Poker Articles

By Fox | Published Nov 29 2005, 07:28 AM
I've been told by my poker buddies that I don't really go on tilt, but I can tell you I do. It's not that steaming, wild-eyed, Phil Hellmuth tilt where I can't think straight, or the evil creeping tilt where your game leans slowly to one side because of the influence of a particular short term run of cards, getting over confident because of a win streak or becoming timid because of a bad streak.

When I go on tilt it's from an extended bad run of cards that makes me hate to sit down and has me paying less and less attention to the game. If the last 50 times you looked at the table closely you were faced with the fact that you are losing money hand over fist, it can be tough to keep paying close attention. It's very hard for me to keep paying attention to something is painful every time I do it. B.F. Skinner could certainly explain it better than I.

When I get like that I become the equivalent of a reasonably solid 3/6 player. All the intracacy is gone from my game and at the 10/20 level I become a break even player. The last week or so has been like that after a terrible run of beats that cost me almost $3,000 over the two weeks before that. When it becomes unpleasant to sit down and play I know that I need to take a break and get my head straight again.

Luckily I have gotten my head straight again, and after a good night at the 15/30 Omaha tables and a few good days of SNG's I am nearly back to even for the month. After the worst run of cards in over a year it feels awfully good to have bounced back so quickly. Since I thought the whole thing would be too long as one blog I will be posting an article on avoiding tilt in the next day or so, with some assistance from my partner Hatfield.

In other news the 100kproject is on hold for a week while LabRat is on vacation, but I have been posting some of the teaching tools I've been giving him to give people something to read while he's gone. I also continue to hear from tons of people who are starting their own projects, most of which seem to be going quite well. Membership is also screaming upward on pokerfox.net, and we have really got the video making process streamlined so new videos will be appearing at the trate of a couple per week now.

Thanks to everyone who has backed off a little after reading the blog about my being so busy. I love to get email from readers as long as it isn't an entire book describing your whole poker career, so feel free to keep sending your comments and questions. Having a little peace the last week or so has been nice.

I'll see you at the final table,
Fox