How to Avoid Tilt in Poker. Relax your state of mind – Relaxing is a good way to relieve off tilt. As a tendency, tilt is triggered on how a player is performing in the table. A big loss, a winning bet that turned sour at the river, and many more. Know your triggers – As many experienced poker players would know, several triggers would. Live Poker: FYI - Coral Poker moves from iPoker to the partypoker Network: 7: January 27th, 2020 8:32 PM: Poker News and Events: Coral Poker and netbet poker: 1: November 8th, 2019 8:41 PM: Poker. Full Tilt Poker was not one of the early sites to market, dealing its first virtual cards in 2004. However, co-founder Ray Bitar teamed up with some of the biggest names in the industry. The likes of Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and Mike Matusow were behind the brand, and their celebrity, combined with an aggressive marketing push. The 1,000x rule. The 1,000x rule is a little trick I developed to help me handle bad beats at the poker.

• How Not To Tilt In Poker
• How To Not Tilt Online Poker
• How To Avoid Tilt In Poker Tables
• How To Get Off Tilt Poker
• How To Avoid Tilt In Poker Hands

Tilt is a son of a bitch, especially when you first start playing poker. As bad as tilt is, it is a part of the game. Tilt is another variable which you can control just like the tables you choose to sit down at or the hands you decide to play. Every poker player, even the best out there, deals with tilt a certain percentage of the time they are on the felt.

The great players realize when they are on tilt and either snap themselves out of it or take a break. In this post I’m going to share my top 3 tips for tilt control. I have no doubt that any one of these tips will help you stop tilting at least some of the time.

Tilt control tip #1 – The 1,000x rule

The 1,000x rule is a little trick I developed to help me handle bad beats at the poker table and prevent myself from tilting. The way the rule works is as follows; if you were in a spot and lost the hand, ask yourself one simple question, “if this spot happens 1,000 times how much money will I make?”

The hands which induce the most tilt are usually the worst bad beats. Those spots where you got your money in as a 9-to-1 favorite and lose. I like to calculate how much money I’d make if the same situation occurred 1,000 times and usually it is tens of thousands of dollars worth of winnings. This instantly helps me understand that I did all I could and should be happy with my decision. How can I tilt if I played the hand perfectly? The answer is I can’t so I don’t tilt.

What happens if the spot is closer to 50/50?

This is a great question. 50/50 type spots are very common in poker so you shouldn’t sweat it too much. If you constantly find yourself in large pots where you have a very small edge or are dead even you might be playing a high variance style of poker. You should analyze these spots and try to lower your poker variance.

If you were up against a very weak opponent who happened to wake up with a big hand and you are now flipping or even behind, then run the math in your mind and you will probably find that if the same spot occurred 1,000 times you are printing money.

What do I do if I ran kings into aces or had some other kind of cooler like set over set?

Thankfully these spots are rare and even the best players find it extremely difficult to not go bust in these situations. You need to be mature about it and know when a hand was a cooler and simply write it off. I know how tough that can be in a live game when your heart is racing because of the flopped full house only to run into a higher full house.

The 1,000x rule will still help you here because you can ask the same question a bit differently. Instead of asking how much money will I lose if this spot happens 1,000 times, you can ask how often will my opponents go broke if the situation was reversed. You will come to the conclusion that in these spots the vast majority of players will lose the maximum a majority of the time. Don’t obsess over these spots.

You will run KK into AA 4.32% of the time in a 9-handed poker game. Don’t sweat these spots.

Tilt control tip #2 – Prepare for the worst

Understand what you are getting yourself into

There are a number of things you can do before sitting down at a poker table to prevent tilt. The most basic thing you can do is find out as much as you can about the game in advance. Contact the host of the game and ask him the following questions:

• Tournament or cash game?
• What are the blinds?
• What is the starting buy-in? Is there a minimum buy-in?
• Smoking at the table?
• How many players are in the game?
• What time are we starting? What time are we finishing?
• Will there be drinks and food? Should I bring anything?
• Is the house taking rake? Does the house take any money?
• Any house rules that are out of the ordinary?

How Not To Tilt In Poker

If you are in a regular cash game then you will already know the answer to most of these questions but if you are going to a new game it is worth while finding out answers to your most important factors. Understanding what you are getting yourself into will prevent surprises which will throw you off your game.

Another way to look at tilt control is to eliminate or optimize all the different factors which influence you negatively in the game. Getting to a game only to find out it plays way bigger than you are use to is a factor which you can assess before the game by asking questions.

