The Dumbest Path to Poker Enlightenment

I promise I mean no offense by what I’m about to say, but your brain is sort of an idiot.

Observing what it does objectively, it’s easy to see that our minds are far from perfect. They are wildly susceptible to emotion, can be influenced by the slightest shift in perspective, and if history has taught us anything, will believe a whole lot of stuff that turns out to not even be true.

I was reflecting on this disconnection between mind chatter and reality recently following a frustrating poker session that had me deep in the clutches of tilt and listening to some wild catastrophizing going on inside my head.  Was there a way, I asked myself, for me to use my mind’s “creativity” to my advantage? Could I trick my brain out of tilt in the same way it convinces me that the sky is falling every time I lose 3 consecutive flips? I was determined to find out.

~~~

Inspired by Pavlov’s famous experiment of making a dog salivate at nothing more than the ring of a bell by first pairing the sound with food, I decided to create my own Pavlovian experiment that I hoped would help cure me of my much undesired affinity for tilt.

In trying to decide on the parameters of the experiment, I only had one rule: it had to be something so simple to execute, like Pavlov’s bell, that I could utilize it even when in the deepest throes of tilt. No trying to convince myself to take a break to meditate while fighting through the clutches of feelings of injustice and rage, no attempts to go out for a peaceful walk around the block when all my mind wanted to do was punt off another stack in some deranged attempt to get back at the poker gods who had doomed me to spend another Sunday session getting kicked repeatedly in the ungodliest of places.

My Pavlovian strategy had to be able to be done with the same ease as the tilted actions themselves — smashing my fist on the table, or chucking another mouse at the wall (pro tip: always at the wall. A broken mouse is much preferable to a broken monitor; a lesson I learned in the worst possible way).

And so, in keeping with the spirit of mental simplicity, I chose the most low-effort activity I could think of: wishing.

As I prepared for my next Sunday session, I made the decision that every time I took a bad beat, every time I ran second set into top set, every time I got KO’d deep in a tournament by another dude with a Rounders-inspired username (TeddyKGB123, WomenRdaRake, PayDatMan, SryJohnIDR), I would do so while wishing, rooting, for it to happen. I would force my mind to take the exact opposite route of the one it was used to, in the hopes it could bring it back to balance once again.

That was it, rooting for myself to lose. That was my entire plan for curing tilt.

Every time I would normally yell “F***!” after getting sucked out on, I would instead yell “F Yes!”

Every time I would normally drop my head on the table in disbelief, I would jump up and fist-pump a loud “let’s goooooo!”

Conversely, each time I found myself all-in, needing to fade a 4-outer for the win, I’d be screaming at the top of my lungs for my opponent’s card, shaking my head in dissatisfaction if the chips slid my way.

And in what proved to be my favorite part of the experiment, I’d take a few seconds during each break in the action to remind myself of my sole intention for the day: to face the most horrific beats possible and notch a losing day in spite of my best strategic efforts (meaning, I wasn’t allowed to actively pursue losses by punting my chips away, only be rooting for Lady Luck to do the punting on my behalf).

And if you’re sitting there reading this anti-tilt strategy thinking it sounds completely idiotic, I assure you, that’s how it felt in practice too.

For about 4 hours.

That’s how long it took what I’ve dubbed the dumbest path to poker enlightenment to make a clear and meaningful impact on my poker experience: 4 hours.

Like I said, your brain, just like mine, is sort of an idiot.

It was the beginning of hour 5 and the number of tournament tables left on my screen was glaringly low – the universe having provided ample opportunity for experimentation already. That’s when the magic happened as the following hand took place.

Nearing the Final Table bubble, I raised pocket queens in late position against the tournament chip leader who had been bullying the table for what felt like eternity. I happily snapped off his all-in in only a fraction less time than it takes Phil Hellmuth to insult an Eastern European, but to my great surprise, it wasn’t the A7 or 85s type of hand I had expected to see when my opponent’s cards were flipped over, it was pocket kings. What the H-E-double-hockey-sticks? Card distribution tilt engaged?

But no, not this time. Instead, being deep in the flow of the experiment, I jumped to my feet and started yelling for victory.

My opponent’s victory, that is.

“King!”

The flop: 875

“King!”

Turn: 2

“Briiiiiiiiiiiiick!!!!”

River: Q

“Goddammit! Every damn time!!”

It took until the sound was completely out of my mouth, my butt fully back down on my seat, before it hit me. I was wholeheartedly irritated by winning a massively meaningful hand!

I immediately broke into a laugh so maniacal it caused my dog to get up from her bed and leave the room.

For a short moment, with only 4 hours of “training” I had legitimately convinced my mind that losing was the outcome it preferred. The surge of frustration and disappointment I could feel coursing through my veins was all the proof I needed to know this to be true.

And although the ultimate goal of the experiment, obviously, was to lessen the pain of losing, not eliminate the joy of winning, that moment proved to me not only that my mind (and probably yours too) was indeed sort of an idiot, but likely an even bigger one than I had initially thought!

~~~

In the four weeks that have passed since that fateful day, I have continued performing this experiment daily, and could not be happier to report that the effects have indeed been significant.

I tilt far less often, my sessions have become far more enjoyable, win or lose, and the amount of time I spend in inner agony following a losing session has cratered to practically zero. In fact, quite the opposite. Actively rooting for losing sessions for the purpose of poker spiritual practice has inadvertently manufactured in me a deep sense of gratitude for my worst poker days. Thank you, poker gods, I find myself saying, for giving me exactly what I asked for: an opportunity to beat my mind into submission.

If you had told me that in less than 30 days you could have me feeling grateful for spending 10 straight hours in poker-variance hell, and that all I would have to do to get there is be a slightly bigger idiot than I was already being, I would have spent every last Satoshi I owned betting against you.

Incredibly to me still a month later, I would have lost that bet. But, in expanding the parameters of the experiment to include other areas in my life, as I have begun to do since, I would have fist-pumped through that defeat too.

Because what I’ve realized through this experiment is that the true value of using the mind’s stupidity elasticity against itself has nothing to do with dollar amounts or tournament wins, but rather in proving to myself how effectively it could be trained to see failure as opportunity, how quickly it could be manipulated into seeing hardship as a training ground for resiliency, and how easily it could be wired to recognize that the natural ebbs and flows of a high variance existence were only as meaningful as I chose to make them.

And in my opinion, that’s one “L” worth celebrating.