Poker News

Dr. Scott Aigner, MD

Have you ever seen a good player go on total tilt? A once well-respected opponent who plays incredibly bad for more than just several hands or even for a session? You have? If you believe that it is possible then maybe you need to reassess your definition of a good player. Good players cannot go on tilt for more than a brieftime. If a player is tiltable to this extent then he does not meet my criteria of a good player. Let me explain this concept a little further.

Tilt can be a difficult word to define. In it’s simplest definition it is when one’s emotions cloud one’s judgment to the point where they play incorrectly. We as humans cannot become so objective that we can ignore our emotions all of the time. It is just plain impossible. A good player realizes when he is not playing properly because he recognizes he is out of control. He ends it right there. Not two hands from now but the very instant he realizes that his emotions are getting the best of him. A good player also recognizes the warning signs of tilt and stops himself from getting to the point of becoming totally tilted. If he cannot control his emotions at the table, he gets up from the table until such time that he has regained his normal state.

As an example of how good players can go bad I was playing in a 30-60 hold em game at the Bellagio a few years ago. There was an opponent whose game I respected and whom I had butted heads with in previous sessions. He always seemed to be in control of himself. He also beat me up on a number of occasions in our first encounters and I am sure he won more than a few pots because of my respect for his game. Then one daylast year, I was sitting in his game and I saw him lose several big pots in a row. This was his implosion point and he ended up losing a huge amount of money over a 4-hour period. He made bad decision after bad decision. Each time he was beat in a pot he became even angrier which led to even more indiscretions in his game.

I never saw anyone go on tilt who I thought was a good player before. Then I realized that this person only appeared to be a good player when he was winning. Once this person took a few beats he let his emotions take over. I have since played a number of times with this person and I can say that this one day of observation changed my results with him. He no longer was beating me in the game. I also found that I could trigger his emotions to make him mistake prone in a session and if I could get him to tilt just a little his game suffered immensely. I even played several marginal hands against this player early just to try to suck out as the pay off was huge compared to just the pot odds I was getting in that one hand. Yes, he was tiltable and yes, my “implied” odds in a limit setting became huge just by observing a seemingly good opponent go on total tilt just one time. Oh what a feeling it is to gain psychological control over a once very difficult and tough foe.

So the next time you see a good player go bad you have to ask yourself several questions. Is this something I can exploit? You bet it is! Is this something that he cannot control? I think that is up to the player in question. Is it possible to be a good player if the player can go on a sustained tilt? I think the answer is a resounding no. A player cannot have a leak as big as this one and be a good player. Good players just cannot go bad!

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