HU SNG's and tilt

So, my HU SNG's so far. I've played some $55 turbos, in fact they were the last thing I played before my poker meltdown last year, and I can see why. Last year, my tilt control was 0, even though I thought I was a generally tiltless player, I was very wrong. I've come to the conclusion so far that tiltless is impossible. We can only eliminate as many tilt factors as possible. And playing tilt free is the goal to good poker. Tilt happens so quickly, and takes over so unknown to us. I remember getting upset by suckouts in these things, and then playing another match without clearing out those thoughts, not pretty. You basically play the next game as your C game at best, and I also see players do that against me now. They are playing good tight aggressive, lose one pot and start calling every raise, and calling down 3 streets with bottom pair. They just stop thinking about what's going on around them, and start playing bad.

So how am I minismising tilt now? Firstly, Tommy Angelos tips on Barts show are fantastic. He talks about being in the now. If you are tilting, you are thinking of the past. How does thinking of the past help when you are dealt AK and have a J94r flop? It doesn't at all. Also thinking about "oh he'll just check raise me" is thinking about the future, and again not focusing on what to do now. What you should always be thinking is "what could he have here", "what will he do with different hands", and now "what is my best play". If you are busy thinking about him sucking out on you or unrationally thinking he'll probably just raise, you can't accurately make a good decision.

So the idea for me is simple. I am currently 2 tabling these things, and if I have a match end, I'll take a quick thought about how I'm feeling. If I'm thinking clearly, I'll fire up another, but if I'm a little tilted, or just need a break, or want to think more about this match, I won't. After the 2nd is finished, I can take a break. It can be however long I need. Often it's just a quick breather and re-focus before firing up 2 more tables. The beauty of this in relation to HU SNG's, is you can easily get to a break time if you just wait a minute.

THe ROI in HU SNG's goes up about 1.9% for each extra match you win in a 100. So if you win 54 from 100, your ROI is 3.3%. If you win 55 from 100 your ROI is 5.2%. Now lets say you play 400 $55 turbos, the difference between 3.3% and 5.2% is over $400!!!! I mean each win is literally $110 different to a loss. So tilting just one game every 4 nights can cost you $400 a month. Now do you seen the importance of staying tilt free?

So there is one more thing. You may play fairly tilt free and still get crushed, it happened to me the other night. At 10:30pm (I can go to bed 11-12 if I feel up to it) I took a quick break, and really wanted to play more to get back to even. However, I was playing a bit tilted by now, was tired and had a lack of confidence, so I quit. I felt great doing this, as I'm sure -EV matches would have followed, regardless of results. I lost money, but felt great about it overall. Last night I was up some money, and felt like quitting, however, I was avoiding tilt well, thinking the game through well, and really had no reason to stop. So I took a little breather with the intention of playing more, and sure enough I played well after the break too.

The point I'm making is in poker, there are many, many things you can control, and need to to be a winning player. What you can't control is luck, and yet so many people focus on that too much. Whether I won a bunch or lost a bunch last night, if I played A game poker, against weaker opponents, I'm a big winner in the long term, and that's all that counts. Luck can go fuck itself really, I don't need it to win at this game long term.

That's a load off, I hope that came out well, but it's probably more a mess of words than anything. Hope someone out there gets something out of this, or at least agrees.