really bad play... why??

probably depends on your mood before you play, because 1 suck out can really tilt you at times but other times you dont give a shit that it was a suck out and keep playing well.

I mean I've done that before when I flat out just dont give a fuck and feel like there's something to learn in paying somebody off, see their cards. I guess you could say you're probably well-bankrolled if you purposely make bad calls. Sometimes a little scared money can be a good thing though lol.

i am running pretty bad these days making really bad moooves preflop vs nits and bad calldowns too... i have filtered out all my lost hands in the database studied them and it helped ...a bit

i have had problems with this before but suddenly realized i played a lot more on auto pilot after a huge winning session. solution: only play when you actually feel like playing. for me that is literally only when i feel like playing for playing, not making money. maybe sounds weird and sucks if you never feel like playing for playing. but yeah, that's how i do it.

edit:

and play more actively, obviously. keep notes. check hands you're not involved in etc. the basics. if you can't be arsed, well then take a break. maybe a few hours or even days. still can't be arsed, well then you'll miss out on a shitton of value to be made from the people who also can't be arsed.

perfect remedy, would be wobbly marshall grudgematch imo

It's because you didn't eat fruit loops for breakfast

i dont know what level ur on as a player etc so maybe im way off but i think it has alot to do with running good/running worse, when u run good u mostly have easy slamdunk decisions and every turn/river are decently easy to make decisions on, when u dont get as lucky with how the board runs out u get into alot of tricky spots and its hard to make good decisions and it feels like we are lost while playing and that we are doing stupid stuff because of that.

idk i think it just has alot to do with experience rather then just randomly spewing after u have been winning alot, and its pretty normal to feel like that.

If any of us knew the answer we'd be playing philivey HU.

I like the idea that, when we're winning in easy spots, that shit isn't important at all. The sets, two pairs, top pair vs fish. So on, it's not important at all.

But when we catch people going out of line, when we're cooler than the other regs, and isolate the fish much wider. When we got read on that fish that he'll spaz river when he misses draws. Getting some extra $ out of the hands most other regulars wouldn't.
And making those folds that other regulars wouldn't.
Stealing a little more than the other regulars won't, so forth, I think that's what it all comes down to. Not the "I played rly good, luk I won 7bi, then next day, BLAM i lost 10bi" I am so unlucky lol, shit like that.

Not 100% sure though, since I'm nowhere remotely close to the skill posessed by the good lpers xD

On December 13 2012 04:36 longple wrote: i dont know what level ur on as a player etc so maybe im way off but i think it has alot to do with running good/running worse, when u run good u mostly have easy slamdunk decisions and every turn/river are decently easy to make decisions on, when u dont get as lucky with how the board runs out u get into alot of tricky spots and its hard to make good decisions and it feels like we are lost while playing and that we are doing stupid stuff because of that. idk i think it just has alot to do with experience rather then just randomly spewing after u have been winning alot, and its pretty normal to feel like that.

excellent post, and exactly what i need to hear when i run bad

thanks a lot

Since I'm having my final exam in Behavioral Finance at the uni tomorrow I'm gonna try to explain the issue with Behavioral Finance/-Economic theories.

The thing is that we humans have some fucked up psychology issues that deviates our behavior from rationality. Those deviations are especially strong when it comes to gambling (playing games with incentives).

Regarding your problem, I think it could be a mixture of a few behavioral finance concepts. First of all overconfidence. People tend to be overconfident in their ability (for example over 50% of poker players think they are above average skilled poker player, same goes for other professions such as stock brokering). Overconfidence is especially strong after a short-term streak of goodrun. Availability is a concept that explains that well, people tend to influence their decisions with the ease of which similar events can be brought to mind. If you've been running good in poker for example you assess your ability to crush at a much higher rate than it actually is because your recent goodrun influences your decision too much. Same goes for the opposite.

So when you get on a losing streak risk-seeking behavior starts to kick in (calling in marginal spots instead of taking the low variance root and fold) because people tend to be a lot more risk-seeking when they are faced with losing but are more risk-averse when they are faced with possible gains. An Alias Paradox example from a famous article by Tversky and Kahneman (1979):

Which do you prefer: 1. 25% chance of winning $3000 or 2. 20% chance of winning $4000
+ Show Spoiler +

Which do you prefer: 1. 100% chance of winning $3000 or 2. 80% chance of winning $4000
+ Show Spoiler +

This shows how people get risk-averse when faced with certain gain although they can take the risky +EV alternative (there are numerous other examples of similar sort, that was maybe not the best one to explain poker but you get the idea).

Then finally prospect theory which states that people get more negative utility when losing a X amount of money than they get positive utility from winning that same X amount. Pic or it didn't happen...



This is all I can think about at the moment, will pop in again later tonight if I can relate some more things to your scenario.

