Tilt has many causes and kinds, but it has only one effect. It makes us play bad. It makes us do things we wouldn’t do if we were at our very best. And that’s how I want to define it, exactly like that. Tilt is any deviation from your A-game and your A-mindset, however slight or fleeting.

Tommy Angelo – 12/2007 – in Elements of poker

One reason that poor players are prone to making mistakes at the poker table is that many decisions in poker require assumptions or thought processes that are vastly different to those we require in our everyday life. In fact, many of the attitudes required to play good poker actually go against our instincts.

Ian Taylor & Matthew Hilger – in The poker mindset

 

Virtually every poker situation can be broken down to a simple mathematical formula. If there is $600 in a pot and you bet $600, you’ll be getting even money on your proposition. That means, in the long run, you’d have to win that pot half the time to make it a profitable play. When you consider that the hand will play out almost identically with a $400 bet, you’ll see that, mathematically, it often makes sense to choose the smaller bet. [...]
You will rarely see a to professional bet all of what’s in the pot when you watch poker on television. They’ll vary their bets generally between one-third, one-half, and three-quarters of the pot. They understand that by keeping the pots smaller, they’ll have more control over the outcome. And that’s just what they want – to maintain control of the table.

Daniel Negreanu – 01/2007 – in Hold’em Wisdom for all Players

I think emotional control is a very common hinderance to poker players, it really amazes me how often otherwise great players allow themselves to lose far more than they should because they have a desire to keep playing to get unstuck.

Brian Hastings – 12/2009 – in CardRunners Blog

If you keep whining about your bad luck, you will play like a weak, scared, passive victim. You will lose, and deserve to lose. If you realize that you’re about as lucky as everyone else, you can play like a confident, decisive winner.

Alan Schoonmaker – 12/2009 – in CardPlayer

A good bluff tells a story that the victim believes and understands. [...] You have to make your opponent feel certain – certain that he is doing the right thing by folding. You don’t want to leave any doubt in his mind. Let him remain confident in his fold, because creating confusion in your opponent’s mind is counterproductive. Confusion leads to curiosity. Curiosity often leads to calls.

Matt Lessinger – 10/2005 – in The book of bluffs

A rule of thumb for cash games is that the first raise means nothing, the reraise doesn’t mean much more, but the four-bet starts to get scary. In tournaments, the first raise still means nothing, but the reraise is already frightening.

Matt Matros – 07/2009 – in CardPlayer

I think even good players sometimes don’t adapt very well. They have pretty good basics, usually, especially these days online, but they don’t adapt enough to the flow of the game. They have just a basic strategy, and they aren’t very flexible. It’s very important to be flexible with your strategy in poker. If something you are doing is not working well at one table, there’s a reason. You have to think about it, and adapt.

Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier – 12/2009 – in CardPlayer

Nine out of ten times, when I’m waiting for a bigger game, I’m in the $10-$20 games because there are more tables and a constant stream of people. It constantly amazes me that people don’t understand how big $10-$20 is. [...] You can sit in the $10-$20 and make $1,500 a day and it’s so effortless to smash that win-rate. I know people who wouldn’t get out of bed for $1,500, but I think $1,500 matters. It’s a big number. Or it’s what I would call a small-big number, and a lot of the 10-20 players don’t realize how fast it can add up. I never got desensitised to money. When I make a bet with friends for 10 or 20 bucks, I try to win that too. Most gamblers aren’t sensitive to the actual value of money.

Phil “Unabomber” Laak – 01/2010 – in Bluff Europe

Convince yourself that you are neither lucky or unlucky. Luck is a label that can only be applied in the past tense, never in the future. The odds of any random event occurring are precisely those dictated be the laws of probablility. If you miss ten flush draws in a row, then the odds of hitting the next one are exactly the same as the odds of hitting the first one, or indeed any of the other nine. If you are considering how well you are running when you make a decision, then you are on tilt.

Ian Taylor & Matthew Hilger in The poker mindset