ITH Poker Forum

[Ironfist]

Hello Tommy

I've enjoyed reading your poker articles since a member here pointed out your website, and I have also enjoyed reading and re-reading Elements of Poker.

A couple of questions.

Much of your writing is about the control of tilt, or always playing your 'A' game. You often allude to tilt problems in the past.
Can you say that you are 'tiltless' now or is it like a monster that you control, but is always there?

Finally, what is the cover artwork on Elements of Poker representing?

best regards
Iron

[Tommy Angelo]

Hi Ironfist,

A couple of questions.

Much of your writing is about the control of tilt, or always playing your 'A' game. You often allude to tilt problems in the past.
Can you say that you are 'tiltless' now or is it like a monster that you control, but is always there?

Let's define tilt twice:

1) TILT: any deviation from your A-game, however slight or fleeting.

By that definition, I am definitely not tiltless and I don't ever hope or expect to be. I think of this definition of tilt as setting a bar that is an impossible dream.

(Forgive me while I break into song...)

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe

To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far


Ahem ... back to you, Ironfist...

You spoke of a monster. That makes me think you are thinking about definition #2:

2) TILT: non A-game that is caused by negative emotions.

Here again, I am not tiltless, but I must say I'm pleased with my progress so far. Tilt of this kind is like any other suffering in that there's nothing I can do today about tomorrow's tilt. I can only deal with it when it arises. So tiltlessness becomes an ongoing practice of becoming untilted after tilt arises. The faster you can untilt, the more tiltless you are.

Tilt, that is, emotion, is as much a part of us as are our eyes and thoughts and anything else that exists or originates with the borders of our body. Tiltlessness is not the squelching of emotion. It is the raw awareness and acceptance of it as part of the reality projected within our minds. When something happens at the poker table that tilts me, the faster I can see it as -- oh, okay, this is just my mind making noise, nothing to be alarmed about, it's my old friend, negative feelings -- the better. You could say that for me, after having been round and round with this for years, that today my tiltlessness is directly proportional to my awareness speed. As soon as I wrap my tilt in honest awareness, it goes away. And I am pretty good at maintaining a high awareness-reaction speed, which translates to pretty good tiltlessness.

Finally, what is the cover artwork on Elements of Poker representing?

The cover is an abstract representation of what is inside the book.

I found the image at gettyimages.com after a year of looking at images all over the place and bouncing ideas off several friends of mine who are artists. At the outset, the only thing I had decided on about the cover was that it would not include pictures of cards or chips.

The bottom third or so of the cover of Elements of Poker is many pieces that sort of go together and reflect off one another, like the elements in the book, and the bottom third of the image also represents the slicing pain and edginess of poker. The various reds are like blood -- flowing blood, and clotted blood. The middle, with the smooth loopy-shaped thingies, is like a tilt-prone poker player in mid-development, learning to smooth out the edges and find some tranquility. The top represents the arrival at emptiness, and peace, that can only exist in the moment, and is never forever, because there’s that thick stripe of bloody tilt looming off to the side.

Tommy

[jeffnc]

the bottom third of the image also represents the slicing pain and edginess of poker. The various reds are like blood -- flowing blood, and clotted blood.

Holy crap. I'm tilting!

[AlamedaMike]

Tommy - I enjoy reading your book and your posts - as I mention to a few people - A New Earth by Tolle is an interesting book.

Tilt to me is like the pain body in Tolle's book which feeds off the ego. You would need to watch the Oprah shows on iTunes or study his book to understand what I am saying.

Bottom line: The awareness of the present moment destroys the pain body and also destroys tilt or at least reduces it.

Read the last paragraph of E144 again if you have his book - if you do not have his book then please play at my table. Thanks.

[Tommy Angelo]

Hi Mike,

Tommy - I enjoy reading your book and your posts - as I mention to a few people - A New Earth by Tolle is an interesting book.

I'm reading it now. I knew I would gain much from this book, as I did from The Power of Now. There are some reminders I never get tired of being reminded of.

Read the last paragraph of E144 again if you have his book - if you do not have his book then please play at my table. Thanks.

At the risk of cutting into your edge , I'll just put the last sections of my book here, since it's basically why I wrote the book in the first place.

"A Process of Illumination"

from "Elements of Poker"

During bad times, we get unhappy. Let’s say we wanted to be less unhappy during bad times. We could train ourselves to do it, if we were to use our bad times as opportunities to practice getting better at getting over bad times. The ideal arrangement would be if we had lots of bad times to practice on, so that we could get better even faster.

