What are Some Great Techniques for Avoiding Tilt?
The term tilt is used most often in poker. One of the most famous and most successful poker players of all time, Phil Helmuth, is also famous for succumbing to tilt in frequent and humorous moments. YouTube is full of his tilts! Another great poker player, Daniel Negreanu, has said that tilt might be the single most important factor in winning or losing over the long term at poker.
Tilt can occur in any game. It usually comes when the game is not going well. In progressive jackpots slots for example, it may come if a gamer has played for a very long time with no sign at all that he or she might soon win the big jackpot. In this article, we will talk about how tilt affects us all in many ways, even many non-gaming ways, why avoiding tilt is so important for ultimate happiness, and why online gaming is far better for tilt-control than land based casino gambling.
We should make one thing very clear at the outset: no one is having fun when they are “on tilt” and fun is by far the most important reason for anyone to play online casino games here at Jackpot Capital online casino. So, you can increase your fun exponentially by reducing your tilting moments to zero!
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Rage is Tilt by an Even More Sinister Name
While we may look at tilt as a humorous over-reaction to some event, as in those Phil Helmuth YouTube clips, rage is a lot more dangerous. Road rage can cause accidents or worse. Airplane rage may make a flight unbearable for both the crew and the passengers.
Online gaming is far better for avoiding rage than land based gambling because we have so many other things we can do at home to get our minds away from tilt. We can do the dishes or the laundry. We can vacuum the carpets. We can change the sheets on our bed. We can call friends and get together for drinks, darts, and dares.
We can watch our favorite television comedies again. We can YouTube the best stand-up comedians of all time. They’re there in their finest moments!
We certainly do not want to be operated on by a surgeon experiencing either rage or tilt! We don’t want the wait staff at a restaurant to take out their rage or tilt caused by the previous customer or group on us. An auto mechanic on tilt may cause our vehicle to “tilt” while we are driving it!
So, we can all agree that tilt is a condition that we should all avoid as much as possible. Even modern politics in many countries is beset by tilt and rage! Our societies will be a lot better off when we can get back to simply opposing those who don’t share our views rather than raging against them!
The Downside of Emotion
All humans are emotional beings. We are generally more emotional than rational. When our favorite sports team wins a championship, we react emotionally with whooping, hollering, possibly with tears of joy, and a great celebration. If we were totally rational, we might recognize than none of the players or coaches is from our city! But that would take all the fun out of enjoying the big conquest.
That is the upside of emotion. The downside of emotion leads to tilt. We need to be able to say “so what”! After all, no matter what breaks or gets lost or stolen, they are all just things. They are not actual people in distress. So, we should save our negative thoughts for when real people are in real distress.
So what if the dealer draws a five with 16 points. So what if the only card that can lose the hand for you actually comes out. So what if you have four to a Royal Flush in multi-hand video poker and you still don’t get a single Royal Flush! Each of these examples is frustrating to be sure but they are not tragedies. They are the vicissitudes of luck, no more and no less.
So, the single most important way to avoid tilt is the recognize fully the upside and the downside of emotion. Be emotional when it counts and avoid emotion when it leads to tilt.
Go for a Walk
Gaming should always be about gaming! If you get a run of poor luck or just one hand that you should have won, it might be best to go out for a walk. This is a lot better to do at home rather than at a land based casino. A lot of land based casinos these days are single casino and hotel campuses. It might be that there is nowhere to walk except around the casino.
When we go for a walk to relieve the temptation to tilt we need to see real life in all its finest. Go to a park and watch the kids play. Go shopping and buy yourself a small treat. Take a good book and read. Watch the birds overhead. Look at the clouds, tree branches, and building facades and imagine seeing people or animals there. If you have some sketching skill, you might “see” things to sketch that you never saw before.
Hope for the Best – Expect the Worst
This is how the immortal Mel Brooks movie “The Twelve Chairs” begins. The point for us is that if we expect to win, we will be far more disappointed to the level of tilt if we lose than we will if we expect to encounter highs and lows in our real money gaming!
It is a lot easier to say “so what” when we lose if we don’t expect to win all the time!
Continue to Follow the Best Strategy
The best strategy in slots is to play many different slots instead of the one slot so many land based gamblers play ad infinitum. Other than that, there is no strategy for winning at slots.
The best strategy in video poker, blackjack, or any other game of skill is still the best strategy even when you are having a run of bad luck. Tilt causes players to change their tactics but statistics don’t lie. We should always continue to play according to the statistically best strategy even when luck is in hiding!
What Should I Do if Nothing Works?
If you find yourself on tilt, the first thing is to be able to say out loud or at the very least to yourself “I am on tilt”. When you do that, you will have won at least half the battle against tilt at that moment and maybe a lot more than half the battle against tilt going forward.
Tilt is the Great Enemy of Fun
When we accept the notion that fun is the ultimate goal in online gaming, we can easily see that tilt is the great enemy of fun.
Self-awareness is a great remedy for tilt and for rage. It is a lot better to get upset and get over it than to get upset, have that turn into mild tilt, have that continue on into major tilt, and perhaps to end up in a case of full-blown rage.
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