Thursday, January 22, 2009

Hud tilt

I watched a 2 part series on leggopoker from Student Caine who finished third in 1 year birthday celebration competition. His videos were about how the brain works and why we have rather irrational emotional responses at the tables. It was an interesting video and I'd recommend watching it (on the link below)
http://www.leggopoker.com/videos/training/313/

It also got me thinking to my irrational responses and I think I have identified an mental leak I have which I am calling hud tilt. It comes in 2 forms.

The first and simpler form is from when my stats are nitty. So like if I find myself 9/8 after 50 hands I will feel the absolute need to get my stats up to some normality and a lot of the time end up monkey raising. I think this goes back to my fundamental fear of my own nittyness. When I first started playing I was really nitty and at heart that is what I am. As I read more I increased my aggression but I have to force it all the time. If you ever read 2+2 you see how nits are treated with almost derision. There is almost a peer pressure aspect to being aggressive which I partly subscribed to even when I shouldn't.

The second form is from my opponents. For example, if someone fires a turn continuation bet on a good card such as an Ace or King and I note they have high turn cbet stats this can on occasion really set me off. It will cause me to make retardo raises even when my line makes no sense. I will do it because I've forgotten my line and literally just looking at that red number(I colour code my hud so red numbers = good/aggressive stats) I literally just stop thinking straight. I think this has cost me especially at 400nl.

When I watch the really top nosebleed players like CTS, Aejones, FWF and so on something that strikes me about them in their videos is how calm and clear their commentary and thought processes are. They always have a plan and know what to do in x,y and z situations. Aggression doesn't affect them at all. I think that is pretty telling. it's also noticeable how they don't use huds as much and rely on gameflow much more. This is something I am deficient in and I think if I want to make the jump up is something that I think I need to address