/academicrant

thanks everyone
to be honest, I don't even know if it's overconfidence or if it's because I play not caring about money or not focused enough or if it's just because I start getting really bad luck and start chasing cards doing bad calls... maybe this is how I tilt
maybe its that risk seeking thing hotchip talks about too
could even be signs of some kind of psychological disorder lol
it's retarded
the only thing I know is that I shouldn't be calling but still click the god damn button to call
I hope it's the last time I do that
I think I need to "meditate" a little before I play to remember to not do that and to be focused

On December 13 2012 08:56 HotChip wrote: Since I'm having my final exam in Behavioral Finance at the uni tomorrow I'm gonna try to explain the issue with Behavioral Finance/-Economic theories. The thing is that we humans have some fucked up psychology issues that deviates our behavior from rationality. Those deviations are especially strong when it comes to gambling (playing games with incentives). Regarding your problem, I think it could be a mixture of a few behavioral finance concepts. First of all overconfidence. People tend to be overconfident in their ability (for example over 50% of poker players think they are above average skilled poker player, same goes for other professions such as stock brokering). Overconfidence is especially strong after a short-term streak of goodrun. Availability is a concept that explains that well, people tend to influence their decisions with the ease of which similar events can be brought to mind. If you've been running good in poker for example you assess your ability to crush at a much higher rate than it actually is because your recent goodrun influences your decision too much. Same goes for the opposite. So when you get on a losing streak risk-seeking behavior starts to kick in (calling in marginal spots instead of taking the low variance root and fold) because people tend to be a lot more risk-seeking when they are faced with losing but are more risk-averse when they are faced with possible gains. An Alias Paradox example from a famous article by Tversky and Kahneman (1979): Which do you prefer: 1. 25% chance of winning $3000 or 2. 20% chance of winning $4000 + Show Spoiler + Results: [1. 35% 2. 65%] Which do you prefer: 1. 100% chance of winning $3000 or 2. 80% chance of winning $4000 + Show Spoiler + Results: [1. 80% 2. 20%] This shows how people get risk-averse when faced with certain gain although they can take the risky +EV alternative (there are numerous other examples of similar sort, that was maybe not the best one to explain poker but you get the idea). Then finally prospect theory which states that people get more negative utility when losing a X amount of money than they get positive utility from winning that same X amount. Pic or it didn't happen... This is all I can think about at the moment, will pop in again later tonight if I can relate some more things to your scenario. /academicrant

This is exactly what I was coming in here to say. Less thoroughly, perhaps with far less informative and a dickish flair, but since someone's picked my(!) fruits from the tree of empirical psychology, I will have to reach a bit more.

Some random other things that might have an effect on bad poker play and tilt..

Mental Anchoring is an effect notable for its unexpectedly powerful ability to bias a person's thinking. In one easy to conceive of experiment, two groups of students were presented with a "Wheel Of Fortune" (1-100 random wheel) which was secretly rigged to stop either on "10" or "65" depending on the group. They were asked to write the number down. After this, the students were asked two percentage-estimate questions about Africa and the UN. Students responded with averages of 25% in the spin 10 group, and 45% in the spin 65 group! There are of course more nuances to Anchoring after that, but you get the idea.

Mental Anchoring couple with Priming (Prime-ing), another powerful effect, sums up the overwhelming empirical evidence that human behavior is influenced not only by the immediate physical environment, but by time-and-events-as-environment. Priming is the notion that prior consciously, or unconsciously, noticed "things" -- whether a bill board you walked by earlier or a thought which entered your mind -- can influence your decision making in the future.

The next concept we need is Path Dependence. When you are trying to estimate how much gas money you need, "To drive from New York City to Seattle" and you use Google Maps to estimate the miles, your gas money estimate is meaningless by the time you've taken a left at Albuquerque. The gas money estimate is thus path dependent. Note that (all) events in time are path dependent; if not entirely, then to some extent.

Now, lets imagine that we are in a tilting session.

a tilting sessions.. The guy in the casino parking lot was a prick. That cocktail waitress is fucking hot. This table looks alright. [...] Fucking deck sucks. Whatever, I got this. I know how this game works. Fucking deck sucks. So what if that fish just took a third of the money off the table after winning a small pot against me. I'm at a new table now. There are lots of bad players here. Where are my Aces? Fucking deck sucks.

It becomes quite obvious, how anchoring, priming, and path dependence together provide strong empirical reasons to quit sessions once you notice "tilt thoughts" entering your consciousness. I don't recommend quitting immediately. I'm saying practice and learn and try random new ways to prevent these types of unhelpful thoughts from being what comes up when "tilting" things happen. The state of tilt is when your cognitive and emotional thought processes are hung up on previous states of being, and the path's cumulative influence on the development of your next thought (the path dependent outcome) is weighted more heavily with negative EV thought processes.

This combination of path dependence, priming, and anchoring effects is the most important part of what's missing when people search for tilt control and can't find it. I know it would have helped me a lot in my time at the felt; many times my "gut judgement" would seem to tell me to quit a session, but my "intellectual judgement" said I could grind it out. Turns out it's an expensive thing, to be more intellectual than gutsy.

To the two long posts, a lot of cool stuff about risk averse, prospect theory and shit like that in the Thinking Fast and slow book xD. And the graph u posted there is also in the book. Nothing to do with poker, a psychology book, but lots of stuff similar in nature, and stuff that happens a lot in poker.

I think also that part about how we over value how good we actually are, and are nowhere close to understanding how good people who are much better than us really are. That combined with that most people are risk averse, and we're curious by nature. Poker really goes against a lot of lizard brain like behavior. I think that's why we see that all the best poker players are ones that have played it A LOT, and they've learned new habits by recognition (intuition), and then it gets easier and easier to apply concepts, thoughts and theories.

Stay even keeled, go into each session with the same remote strategy
Understand you are supposed to win just above 50% of your tables per session

TRUST your instincts

Don't make calls until you have a reason to, have history and hands to make better decisions.

Read that ~ I used to do same shit.