Bring enough cash

Different types of games require different bankroll requirements. This means that you should put some thought into the amount of cash you are taking with you to a cash game. If you are playing in a very low buy-in friendly, home game where the chip to buy-in ration is very high (500 worth of chips for $100 as an example) then perhaps you need to take no more than a few hundred bucks with you to be on the same side.

If you are playing in a loose, aggressive game with guys who invest 5 – 20 buy-ins in a night without any problem, then you should consider taking a lot more with you so you can fight the variance and improve your odds of winning at the end of the night.

Set a flexible quitting time

Before going to the game you should set a time for yourself to stop playing. I call this a flexible quitting time because you should be flexible only if you are winning. What I mean is if you are break-even or losing then you should quit when the time you set for yourself arrives.

If you are winning and feel good in the game then you should stay as long as you can maintain your A-game. This can be a slippery slope for most players and it requires a lot of discipline. The reality is that if you are beating the game comfortably then your image at the table will be favorable and you will have the confidence to do things you usually wouldn’t. All of these factors will play to your advantage so this is why you should stay as long as you can. If you aren’t crushing the game and even a small winner then you should quit when the time comes.

If about an hour or even two before the time actually arrives you are break-even, down or a small winner, you should give notice to your fellow players that you will be leaving in an hour or two depending on when you decide to tell them. People hate it when someone who has a lot of the money on the table just gets up and leaves so do the right thing.

Set a stop-loss

Just like you’d set a quitting time before going to a game, you should also set a stop-loss. A stop-loss is the maximum amount of money you are willing to lose in a single poker session before quitting. Setting a stop-loss is something you should do for both online and offline poker. The way I do it is I take only the amount I’m willing to lose with me to the game. I don’t like borrowing money from people so when the money runs out I get up, say goodbye and go home.

As a general rule, you should play as long as you can when you are winning and quit early when things aren’t going your way.

Tilt control tip #3 – Lock-down mode

This tip is meant more for live poker but it can also work wonders online. The tip is to enter lock-down mode when you feel you have started tilting. What is lock-down mode exactly? Lock-down mode is essentially locking down your range to nit levels. It means that you are playing only 5 – 10% of your range. This isn’t optimal poker but when I’m tilting my main focus is getting out of that zone ASAP and forcing myself to fold 90% of my hands helps a lot with this.

By playing a very narrow, strong range you also limit your variance which means that you are more likely to win the hands you play and win a significant pot. From my experience nothing helps to get me out of tilt more than winning a big pot.

There are some exceptions to lock-down mode like if you find yourself in a very loose, passive game. In this case lock-down mode won’t work well and instead of playing only 90% of your range, you should expand that to the top 18 – 25% of your hands, depending on how weak your opponents are. Playing too tight in such a game will dramatically limit your chances of winning pots, especially if your opponents are very weak post-flop. The problem you might run into here is missing the flop a ton of the time which won’t help your tilt. To help with this consider being more aggressive in position and paying attention to habits of your opponents so you can exploit them.

The hand range marked in yellow represents the top 25% of poker hands.

Conclusion

Tilt is one of our worst enemies as poker players, but if you can master your tilt you will have a significant edge over players which let their tilt control them. I hope these 3 tips help you master yours. I’d love to hear your feedback after you give them a try.

If you have certain tricks that you use to prevent yourself from tilting then let me know in the comments section below. I’d love to learn some new ones.

Table Of Contents

How To Not Tilt Online Poker

One of the most iconic — and perhaps most infamous — brands in poker will become a thing of the past on Feb. 25.

That's the reported date on which PokerStars will shelve Full Tilt Poker, its former arch rival, for good. The news was first released by Pokerfuse and is confirmed by a FAQ page on PokerStars' website detailing some of the minutiae of the move for its remaining FTP players.

Those players will essentially just be migrating over to the main skin of the network, so there won't be much meaningful change in their playing experience.

'Our commitment to improving PokerStars software and the PokerStars customer experience in recent years has limited the amount of focus and resources we could apply to the evolution of Full Tilt,' the company stated. 'We feel it is time to consolidate brands so that everyone has access to the newest features and most innovative games which are available exclusively on PokerStars.'

A Rich History...

Full Tilt Poker was not one of the early sites to market, dealing its first virtual cards in 2004.

However, co-founder Ray Bitar teamed up with some of the biggest names in the industry. The likes of Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and Mike Matusow were behind the brand, and their celebrity, combined with an aggressive marketing push, led to huge success for the site.

'Learn, chat and play with the pros.'

