the time he argued that it was impossible to refuse a challenge of any nature, as he was a Kshatriya (warrior caste) and was obliged to stand by the Kshatriya code of honour. That’s post-facto rationalization; it stops one from learning from our mistakes which of course makes us keep repeating them. Yudhisthira, of course later, reproached himself for weakness of mind. After all, it takes a smart man to not only realize that his actions were wrong but also that his rationalization of those actions was faulty.
The extrinsic reasons for tilt are primarily due to other players. There are players that, on purpose or unwittingly, will do things that can cause one to get upset with them. Excessive rudeness or lewdness, being heavily intoxicated at the table, and poor table etiquette are ways that players can wear on nerves. This will result in development of animosity towards them, and before you know you are gunning for them on the table. Less than optimal decisions will be made, money will be lost and now you are in the middle of a full blown tilt attack. Conversely, the act of putting an opponent on tilt may not pay off in the short run, but if some time is put into practicing it, a player can quickly become an expert at “tilting” other players (with or without using bad manners). In theory, the long-run payoff of this tactic can have a monetarily positive expectation. Though I do not suggest it as the social losses may be too much to bear.
So it becomes abundantly clear that a major aspect of this game (and perhaps other areas in life) is to avoid tilt. It is my contention that given enough experience and the correct knowledge of the game (almost) anyone can become good at playing poker while the players who can do the aforementioned and control their emotions i.e. tilt, are great.
How does one avoid tilt? Understand the game you are playing. This game is about, and I can’t stress this enough, process over outcome. Disregard the outcomes of pots, particularly those that are statistically uncommon. So-called “bad beats,” when one puts a lot of chips in the pot with the best hand and still loses, deserve little thought; they are the product of variance, not bad strategy. This mindset calls for the player to understand that poker is a game of decisions and correct play in making the right bets over a long period of time.
For example, you opened up a shop that offers its customers a game where you flip a (fair) coin and every time a heads shows up you pay them Rs. 30 and when a tails show up they pay you Rs.70. Amazingly someone actually shows up to this shop and wants to play. Now heads shows up three times in a row, will you shut your shop thinking life is not fair? I would be happy that not only are these geniuses coming to my shop and playing this game but also that they have won a few times making them long term customers. Remind yourself, that every time you sit down to play this game, it is a test of your psychology. Can you withstand the pressures of the game (variance and the crazy characters on the table) and maintain objectivity and discipline? Also, if you want to avoid desperation, have the appropriate bank-roll. If you play a game of poker with a minimum buy-in of Rs. 100 and your life savings are Rs. 500, you are in a lot of trouble. Play within your means and you can evade desperation. Do you think that Yudhisthira would have bet his brothers one by one on the outcome of a skilled game without having any, had he known how to control tilt? But then again the Mahabharatha would have been quite a boring read.
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