"Good Hand" Tilt in $4/$8 HE

[shipitfish]

During my trip to Foxwoods last week, I was fortunate enough to get some insight into my typical "tilt" scenario. It was during a $4/$8 session very early in the morning (around 03:30 - 05:00) after the $1/$2 game in which Nick and I were playing seemed to have dried up. (nick_marden stayed, although I am not sure why.)

For those of you poker newbies not familiar with "tilt", it can be loosely defined as "a state of mind that causes a poker player, due to frustration or external factors, to make poor decisions and fail to play his/her best game". The etymology of the word is generally believed to be from knocking a pinball machine to "cheat", which causes it to "tilt" and makes you lose.

I am not usually prone to tilt. Most things that seem to bother other players don't usually bother me. It takes a group of bad events to happen in sequence to really bother me. The first thing that happened before this particular session were the beginnings of my frustrations with $1/$2 NL HE, which I have previously written about. In hindsight, I am happy that I played in that game, because it gave me the chance to spend time with Nick. However, at the time, I was leaving it down a couple of buy-ins and was frustrated with the variance. This alone, however, wasn't enough to send me into tilt. I went to the $4/$8 game because it's always easy to beat and I wanted to relax, and recover some losses.

I immediately got the 3 seat in a ten-handed $4/$8 limit HE game. I came right into the big blind after getting the requisite yellow $2 chips at the cage. I began playing my usual game, and watched all the players, beginning to build some reads and figuring out who knew what they were doing. I even won a few pots.

A loudmouth was sitting at the other end of the table in the 9 seat, ranting to the woman (in the 8 seat) next to him about "how awful the $4/$8 games are". "You have to show down the best hand", he said, "in $20/$40, you see everyone making plays to muscle people out of the pot. Your reads matter there. Here, you just have to have the best hand and can't win without it." The whining went on and on. My first thought was amusement, as I always find it funny when people sit in very low limit games and talk about how much "better" and "like real poker" the big games are. I imagine that such people have been beaten to submission in those games, and have bled away too much bankroll to play any higher than $4/$8. They are hating themselves that they can't beat those bigger games, and nurse their pain by ranting to fellow $4/$8 players how "this isn't a real poker game".

The funniest thing about the whole situation was that his rantings were mostly going to the young woman (probably in her early 20's) sitting next to him. I knew who she was, at least vaguely, as she was the girlfriend of someone I'd just been playing NL with. He'd asked me to let him know how she was playing. I had obliged, so I was watching her a bit more closely than the other players, and I was quite sure that she didn't care in the least what Loudmouth had to say. Yet, he went on ranting, making a "terrible read" when he failed to realize she wasn't interested in him, that she wasn't impressed with him, and that she had a boyfriend already anyway!

My amusement changed to annoyance with the situation at a key moment. It was about seven hands after I sat down. The table had snapped tight, as these $4/$8 games sometimes do, but they reloosen if you wait for it. The hand was folded to the button, who was clearly a new player (at least to casino poker), as he fumbled with his chips, got confused about the order of action, and the like. However, he was clearly a student of the game, as he had an inquisitive look about him. My theory was that he was a low-limit online player who had beat the online games for a while and was now trying out the casino poker world.

Anyway, it was folded to Newbie on the button, and he called. Loudmouth immediately began to shout: "Open-button-limp! Unbelievable!" Newbie wasn't offended, really. He was his inquisitive self, and began to ask what Loudmouth was saying. Loudmouth responded, "That's an abysmal limit HE play. How can you do that? Do you know what it means to 'open' a pot? Do you know what it means to 'limp'? Do you know what the 'button' is? You have to know these things, and if you don't I can't even begin to tell you why what you did was so wrong!"

It was clear that Newbie didn't know these terms, except for button, but he was instead filing away the information to learn from later. Meanwhile, the dealer called for floor to reprimand Loudmouth, as it is a rule violation at Foxwoods to berate another player for bad play. The dealer was sick of Loudmouth's rantings, and was hoping that floor would kick him, I think. Newbie stood up for Loudmouth, as Newbie clearly didn't want to be the center of a scene and didn't really care about getting chewed out because he was so generally nervous anyway. The floor-person took Loudmouth aside for a moment, but play resumed a minute later with his usual rantings.

I don't know why this got to me. I presume it's because I'd could recall being that Newbie in the $2/$4 and $4/$8 games, and being berated. I remember feeling like I must be stupid, but I wasn't stupid, just unknowledable. But I felt for the guy. I also was pissed at Loudmouth, because he was annoying everyone at his end of the table (he was in the 9 seat and pretty far from me). I have now been convinced with Greg that "tapping on the glass" isn't a concern -- people don't learn how to play better from just a few random comments -- so I didn't really care that he was "educating" bad players. But, he was hurting the game because people weren't enjoying themselves, and it was good game that I didn't want to see break. (It was around that time of the morning that games are starting to break and tables merge.)

