For some time I have been obsessed with this aspect of psychology related to poker.
Unfortunately, I suffer every day, if I have a positive session (1 or 2 boxes up) I want to close, On the other stage, if I am losing,
I am not able to close, even after the 60 min.
But in the case of winning, I always think, why not close and go with a good taste? Why risk losing the earned?
I know that this has to do with the short-term mentality, and it should not influence me, and I should think only in the long term,
and be clear that the way I finish a session should not be influential for my game, but unfortunately, despite knowing the theory, I can not put it into practice.
Tips? Advices? Recommendations?
Thanks for your post mate. Sometimes we are winning but we are not playing good. On the contrary, sometimes we are losing but we are playing our best game.
This is very frequent subject here in the forum and I love it: tilt and reversed tilt.
Most players talk about tilt as if it happens only when we are losing. Of course, there can be serious long run outs and this can make even the most solid poker player lose its mind. It is rare but it is possible a downswing so huge as of 1 million
hands losing!
Most common are bad run outs of 1 thousand hands losing, or 10 thousands hands losing in a roll, which is one of the reasons we must have and keep a strong bankroll management.
We usually tilt for negative things such as a series of bad beats or when we are dealt AA 4 times and lose all of them for any kind of hands. This is the most famous tilt, the negative one.
As you said yourself there is also the positive tilt, when we are winning in an incredible run out and we get scared of losing! So we start to think we should leave the tables before we begin to lose, in spite of we have been playing our ultimate top game!
The only thing that should made us quit and leave the table, no matter if we are winning or losing, is when we have admitted to ourselves we are not well, in spite of results, then we should get out and relax for a relative amount of space and time.
Now, for instance, the last 5 hands I played:
1- HERO goes all-in preflop holding AA and VILLAIN AK, and villain wins the pot
2- Hero shoves the turn having 82%
equity with OESD + FD and Villain wins
3- Hero tries to
bluff 3 barrels til the river and villain calls
4- Hero floats flop turn and jam the river for bluff and villain calls with third pair
5- Hero is dealt KK in a 3-bet pot and setmines on the turn. Villain setmines AA on the river and takes down the pot
Did we play these hands wrong or these are things that happen in poker every time ? Should we leave the table because of these results? I don’t think so, unless those results have affected our perception and psychological performance!
The same goes for the opposite situation: if you are playing well and winning a lot of pots continue to play for as long as you would have played in spite of results.