So, to help us accelerate the process of learning how to handle bad times, we decide to invent a new game. We call it: Bad Times. The purpose of Bad Times is to cause bad times for everyone. The more the better, and the worse the better.

We’d want our game to unleash waves of agony and anger, again and again, on every player. We would call our game a success if it caused depression, oppression, beguilement, defilement. Bad Time would follow us around and cause us grief, by souring our relationships, our disposition, and our grapes. We would design and refine our game to be seductive, and addictive, in multiple ways, so that its snares snag many, many times.

Our game would not be like chess. At chess, whoever plays the best wins. Where’s the agony in that? Our game must be viciously unjust: the better you play, the more exquisite will be your torture. To that end, we will employ a significant randomizing agent. Something like randomly selected pieces of paper with markings on them would work. We would attenuate the luck factor so that it causes the maximum amount of confusion, and delusion, and bad times, and very bad times.

Our game would not be like football or any other game that has teams. A team forms a supportive network that makes losing easier. We’ll have none of that in our game. Not only will nobody and I mean nobody share your pain, they will probably enjoy it.

Mountain climbing is painful, but Bad Times would not be anything like mountain climbing. A mountain climber is so busy at not freezing to death and not falling to death that his pain doesn’t really get a chance to cook properly. Our game would have gaps in the action, plenty of time for steaming, and simmering, and stewing, and boiling, plenty of time to allow the thinking mind to wander off and injure itself, so that we can practice healing it.

Let’s see. What else. Oh, I know. Proximity. We’ll sit in a circle, as close as we can get without touching. That way the bad vibes of Bad Times can spread easily and quickly, spraying fertile spores of conflict. And let’s have comfortable chairs that stick to people who are stuck. And we’ll have dealers, ghastly beasts possessing wizardly powers, able to raise the frequency and pungency of the bad times.

What would be at stake? What could we put on the line that would pour on the pain? What could we lose that would amplify the anguish? Pride? Of course there would be that, but loss of pride is not nearly severe enough to do the damage we’re after here. Plus, everyone doesn’t have it, so everyone can’t lose it. We need something that is universally valuable. Something everyone has, and wants more of.

We decide that in our new game, the loser will pay, not only in pride, but also in cash. Money buys time, and food, and choices. Money is time, and food, and choices. Money equals food. Food equals life. Money equals life. Broke equals death. In our society, wagering money is as close as we can get to betting our lives. With so much at stake, our game is sure to cause desperation, and treachery, and man, this is truly a nasty game we are inventing here. Do you think we’ll be able to get anybody to play it?


We play our new game, and the bad times come, and we remember to follow our breathing. In, and out. In, and out. By doing so, we set aside our thoughts about what went wrong, and we step away from our thoughts about what might go wrong, and for that moment, when those thoughts are gone, so too is unhappiness. By eliminating the past, and eliminating the future, we give ourselves this present. We will practice this process of elimination, using our new game, and it will become for us a process of illumination. Let us play.

[AlamedaMike]

I am glad that you like Tolle's book.

What can I say but great post Thanks for sharing.

After reading the last section of your book I sent you an email expressing my pleasure and the benefit of breathing - I had an opportunity to use it y'day when some a very loose player sucked out on me - I felt the ugly head of tilt (anger - pain body) starting to rise and I wanted to kill it on the spot - I did - it took me about 30 seconds. Thanks to you and Tolle.

Tilt was coming not because he sucked out but because I did not like the way I played the hand on the river.

Almost always, I can play for hours, win or lose and not tilt. On another hand, I had the best hand (don't we always) and the blind bet into me on the river when the 3rd flush card hit. When bet and I had only one choice. Decide if he had the flush or two pair since I had top two pair I called and lost to his baby flush (2s-4s).

Zero reaction. I love that feeling.

I do not want to slight Piemaster and company. They wrote an excellent book in The Poker Mindset. It was eye opening, insightful and it helped me a lot through some tough times. However, his book did not push me over the edge where I needed to be.

His key concept - Luck is king in the short run is classic.

I think that most poker players would benefit from reading TPM. They could relate to it easily. Most would get something from it while on the other hand few poker players would get anything from A New Earth and from The power of Now.

I am thankful that few players that I play against read anything related to poker.