That ubiquitous slogan, along with the trademark black and white commercials creatively utilizing the site's immense roster of sponsored pros, beckoned countless thousands of players to give Full Tilt a try. The brand became a world leader, trailing only PokerStars in a raw numbers.

But where PokerStars laid claim to the biggest quantity, Full Tilt could credibly claim to house the best quality of poker in the world.

The highest stakes games in the world usually ran there, including monstrous and legendary games as high as $500/$1,000 blinds on the famed Rail Heaven table. Patrik Antonius, Viktor Blom, Hac and Di Dang, Gus Hansen, Ivey and more made Rail Heaven their favored battleground, which in turn made it the greatest place for fans to watch six-figure pots trading hands on the regular.

Correspondingly large pot-limit Omaha tables eventually produced the biggest pots in online poker history.

The software, too, was almost as celebrated as the quality of the games. Colourful avatars and lively animations made for an entertaining experience for the casual player. A fun MTT schedule gave tournament grinders tons of options at every price point and let players aspire to one day earn a custom avatar by virtue of winning a Full Tilt Online Poker Series event.

Considered industry leaders in many respects, the FTP team birthed innovations like fast-fold poker — now a mainstay almost everywhere — and rolled out creative ideas like Irish poker that were later adapted in some fashion by PokerStars.

It all made for a high-quality and incredibly popular product. And it all came to a crashing halt in 2011.

...But a Marred One, Too

The machinations of Black Friday dealt harsh blows at many levels of the poker industry, with the ripple effects being felt to this day.

However, perhaps the most shocking development in the aftermath was the revelation that Full Tilt's accounts were more than $300 million underwater. The company had $60 million cash on hand but player balances amounted to $390 million, with $150 million of that owed to U.S. players.

After repeated assurances from company reps that players would be paid, the fact of the matter was the company simply didn't have the money to make good on that promise.

Luckily for everyone involved, PokerStars stepped in and acquired Full Tilt's assets, with part of the deal stipulating they'd make the players whole in the process.

Entire books could be written about the ordeal and the fallout thereafter, all of which is to say the whole thing is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say some former FTP brass paid millions in penalties, others became pariahs, friends became enemies and countless poker players everywhere were left with sour tastes in their mouths regarding a once-beloved company.

Relaunch and Merger

Full Tilt Poker relaunched in November 2012, but it quickly became a shell of its former self. FTOPS returned, and high-stakes action even got rolling, but the site predictably failed to regain its former glory.

As the operator slid in the worldwide rankings, company brass attempted some moves that left many in the industry scratching their heads. Rake was bumped up in many spots, rewards were cut in others, table maxes were changed from six to five players in some games and many high-stakes offerings were removed from the client altogether.

The result?

A dive in traffic as unhappy players left the site. That was in August 2015.

Early the next year, decision-makers at parent company Amaya opted to pull the plug on Full Tilt being a standalone operator, migrating the players into the same pool with PokerStars. What would have once been monumental, industry-shaking news, barely registered as a blip on the poker radar, the surest sign of all that the glory days of Full Tilt were far in the past and never likely to rekindle.

Seemingly Little Chance of Return

After the merger, PokerNews spoke to industry expert Chris Grove to get his take on the functional end of the once-proud brand. He pointed to the decline of the international online poker market as a whole as a big reason for the decision to migrate the players to PokerStars.

How To Avoid Tilt In Poker Tables

'In a world where Full Tilt found a unique niche or footing, or in a world where online poker continued to expand, I think we certainly could have seen the two sites continue on separately,' he said. 'Only when it became clear that Full Tilt wasn't finding that footing did a merger start to seem like a matter of 'when' more than 'if.'

With online poker moving toward a regulated future in the U.S., that meant there could have been buyers interested in acquiring Full Tilt. They'd get to avoid the headache of constructing software from scratch, to say nothing of the brand's name recognition stateside. Grove estimated PokerStars could rake in between $10 million and $50 million with such a move.

Of course, that would require interest by the selling party as well, and that never seemed much of a possibility. Poker Industry PRO reported being told by a company rep the software wasn't for sale ($), and nothing that happened in the intervening years has made that appear to be mere lip service.

How To Get Off Tilt Poker

The most likely case going forward would appear to be Full Tilt Poker simply collects dust in a virtual PokerStars storage room. In one sense, having your once-chief rival neatly tucked away on some backup storage drive is the ultimate power move.

In another, though, it's the saddest, meek ending imaginable to a company that took the poker world by storm more than 15 years ago.

How To Avoid Tilt In Poker Hands

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