Meanwhile, since it was a good game, I was getting good hands cracked. I had gotten big pairs about four or five times, and they hadn't held up since the first two times. Normally, this is a sign of a good game. But, the $200 I'd sat down with was dwindling, and getting good starting hands was only serving to ship more of my chips around the table. I was getting frustrated. I wished I'd spent more time in the limit games that night. I was pissed at Loudmouth. I was unhappy with the variance from the NL game. I was tilting.

However, I don't tilt the way most people do. I notice it on some level, and my response is to play tighter. I throw away marginal hands like JTo. I focus on only premium starting cards. The problem was, I was catching good starting hands, so I was playing a lot of pots, and that's what led to disaster.

The way the tilt impacts me is not in over-loosening my starting hand requirements, but in my obsession with getting those starting hands to hold up. For example, I called down, holding AA, after being check-raised on the turn when an obvious straight card hit someone who was drawing. He showed me the nut straight.

I called a check-raise on the river, with QQ, when a three-flush (hearts) had come on the turn and the river put up a four-card straight (2356). As it turned, the player had 44, without a heart, and had called to the river. Was this a bad beat? I don't know, but I wasn't paying enough attention to know, because I was going to play that overpair to the river, no matter what, as long as the flop had no king or ace.

Then, I played just plain stupid against Loudmouth, when I held QQ. We capped the preflop betting, and I know he would not have done that with anything but a Group 1 hand (AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AK). The flop came with two aces and a two-flush, and I figured I was behind. When we checked through the flop, I began to wonder if he had KK. I didn't think he would make the mistake of slow-playing open trips with a two-flush showing (the pot was three-handed on the flop). I bet out on the turn when the third ace came, and got called in two spots. I stupidly bet the river, Loudmouth raised, the other guy folded, and I called. Of course, that was pointless. Check-call on the river may even be wrong, because if he doesn't have made quads, he surely has KK. Loudmouth showed me the quads; I lied and said I had kings after I mucked.

Two hands later, in my final hand of "glory", I caught AA UTG, raised and got three cold-callers and the BB to come along. The flop came with three straight cards. I pushed hard and the turn brought a four-straight to the board, and again I was raised on the turn and called down to see the nut straight made with a suited connector from a fellow behind me but also in early position. I knew I was on tilt at this point, because I did something I only do when tilting. I said dejectedly, "Of course you have a straight!" I felt anger boiling when he responded, quite innocently, "What did you have?" I said, "I had aces. What did you think I had!" He answered, "I didn't really think about what you had."

Of course, he shouldn't have played the hand without thinking about what I had. He obviously had no clue, and the surprise in his face made me think if he had thought at all about it, he thought it was something innocuous for the given board (e.g., AK). But that wasn't the point. The point was this: here I was, clear across the table from Loudmouth, and I was doing the exact thing that he had done that contributed to my tilt. Here I was scoffing and berating a player who, aside from his too-loose preflop call, had played the hand exactly as I would have. Had I been really paying attention, I probably could have folded to the check-raise on the turn.

When I tilt while card-dead, there is no damage. I know how to tighten up when my emotions are getting the best of me. But, I'm a danger to my bankroll when I get premium starting hands while frustrated. I am not immune to tilt just because I don't do the typical thing of "loosening up" when tilting. It's still part of my poker game, and needs attention. Following the 30 BB rule helped me a lot here, because I didn't lose too much. But, I should put the losses to good use and take a lesson to pay attention to tilt. Just tightening up when frustrated and annoyed is not enough to protect my bankroll; my card rush of the night can be my worst enemy in such a situation. And, why would I want a card rush to be my enemy?

Toward the end of the session, I got the opportunity to see how bad tilt can be. A ruckus erupted over at the $5/$5 no-maximum-buy-in NL HE game across the room. A very large man began screaming: "What were you doing in there with that!?!?" and throwing and kicking his chair. I ran over to see what the hand was before it mucked, and saw about $4,000 in the pot being shipped to a player who seemed to have turned the nut straight. The angry fellow seemed to have flopped top set (queens) and all the money got in at some point. I thought again about the fact that if you have that strong of a reaction to losing, you shouldn't be playing at the stakes you are playing at. Security descended on the table and calmed the guy down, but I wonder if he spent some time to learn a lesson from his tilt; I hope he did.