Poker tilt isn’t all about playing bad when you’re steaming – it can surface when you’re running over a table too
As you should all know by now, I welcome both genders equally to this column. If anything, women are slightly more welcome – after all, my Mum’s one. But this month I suspect I will be talking more directly to my brothers.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to ‘reclaim the cock’ like Tom Cruise’s character in Magnolia, but I do need to speak to your inner caveman for a bit. Now I don’t care how many cosmetic products are in your bathroom cabinet, how many pastel shirts you wear, or even if some of your best friends are ‘metrosexuals’ – we all have our caveman to answer to.
Just in case you don’t know what I’m talking about I’m speaking to the part of you that screams obscenities at the TV when your football team’s playing (losing), the part that wants steak for breakfast and the part that absolutely never, under any circumstances, wants to know how ‘her’ day went.
And however you might try to play great rational poker, at some point the game is guaranteed to bring out your caveman. It might come out as maniacal tilt after a bad beat or as a personal war with the cocky kid at the end of the table who keeps re- raising you. Personally, mine comes out in a phenomenon I’ve officially trademarked as ‘positive tilt’.
Over the years I’ve worked hard on my game and am proud that I rarely become upset or tilt in the traditional sense. However, I’ve never been able to get on top of my positive tilt. Let me define my Achilles’ heel for you. If tilt is playing differently from your best due to negative emotions, then positive tilt is playing less than your best due to positive emotions.
Specifically, I’m afflicted by the emergence of my caveman when I’m winning and feeling like I’ve got poker licked. Instead of a red mist it’s like a golden shining mist. In a tournament my stack is huge, in cash games I’m running over the tables. I am the warrior, they are all my little bitches, I own poker… I am above the law.
Overconfidence
Except, sadly, it turns out I’m not. Poker has a way of punishing you the moment you think you have it cracked. When I’m in this state, the specific thing I do is get trapped in bluffs. If you’re making a move on someone, being prepared to bluff every street is a good quality in the right spots but, of course it’s a very high-risk play and often you should bail out before the river. But when you’re the caveman, hey, how can they possibly call?
Field of dreams
Last week I was struck once again by my positive tilt monster. In an online MTT that had started with a pretty big field, we were down to six tables and getting close to the money. I found myself at a dream of a table with very predictable players who weren’t stealing enough and were almost never playing back. As such, I’d been able to run over the table and build my stack from a medium one on arrival to one of the bigger stacks in play, with very little risk.
So, by a show of hands, who thinks this continues and I sail effortlessly into the final table, and who thinks I spew off all my chips with an ill- timed positive tilt bluff? Yep, you’re all correct…
The painful hand arrived with horrible predictability. The only stack at the table who’s approaching my chip position opens from middle position and I’m on the button with some junk – let’s say 6-7 suited so I can save some face. I call as we’re both deep-stacked and he’s playing in a very straightforward fashion. The flop comes Q-4-2 with no suits and he checks. Now I know that means he’s not strong – he’s just not ‘trappy’ enough to play any other way. So here comes the caveman… only one thought now exists – this is my pot.
I bet the flop and he quickly calls. Okay, so I know where I am – he has a medium pair and doesn’t believe I have the Queen. The turn is a Three. He checks to me and I follow through on the plan, firing out a ‘No, I really do have something’ bet on the turn. Again, he quickly calls. Now I’m hoping for an Ace or something scary to hit on the river, but what I get is another Four to pair the board.
This is a horrible card for me as it changes nothing and means he’s very unlikely to go anywhere, as the pot is so big. In my normal state I would give up now – he might be trapping me with a monster, but probably he’s just decided he’s not going to be pushed off his hand.
Sadly my normal state is far away, long since stamped on by the positive tilt monster. It doesn’t take me long to move in – after all, how can he call? He thinks, he calls, shows me his pocket Nines, and I muck my J-8 or whatever it was. From being in great shape I’m down to seven big blinds and my exit soon follows.
My traitorous caveman has been trampled, squashed and killed, leaving me feeling faintly dirty: just another metrosexual loser.
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