Tilt

I've always been pretty good at controlling my emotions, or so I thought. It's true that I'm good at controlling anger, despair and hatred, but I absolutely suck when it comes to handling doubts or feelings. Then I realized that I was good at not monkey tilting, but I could often nit tilt or cry tilt and not even realize it.

So I let my mind wander a bit, and I categorized different forms of tilt. Then I realized I might as well write it down because, y'know... It's always good to write things down.

The first, most obvious, and well-known form of tilt is evidently the monkey tilt. That's the tilt depicted in tons of movies, where some bastard just completely loses it and does something reckless. The kid deciding to gunsling against some epic outlaw, the husband who beats the sh*t out of his wife's secret lover, or the retired officer who explains years of conspiracy in court and justifies it by saying people could not possible handle the truth. In poker, the monkey tilt is seen by the guy overshoving all-in preflop and generally going broke very easily. His raise button suddenly grows big enough to cover both the fold and call options, and shoving 500$ to steal 20$ suddenly looks like a very valid and reasonable option to him. Thankfully, I'm pretty much immune to this, as are most people who claim they never tilt. It's also the easiest form to recognize, so eventually, most people learn to adjust to this.

A second, more subtle form of tilt is what I call the crying tilt. It's the guy who suddenly realizes he is powerless and has to endure whatever life throws at him. He usually cries himself to sleep for a while until a life-changing opportunity arises, and then he finally comes back to face everything he was avoiding, realizing that he's pretty badass. Except that this last part happens only in movies, in real-life society seems to enjoy these fellows as they are very profitable for their surroundings. In poker, these guys are equally profitable, as they stop raising or folding anything, just cry-calling everything down, accepting whatever you throw at them as their fate and only path. I tilt this way to some degree when I'm drunk, tired or on some long downswing. Fortunately, sound logic and reasoning can get you out of this pathetic state, so all it takes is a gentle tap in the back from some external force to get you back on track.

The next form of tilt used to kill me at the tables and cost me dearly in life, and I haven't settled on a name for it yet. Paranoia, Nit Tilt, Loser Tilt, or maybe Monster Under the Bed Syndrome. Actually I like that last one, so I'm gonna call it MUBS. This tilt is pretty obvious and is hard to get out from. It's a state in which you seem to think that every good thing is slightly worse than it appears, and everything bad is likely to happen. It usually appears after someone's been down on his luck for a while, and as most bad habits, it's pretty hard to get rid of. Hopefully, at some point, everyone learns to recognize and avoid this pattern, but it takes lots of self-analysis and positive external force to really make the difference. Obviously, in poker, this causes you to fold too often, and miss a ton of value when you do have the best hand. It can cause you to play less, because any activity you do with the MUBS will be a lot less enjoyable. While this form is obviously not as strong as the monkey tilt, it is just as dangerous due to its sneaky nature.

The last form of tilt is kind of counter-intuitive because it is actually a good thing. I consider it tilt though, under the definition that tilt is a state in which you do things based mostly on unconscious reasoning due not to careful training and analysis, but to some temporary state of mind that you cannot really work on and improve to make yours permanently.

Wow. That sentence is pretty badass. Mostly meaningless, but it sounds good.

Anyway, this last form of tilt is best known as The Zone, and I'll call it Zen Tilt. After some fortunate event, your mind seems to be really focused, and with your newfound confidence, you can easily avoid useless thoughts and come to faster and better answers. The ultimate form of zen mastery is living under this state of mind in whatever you do, and takes a lifetime of training to achieve, according to writings such as Zen in the Art of Archery. For most of us, this is ultimately out of reach, but we still do have our moments. Unfortunately, this state is very fragile, and anything could disturb it and throw you back into your normal routine, or even down into paranoia-land.

The first three forms are obviously pretty bad, and while you do have a main way of tilting, under the right (wrong?) circumstances, you could fall for any of these. One caveat of not falling under your usual tilt is that you might not recognize it, and you can't climb out of a hole you don't know you're in in the first place. However, once you start working on ways to avoid tilt altogether, it seems that zen moments come more naturally. No matter how you look at it though, it's something that is worth investing a lot of time into, as it makes pretty much every aspect of your life better, and the sooner you do it, the more you'll reap out of it.