To develop into a good poker player, you need to learn to avoid tilt. This is highly important as this would seem to be one of the easiest things to do in poker but it is sad to say that may players don’t realize how easy it is to go on tilt. There are many simple things that can cause tilt.
Wild play is the most common reason players lose their bankrolls. It doesn’t take very much to force someone on tilt. There are reasons for it, and when you recognize them in yourself, you can spot them in others, and use it to your advantage.
Reasons for Tilt
Distractions: It’s Murphy’s Law of Poker. Yes, and anything that can distract you from your game will happen. Whether you are at your home and the kids decide to reset your computer; the waitress at the casino has a shirt that is on too tight; or the bartender is pouring the drinks a little too freely, unless you control your distractions you run the risk of tilt. Try to avoid such distractions and focus on the game to the highest level. It is not easy but you need to practice how to increase concentration.
Table Talk: Sometimes it’s hard to ignore what other players are saying at the table, but it is important to ignore. It’s part of their strategy and often happens when you are playing against a maniac. If you let the talk get into your head, you can easily find yourself pushing your entire stack in on a hand that you have no chance of winning, just to prove a point or try and keep your ego satisfied.
Bad Beats: A good measure of a player is how well they respond to a bad beat. There is a sense of failure when your full house gets beaten by four of a kind, and you usually go all in on the next hand, to either try and recover your stack or just go out in a blaze of glory.
Playing above your level: Nothing makes a person go on tilt faster than playing out of your league. If your bankroll can’t afford the swings that come with playing poker, then you should drop a level. This is highly suggested by experts and professional poker players simultaneously.
Tilt Management
Tilt is all about stress, and just like stress management there are different techniques you can use to manage tilt. You can take a deep breath, and remember it’s better to fold a hand or sit out then lose all of your chips. If you know the reasons for tilt, you will know how to avoid it better and you will play a better game.
You can never fully eliminate tilt. This is completely true, but you can at least affect how much it impacts your stack. So, good luck. And wait, there are some more valuable suggestions below.
Does Winning Online Make You A Good Poker Player?
Is it true? Just give a thought.
New sites like casinos-online.co.ke spawn up on what seems like a weekly basis, each boasting some sort of promotion to lure in flocks of new players. Most online-poker rooms cater to players with a broad range of skill levels, so this begs the question, do online-poker results provide an accurate assessment of one’s Poker skill? If so, do these results translate into live Poker success? Just give a thought.
Those With Whom You’ll Play
The answer is highly debatable. Unfortunately, it depends on the company you keep; the faster the company, the better the play. Sure, some online players have an excellent understanding of the game and grasp on the complex strategy involved. But on average, most online-poker rooms are occupied with inexperienced and mostly undisciplined players trying to learn the game.
Every day, traditional “brick and mortar” cardrooms are filled with players with varying degrees of ability, but nowhere are the differences between a good and a bad Poker player more vastly evident than online. The definition of a bad Poker player is not based on that of inexperience, but more so on the quality of play, and the class with which a person plays.
A Poker Story
Players have most likely witnessed keyboard-happy player. Then he pushes “All-in” with J-5 offsuit or some other junk hand that no self-respecting Poker player could bring himself to play against a pre-flop raise with A-K, only to River Jacks full over Fives or vice-versa. Such an outcome doesn’t boil down to ability. Though luck is an essential element of Poker, such a move is not a winning play.
In his famed Poker bible, Super-System: A Course in Power Poker, Poker legend and two-time World Series of Poker Main Event Champion Doyle Brunson warns players to be wary of playing against suckers. As Doyle explains in his book, suckers can’t be bluffed because they’ll call with most anything. To ensure victory against a sucker, Doyle says, always showdown with the nuts (best possible hand), and that advice holds especially true when testing one’s skills in online ring-games and tournaments.
Tournament Practice
Several software companies have designed dynamic Poker simulators with incredible features that distill the essence of the live game into a computer program with a hefty price tag. These programs feature customizable tournaments and editable computer players that can put you in any tournament situation at the click of a button. These computer artificial intelligence (AI) players are designed to accurately reflect that of “real-life” playing styles, but can’t provide the atmosphere and the essential human aspect of live Poker.
If your sole desire is simply to play and play, then good luck swimming in the murky waters at the shallow end of the online River. The good news is one won’t find many sharks. Yes, but the problem lies within the fact that solid Poker games are difficult to find online apart from the more high-stakes cash games where dedicated players are more apt to play for their money.
