The Template Temple

The other day I made a bad poker decision; I played while on tilt. Tilt is obvious in poker. When you lose a big hand or make a big mistake you get angry. Tilt also happens a lot when people bluff you and then show you the hand. Maybe you decided not to call a raise with a small pair and would have hit a set to stack a player. All of these poker decisions can cause tilt and affect the poker you play in the immediate future. What happened to me the other day was not poker tilt, but life tilt, and it bled into my poker play. On Sunday I got up and headed out to go to a friend’s house to watch some football. I got in my car and went out the driveway, right smack into a huge pothole that had just been carved out of the road. Everything was fine as I continued down the road. On my way I hit another big pothole as I turned a corner, still everything seemed ok. Then I get onto a construction road and my tire goes flat. I get out and find a nail in my tire, call roadside assistance and get my spare tire on. I decide to go home instead of on to my friend’s. I was registered for a casino tournament at 3pm, which I had planned to play on my laptop at my friend’s house while football was on. Now it was nearing 2pm and all I wanted to do was get home and be comfortable. I get home around 2:30pm and see that my fantasy team is getting crushed. Terrell Owens on my bench got 200 yards and a Touchdown while all of my starters were getting nowhere. Things are not going well, and then I notice that it’s 3:02. I get out my computer and log in to the website. Within 15 minutes I’ve shoved all-in on someone’s preflop raise and lose a coinflip. I didn’t have the patience to play a big MTT after all of the bad news. The correct decision would have been to unregister from the event because I was not mentally prepared to put 100% of my effort into poker. Life tilt is something that has to be controlled just like poker tilt. If you can’t control it, you better be ok with losing money.