On Take A Stand Tilt

Great article, Ed. I know exactly where you are coming from. Sometimes it becomes difficult to keep making prudent folds.

Appreciated the article, Ed - as someone who has tilted like this in the past it’s almost as if you have articulated my own thoughts for me. The reasoning for making the call, finishing with,

My brain thinks up an excuse for why I need to get to showdown THIS time.

is right on the money. I love the way we (as poker players) can ALWAYS find a way to get to a showdown, no matter how tenuous the reasoning may be. And then I hate myself when I make the call, am clearly crushed, and know that deep down I could have stopped myself. I’m sure some of you all do this already, but recently I’ve even taken to physically taking my hand off of the mouse when I’m in a sticky spot just so that reaching for it again is going to be one more conscious movement to make and not just the poorly thought through snap decision I sometimes make, and then click away with, when I’m tilting…

I SO hear you on this, and its one of the (many) holes in my game too.

Ed,

What range are you putting him on when he c/r’s the flop that you call? Are you committed?

I haven’t even read this yet, but I love it. Take-a-stand tilt or you-will-not-push-me-around tilt is a personal favorite of mine.

My friend and I were just discussing our ability to spew chips in this fashion. Thanks for the article.

Ed, I could have sworn I learned the 2X pot turn overbet shove from your books…right? lol

AK IS what I put you on, and I thought surely you’d muck to my turn overbet. I was cursing myself for overbetting when you time-banked for so long. I did notice you were playing fairly tight, but didn’t put any thought into you being on “take a stand” tilt, but I do understand your thought process.

In short, my preflop call OOP was marginal as I mentioned I did notice you were playing fairly tightly, and I hit a lucky flop. You’ve helped me become a better player, so maybe these types of discussions can help you realize that sometimes the fear or belief that people are conciously trying to exploit your play and push you off hands is just not the case. I’m sure some internet players are conciously doing this, but my guess is more often than not it’s just your head telling you this.

-vb

lagniappe, great word! Thanks for expanding my vocabulary.

And great article, I run into this tilt all the time. The other side of it is very occasionally I will go out of my way to lay a bad beat on a player, or bluff with second best hand to intentionally try and put someone in this tilt mode. One play I like to do when I am feeling frisky is bet big three or four times in a row and hope I catch a big hand by the the end. If you size the bets right most of the bluffs will work. But man oh man is it a thing of beauty when you are in there your third or fourth time in a row with pocket aces and everybody thinks you are on rags. But it really depends on stack sizes. If I am deep stacked I am generally willing to risk $75-$100 if by the third or fourth time I can catch Aces and stack off someone who has $600 in front of them. But the two main problems is not catching the Aces when you need them and running into a player who doesn’t necessarily fall into the “take a stand tilt” mode very easily. The key to winning the game for me is figuring out the range of hands someone will take a stand with. If someone will make a stand with top pair great, but most of the time good players must have a set or better when they go deep. And I tend to avoid these players just as a rule unless I flop a monster.

Heh good on you for posting that article. Nice to know that even pros can act retarded sometimes.

Weirdest tilt i’ve ever been on was quad tilt. Was at a home game and i flopped quads 8’s against one opponent and there was an Ace of the board. I checked, he bet 1/2 the pot, i 3x him. I didn’t even think “what does he have, what does he put me on” blah, i just did a standard scare raise. He folded his ace.

i only had like 15bb at this point, easy slow play + double up. even though i won that hand i was agro for like 1/2 an hour afterwards

Great article, and very familiar.

I noticed you use some kind of poker tool to see what kind of action your opponent gives, the “21/14/1.8″ is what im reffering to. Can you share what tool you use and what these stats mean? Ive been looking for something like this.

Nice article, typo in ” A randomly-selected 21/14/1.8 (i.e., tight and super aggressive) player ” where you probably intended ” *not* very aggressive” as earlier in the text.

Edwin,

a poker tool that many people use is called PokerTracker (abbreviation in poker slang: “PT” ). This tool reads in the hand history that many sites provide. Out of all the hands you or your opponent played it calculates certain key figures, like the ones you quoted in your question.
“21/14/1.8″ means:
21% VP$IP (voluntarily put money into pot) = of all hands where money had to be put into the pot to see the flop (no money is needed in an UNRAISED pot when you are in the big blind) you put money in
14% PFR (preflop raise) = out of ALL starting hands you raised 14% before the flop (this includes reraises, but just calling a raise is excluded since YOU did not raise)
1.8 AF (aggression factor) = this basically tells you how often a player bets or raises. It’s common to exclude any preflop action, so this figure is about flop, turn and river betting (you can make the corresponding settings within PT).

