Avoid Adjustment Tilt

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Recently I benefited from a serious case of what I call adjustment tilt. I was in a live $2-$5 no-limit game. Most of the players, including me, had helped to start the game a few hours earlier, so we were familiar with each others’ play.

Some of the players had modestly weak-tight tendencies, so I made my usual adjustments: I played (and raised) looser preflop in position, and I challenged for more pots on the flop and turn. My strategy was working reasonably well, except that I had gotten caught a few times on some of my bigger bluffs, so I was about even for the session. I never showed down a bluff, but twice I made sizable bets and then folded to a raise.

Most of these conspicuous plays had occurred within the first two hours of play. After that, two relatively uneventful hours passed. Then this hand arose.

Three players, two loose ones and one with weak-tight tendencies, limped in. I limped on the button with K 6 . The small blind raised to $10 (a minimum raise), the big blind folded, and all the limpers called. There was $55 in the pot, and I was about $500 behind, and my opponents had varied stack sizes.

The flop came K J 6 , giving me top and bottom pair. Everyone checked to me. I bet $45. Everyone folded to the weak-tight player who called. The turn was the 4 . She checked, and I bet $100. She hemmed and hawed briefly and then called. The river was the 9 . She checked, and as she checked she glared at me and said, “You need to be careful.” She had about $200 remaining, but I bet $125.

She hemmed and hawed a little bit more. Then she said, “I think I’m in trouble.” Then she called. I showed my two pair, and she nodded. She said, “I was in even worse shape than I thought,” and she flipped over A J for just middle pair on the flop.

About 30 seconds later, as the next hand began, she said to someone else, “He was bullying so much before.”

This woman was not a loose player. If she limped in and I raised on the button, she generally folded immediately. She hadn’t gotten out of line once in the approximately four hours I’d played with her. Yet she called nearly $300 in bets after the flop against me with a hand she likely wouldn’t have called $20 with against someone else. My earlier failed bluffs had silently put her on a tilt that had lasted several hours.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t adjust to your opponents. If you see someone launch several unsuccessful bluffs, definitely use that important information in the future. But don’t over-adjust. Don’t start calling down blindly with any old piece of the flop. Even a player who bluffs a fair bit will tend to have a strong hand after making sizable bets on the flop, turn, and river.

So how might you adjust correctly to a suspected bluffer? Say you have a draw on the turn, and your typical, non-bluff-happy opponent makes a decent-sized bet. You don’t think you have the right odds to call to hit your hand. And you think that if you raise all-in, you’ll get called a bit too often to make the semi-bluff work out. Against this player you should just fold your draw.

But against a player whom you know bluffs fairly frequently, you might not fold. You still won’t have the odds to call to hit your hand, but raising as a semi-bluff will work out better. You’ll get called less often because every time you catch your opponent bluffing, he’ll fold. So if you have a borderline drawing hand on the turn, you might fold it against a solid player, but shove all-in with it against an aggressive, bluffing player. That’s a reasonable adjustment.

On the other hand, calling down three streets with a flopped middle pair against someone who bet the flop into four opponents is asking for trouble against all but the craziest players. That’s adjustment tilt.

Here’s the point of the story:

1. Put all your observations in context. Just because you saw your opponent bluff once or twice doesn’t mean he’s bluffing every time. Try to remember all the situations where he could have bluffed, but instead he just folded, checked, or called. That should give you some perspective about his real bluffing frequency.

2. Keep your eye out for tells. My opponent dropped a doozy in this hand. After her turn call, I wasn’t exactly sure what sort of hand she had. I suspected A-K, among other possibilities. But then she tried to scare me into checking down the river by telling me to be careful. This classic tell suggests a hand that your opponent wants to see a showdown with but doesn’t want to call a bet with. After she warned me to be careful, I knew she likely had exactly one pair, and it was a pair she was worried about. That’s why I chose the $125 bet. I was concerned that if I pushed all-in, she might come to her senses and fold. If I hadn’t picked up the tell, I might have bet a different amount, and I might not have gotten such a good result.

3. If you find your thinking still focused on a hand that happened several hours ago, you’re probably on tilt. You don’t have to lose a big pot to go on tilt. Indeed, I hadn’t played a significant hand against this player the entire session. But she saw one or two hands and convinced herself that I was trying to run over the table, ignoring the countless hands where I quietly folded preflop or on the flop. That’s tilt. If you find yourself fixated on a particular opponent, and it’s not because they’re the weakest player at the table and you’re trying to figure out how best to get their money, chances are that you’re tilting. Take a deep breath, take a walk, forget about that one player and refocus on how to beat the entire game.

[This article appeared originally in the July 16, 2008 issue (Vol. 21, No. 14) of Card Player.]

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