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The river card peels off, it is harmless, until your opponent flips over his hand. You've just lost the huge pot on the river to a runner runner straight. You feel yourself getting warmer and the frustration builds up until you just don't care about what happens. For the next few rounds you lose more and more money. All the while you think about that horrible beat you got. He was practically drawing dead and he won, how can it be? This is what happens to most poker players out there. It sucks, but it is true. In one way or another you too are throwing away money like this. You can deny it if you want but that is not why you are reading this article, is it? It isn't hard to minimize poker tilt, it is quite simple actually. The catch is that it takes time and persistence. In simple words, it is when you lose control that bad things happen. It often looks like you have control when you do not. Here are 5 simple steps on how to minimize tilt: 1. Identify Your Fear(s) - What is it that you fear? Why do you get upset when you get bad beat in a poker game? For me it is the fear of losing money. Since I am a professional poker player I want to win money, I need to win money because it is how I make my living! Identifying this and switching from what I don't want to what I want makes all the difference. 2. Identify Your Goal(s) - What is the reason you are playing poker? Most non-professionals get mad because they lose to bad beats. Why do they play poker? I would assume it is to have fun. My #1 goal is to have fun and making money comes second. I started playing poker because I enjoyed it and I intend to keep it that way. What is your goal when you are playing? What is the need to feel like crap while you're playing? So what if you lose some money. Play the limits where the money doesn't hurt and have some fun! 3. Listening To Yourself - Have you ever thought about listening to your mind and observing your body? What are the signs of you going into that zone of "I don't care about anything"? My signs for example are that I get a feeling in my chest, I get hot and start to sweat. Frustration and anger build up and this is when I know I have to stop playing unless I want to lose money. Sometimes I slip and keep playing, it happens to everyone but everyone has lapses. The more you do this, the better you become. If you even practice these steps a little you are way ahead of most people on this earth. 4. Quitting - This is a big, BIG part of any good poker players game. Did you know that Phil Ivey quits the highest online poker games after he loses one big pot? Now that takes discipline to do. And it is something you too should do. What would happen if you quit playing whenever you started playing bad and tilting? Your overall winrate or amount of fun would go up. Identify your signs of tilt and start quitting whenever they start creeping up on you, you will thank yourself! 5. Fun - Keeping it fun is what has kept me from going insane. It is all to easy for me to fall into a rut of making money, making money and making more money. Money is not where happiness lies, it is the things that it can give us. Freedom is one of those things and of the most important for me. And if I cannot keep poker fun then why would I want to play? Ask yourself these questions and see what comes up :-)
By: Henri Junttila
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