Hope that helped.

Yes, yes, yes.

The worst part about these hands is that when you go back, they are too pointless or too embarrassing to post. No matter how many ways you try to recast the hand as a meta-game problem, the answer comes back, “yeah, just fold”.

Greyzy, or anybody else.

Do you know of any good poker tracker software that works with Mac OS X?

Thanks

Thanks for this article. Well written and very relevant. I’m glad I have a name for this type of tilt; that’s an important first step. Now hopefully I can recognize it before it’s too late. Thanks again for the awesome read.

degenerate bluffer,

I am not a Mac user, so I don’t know what exists for or works with Mac OS X. Why don’t you check out the discussion forum on the homepage of PT? Maybe there you will find an answer. Also I am not sure if there’s a free version of PT to try it out. If all that fails you might want to contact the guy who wrote the program and keeps it up to date. He might have a version, patch or whatever it takes to get it to run on a Mac.

I can so relate to this, happens to frequent when multi-tabling.

Thx for the great article, helps me indentify alot

Yea, any article by Ed is great for sure (without the reading
but always worth reading twice :)
I realised that, as far as tournaments are concerned, I’m on permatilt for months.
I just decided it’s a wise way to spend my player-points on tourney’s fees. Yea - I’ve almost spent them all LOL and quite don’t remember one that last more then an hour. Hehehehehe

GREAT articles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Man… I am so glad I’m not alone in this. I can usually keep a cool head, but after hours of getting pushed around and bullied I just can’t help that feeling from creeping in, that I just want to stand up on the table and start winging chips at the jerk who’s been pickin’ on me all night…

Okay maybe that was a little over the top, huh…

Anyway, thanks for the great post and all the follow up comments.

Regards,

cheer_dad

“Take a stand tilt” is my biggest problem, particularly in tournament play where leaving the table is not an option.

Since I’m naturally aggressive, I tackle problems by bashing my head against them until either the problem or my head is cracked. Lately, I’ve been seeking out the slashers who put me on take-a-stand tilt so I can better understand their game and its deficiencies. I’ve greatly improved my anti-slasher game, have increased my tolerance dramatically, but haven’t yet completely eliminated my tendency to try to take a stand for its own sake.

A few days ago in an online tournament with a $20k top prize, I was on my A+ game with zero mistakes for the first two hours. Then the tables rotated and gave me two slashers at once. These two made the flop expensive and the price to see the river as much as the average stack. Players around them were dropping like flies, usually due to “take a stand tilt”. I kept my cool for more than an hour, taking some greatly exaggerated pots while making no mistakes, and had the tournament ended at the end of the third hour I’d have been in the money. It got to where I had to put on my best sneaks to get any action from the two slashers.

I should have kept that in mind.

In the fourth hour, which was my second hour with the slashers, I was catching strong drawing hands that didn’t quite justify engaging the slashers, hands that I would have played at a calmer table and that mostly would have won had I stayed on them. The frustration of folding so many potentially winning hands finally exceeded my threshold. I took a stand with wired jacks, bet aggressively preflop. When the flop came low and uncoordinated, the villain pushed, and I raised all-in.

In the moment, I believed (can’t call it thinking) that the villain was most likely just foolishly asserting dominance because I’d played so well against him for over an hour. I KNEW that I wasn’t getting action out of him without a sneak, but I neglected that datum because the notion that I’d got under his skin was more appealing. The low, uncoordinated flop had brought him top set.

After the hand finished, the villain typed into the chat box: “I was just waiting for that guy to make a mistake”. I’ll be haunted by those very illuminating words for quite a long time, I think. Hopefully they’ll make me a better poker player.

Know the feeling exactly…

Does this one count as take a stand tilt also ?

Just recently sat at a low limit no limit table in middle position. 2 limpers in front of me, and I hold a suited ace so I happily limp along up till the big blind who minraises and ofcourse, all 6 limpers happily pay the extra 25 cents to take the flop, 533 with 2 of my suite giving me a gutshot and a nut flush draw. Big blind bets 75 cents into the 3 dollar pot, early position guy now minraises but 1,50 to pay for my draw sounds like more than fine so I happily call along with 2 or 3 others and then the big blind minraises again and ofcourse, the guy in early position also minraises… great for me with my great draw, I happily call 1,50 extra, along with 2 or 3 other and then, the big blind minraises again and ofcourse, this early position guy minraises again!!

