The ultimate aim is to laugh off bad beats, of course, and I do try, but how do you avoid tilting hard when something like this happens?
Threehanded, I have about 7000 chips in the BB. Blinds are 150/300, no ante. The other stacks are about 5000ish and 3000ish. So the small blind completes and I have A9.
We're a bit bigstacked for me to push and I have the stack because I have completely outplayed this guy after the flop in so many hands, it's a wonder he still wants to see flops with me.
The flop comes down AJ9 rainbow. He bets the minimum, I raise to 700, he reraises to 1100 or something fucked-up like that, so I push.
In his shoes, I'm folding everything but AJ or a set. I can understand calling with AK/AQ here, but I think it would be bad. I am not doing this with QT, no matter how much you try to convince yourself I am. The first raise can be a bluff, but the push isn't ever.
So he calls, and turns over AT. Dude, how am I not beating that? And how the fuck do you not raise it preflop? It's not that strong a hand that you want to play it OOP against a player who is dancing rings round you postflop.
So it's not the worst suckout ever. He has 6 outs, and rivers the T.
Again, it's not the bad beat! It's that I played well and he played badly. Yes, I know that's what I want. The three out of four times I bust him -- taking all his equity that he gambled that I was bluffing with -- I am delighted. But the other one sucks.
Actually, maybe I'm probably giving him too much credit in suggesting that he thought he might be beating a bluff. He doubtless didn't think at all. He had TOP PAIR. Everyone knows that top pair is the nuts.
Anyway, I still have a couple of thousand chips, right? Right. And I pick up AKs next BB. The button, a timid, awful player, limps, and I push over him. He has a bit over 3500 chips and I still have about 2000, so I should have quite a bit of fold equity. He's in desperate straits if I beat him.
If you play STTs, think about what range you would conceivably limp and call a push with here. Let's say that you've for whatever reason decided I'm going to check most of my range, and you can play it cheaply. So you limp a fair range, okay. I can go that far with you.
But you are not calling the push with 98 off.
Well, you're not, he is, and he flops a 9. I played a fantastic game in this STT, probably as well as I've ever played. But the records say I finished third.
And I know everyone has bad beats. I'm not boring anyone with this shit but myself, because no one reads this. Just blowing off steam.
And if anyone is, I'm going to make up for it by posting some theory.
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6 comments:
"And I know everyone has bad beats. I'm not boring anyone with this shit but myself, because no one reads this. Just blowing off steam.
And if anyone is, I'm going to make up for it by posting some theory."
boots sez:
So post your theory, clearly I'm reading it. It's winter here and entertainment is thin.
"how do you avoid tilting hard when something like this happens?"
Maybe you don't. Maybe absorbing it is part of what makes you a stronger player.
Let's hear that theory. I'll probably not understand it, but at least scanning the words will occupy me for a while. It's within the realm of possibility that I can spout some random words and phrases that will jiggle your head; not probable, but that's what makes the bet small and the leverage high.
Besides, if I post my usual twaddle you'll have someone to abuse for free, not bad eh? Well cheap, anyway.
LOL. Well, you try to avoid tilt because it tends to make you play badly.
I need mechanisms to cope with it, because I do suffer it, and I expect I will until I'm a much better, more confident player. You know what they say about recognising the problem...
So at the moment I often berate idiots in chat, and that's destructive. It does help me not tilt though.
boots sez:
Well, you try to avoid tilt because it tends to make you play badly.
Only playing badly makes you play badly Zen, tilt (unless I misunderstand your use of the word) just makes you feel like shit. The real problem seems to be that feeling like shit makes you play badly. It's an apparent conflict between emotions and belief in maths isn't it? I mean, the maths don't care how you feel, and if you play by the maths it shouldn't affect your playing. Yet it does.
"I need mechanisms to cope with it..."
I assume you've tried failing to care and that hasn't worked? Or perhaps that approach only works with small pots?
I'm at a bit of a loss here, if you're playing mechanically by the maths it should make no difference whether you win any given pot or lose it as long as your playing is according to your ruleset.
I'd look at the apparent conflict Zen. It seems you're not playing like a mathematical machine, you're playing like someone who believes in luck or something and getting upset because you're out of favor?
"So at the moment I often berate idiots in chat, and that's destructive. It does help me not tilt though."
Bad practice, what if you try berating the wrong person in chat and get your ass kicked, will you be able to play well with a bloodied nose?
I'm joking, but not entirely. If your emotions are running you even part of the time, engaging in chat at all puts them at risk.
Time for me to get offline soon, I hope you benefit from reading this twaddle. Later---
Tilt is just emotion that changes how you play. If you're angry, frustrated or whatever, you can't think straight and make poor decisions. Maybe it only affects you a little, but that can be enough.
Belief in maths is what will in time help me to overcome it. Good plays are not guaranteed to win. A 70/30 favourite loses three out of ten times in the long run--and can lose ten out of ten in the next week.
Yes, I've tried failing to care, but I am strongly empathetic, boots. I care because it hurts that other people don't care. Do you see what I mean? I hate that people play without wanting to play well.
There's no such thing as playing mechanically, boots. Poker is situational. But maths guides your decisions, obv.
I am not going to get my ass kicked. I'm tough. You wouldn't start a fight with me. Ultimately though, I need to turn off the chat. It's just a distraction.
boots sez:
Perhaps I've been unclear. There are two ways to gamble. You can follow a system, or follow your gut. The important thing imo is not to attempt mixing the two.
A gut player who gets talked into ignoring his gut because he's failed to ignore the maths will get confused and fuck up.
Likewise a system player who pays attention to his gut is going to get confused.
By mechanically I didn't mean that the situation's affect on the maths shouldn't affect your playing. What I meant is that no matter what your emotions are doing you play by the maths and not by your gut.
I suspect you're mixing the two by allowing your emotions to sway you against the maths.
As a gut player I don't concern myself so much with the maths, but I recognize their existence, and I have the understanding that you play by the maths.
You have to be a fucking Vulcan about playing by a system, Zen. If your emotions are not ignorable, the best thing to do is fold out and walk away immediately to minimize the damage. The maths theory tells you a single pot is meaningless but if you continue playing haphazardly it will amount to more than a single pot.
If your gut is keeping you from playing the maths, then it amounts to just guessing and the probability of your getting fucked approaches unity.
So what I'm saying here is, if you can't keep your emotions on a leash walk away until you can, and if you consistently can't keep your emotions on a leash then perhaps you're a gut player who's convinced himself he's a system player. If your emotions are too strong to ignore, letting them pull you along instead is another approach.
I think though that if you simply develop the habit of disconnecting chat and folding away when you recognize that your emotions are fucking with your decisionmaking, over time the maths will put you good and additionally over time your emotions will level out while you're playing.
It's really a matter I think of recognizing the problem (which you've done) and then finding a way to eliminate it. Really, I suggest that you monitor your emotions and when you find them interfering just fold away. I believe you'll find that if you can be consistent with that it will amount to "training" your emotions to stay out of it.
lol
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