By then I guess it’s time to go on “take a stand tilt” and I put in my last 20 dollars that I have left only to find out that I am getting called by both the big blind and the guy in early position with the guy in early position showing 55 for absolutely drawing dead. Only happiness I could find in that hand is that atleast the big blind lost together with me

Next time I should try thinking before I take a stand… or might this have been “minraise tilt”.

Oh man, I was just thinking exactly the same thing this weekend after thinking about my own play some more. I really suffer from “taking a stand” tilt.

For me it’s also about not wanting to appear weak to the table. I usually try to be aggressive, which usually works pretty well. But when players start playing back at me when I have reasonable hands, which just don’t seem to materialize… Chances are I’ll go on “taking a stand” tilt, and shove the money in with a similar situation as you describe above.

yes, this is definitly a big leak in my game. Just yesterday I lost 3 shortstack buyins when I thought I had to “take a stand” and they always had the goods. So I’ll try to put the others as solid/reasonable and drop marginal hands to aggression unless I have better information.

i’m experiencing a string of take a stand tilt when I am constantly losing showdowns for more than 100BB in a losing streak. The guys bet, and I know I have the second best hand, but here is what I think: they always call ME, because they think I am so tag fish. now there must be a problem in my game, i will loosen up my calling standards, loosen up my preflop standards, afterall this stupid guy at 70/30 has won 70% of showdowns and something like 50BB in one hour just playing junk hands while I’m folding like an idiot. The first and second and third time I bet and they call and crack my very good hand on the river. So the next few times, I call them down and lose. Then its operation poker justice and I want to crack their straights and flushes and fulls on the river by raising my stupid pocket aces… how dumb I am… It would not be a problem to lose some money in some pots for a good hand cracked on the river, but now it really hurts because it seems like I am not playing well, that I am forfeiting 100BB because of a tilt in my own game… I want to understand what I am doing bad, but i’m not doing nothing bad, i’m playing just as good I always should when i’m in the right spots… I’m just on a losing streak, and I dont use aggression with selection anymore… and tilting advert behaviour makes it harder to recover from losses in the future.

seems like me.

sitting at a NL50 6max table with 20$.
guy two to my right (large stack, >200$) raises or folds, never limps, and always bets pot. gets me to fold my decent LP opening hands for a couple of minutes, working my way up to $80 from the other players at the table. but dammit, that guy goes on my nerves. really.

he shows down some very very marginal hands. finally, FINALLY! i get handed JJ on the big blind. it folds to the captain, who bets pot, SB folds, I reraise pot, he min-reraises, I push (since I KNOW he’s gonna call most the time, right? if not, I can still use the move to my advantage to push him out of pots later…), he calls… and shows AA.

so despite deliberately avoiding confrontation, good play against the other players, i took a stand and got felted for ~100$. dam.

Yeah … I have many bad beats ( or so *I* think LOL ) to tell you about. The first one …

Awesome to have a name to put at this. I have been playing short stacks for the last month or so and have doubled my bankroll. The times where I perform poorly is where I take a stand dammit. I’ll have to review some sessions and some key hands to learn.

As always, thanks Ed.

Likewise, I know I have the same problem in my game.

I always feel that I am being bluffed on SO many hands. In fact I am always afraid of being pushed around, and at almost any occasions that I take a stand, I find out to be against a much better hand. And this is to the point that I was wondering if it would’nt be a more profitable thing for my game to simply…never take a stand ! I mean never, even if I am convinced that I am being pushed around, to the point of even change of table at times. We so many different players at online low limits hold’em (specially microlimits), that I think it would be suprising that so many players would “chase you” on a site with the purpose of pushing you around. I fairly think that it would be more profitable than to go on that kind of tilt one or twice a session.

I am just simply curious to hear your opinion about that.

Thanks

I like your post.
My favourite opponent, The one, who does not want to be pushed around.
its just about ego and testosteron. the more he has the easier is it to take his money.
like a raging bull. show him one bluff or two and he will call your raises with any pair.
because he takes a stand. Brave but not smart.
Let it be his Alamo.(no survivors)

I actually was searching tonight for thoughts on combating this very thing, although to be honest I hadn’t seen it for what it truly was until I read your article.

Oh man! This is a major leak that I have come to terms with just yesterday. After having a great set of sessions the last few days (I am only playing microdonk stakes) I end up doing the ‘take-a-stand-tilt’ (TAST) and blow all of my hard work from the previous sessions.

It is good to see it written down and now I just need to REALLY REALLY work on recognizing when it is occurring. Sometimes its just not worth 2nd barreling (another lesson for me) and if you do and get called-be wary. I figure my meager bankroll would be at least 50-80% larger if it wasn’t for me doing the TAST thing. Great article Ed.

Cheers
Andrew