Some how I have been listening to Poker Face by Lady GaGa for quite some time but had not seen the music video. It is worth checking out.
Tournament poker has introduced a new situation to live poker. You have to sit there and take whatever the other players are dishing out in terms of verbal abuse. In a cash game you can always go somewhere else, table change or go home for the night. But in a tournament you forfeit everything if you leave and you have no idea how long it is going to be till they break your table. You are stuck and you have to be able to clamp down and weather the storm. Some players out there know this very well and take a lot of advantage of it.
Tony G ( Antanas Guoga ), Mike Matasow ( The Mouth ), and Phil Hellmouth (The Brat) are some of the most well know talkers that try to get under peoples skin and either manipulate them or tilt them off their game. I am always blown away by the effectiveness of Tony G, he can take the best pro’s and make them play like little children.
Tony G takes out Russia player Ralph Perry
Now this is an pretty extreme version verbal abuse to put someone on max tilt. For example when I played with the TiltBoys they are still going for tilt, but they are willing to wait all night to get it and therefor they start off much slower so no one ends up hating anyone else at the end of the night. My favorite forms of TiltBoy tilt are asking Phil Gordon why he is not wearing his WSOP braclet ( he does not have one yet ) and how his company Expert Insight is doing ( it went under ). For extra fun you can also ask him what Eric Lingren called him on national TV ( an idiot ).
Now the question is given that is it clear that tilt can be profitable, what is it worth and are all the downsides worth it?
I am pretty sure Ralph Perry will never talk to Tony G again and that is a serious problem. Just like in the work world everyone you seriously piss off is another bridge burnt.
Now in our little worlds it is a little different we will not have to worry about sponsorship deals but the other three apply. Plus we cash game players have to worry about pissing fish off and them not coming back to the game; one of the biggest hurt to your bankroll is money you can no longer win.
Think it is fine to go for a little tilt and get a good player to play a little worse:
Just avoid the going for extreme tile and do not waste it on already bad players:
The short term gain is not worth it, you chase the long term + EV fish away and are only left playing with the better players that can ignore you and still think your worth their time to play against. Instead of focusing on tilting people, focus on building a better game.
A couple of years ago I was at Lucky Chances Casino and I sit down at what turns out to be a fairly weak 1-1-2 NL table. No one has any real play, couple of kids are stuck in aggressive mode and there is a bunch of passive calling stations. But it looks good as there is a bit of money at the table, so I decide to wait it out. I get up about $100 when I see someone that looks familiar, it turns out to be Rafe Furst a Tiltboy and WSOP bracelet winner that I have played with at Phil Gordon’s home game.
TiltBoy Rafe Furst
Back then he was running Expert Insight and on this night he decided to take two of his employees out for a poker night. They eventually all end up at my table and I think it is my lucky night; I get to play with this guy for $100 stakes instead of usual $1000 stakes were I have to play extra careful. This should be fun right? Given his normal wild play style and combined these small stakes I was sure he was going to crack this table wide open.
First hand he raises to $25 from the small blind after a bunch of limpers had just called, they all fold and shows 6 2 offsuit as he is takes it down. Second hand he raises to 25 bucks from the dealer button and almost stacks seat 6 with his 6 4 offsuit when it comes 6 6 K on the flop, seat six is now cursing under his breath and shuffling what is left of his chip stack.
They do not call him a Tiltboy for nothing, now the entire table is going crazy and he is pushing people all in for fun for the next ½ an hour. At the end of this 1/2 an hour everyone has lost their minds and is going all in with any pair, any draw, or any time they get deal two cards that are the same color. Shortly after this one of his employees gets the most insaine double up I have ever seen. The employee has not played two hands in the last 1.5 hours yet some fish in the feeding frensy decided to put im all in pre-flop with a K-J offsuit. It was not like he bluffed and got caught with K J offsuit, no even better he had to re-raise twice to get all in as it is a 200 spread limit game. Of course the employee had pocket AA and won a nice 500$ pot. At this point I decide I am not leaving this game until it breaks no matter what.
Sadly I only get one hand during all this time, it ends up being with Rafe, I miss the flop and have to bluff to win my last pot of the night. They leave around 1 am and a couple of people are now stuck around 2 grand and start gambling even more. The pots that had been averaging around $80 at 1 am grown until there is about 6 grand on the table at 5 am and the average pot is about $400. Sadly I only get 2 hands between 1 am and 5 am and I lost both to end the night down $100.
4 hours of folding hands while complete idiots are getting rich and then neither a str8 or flush can hold up for over $1500 in lost pots. It was like a real poker nightmare. But seeing how easily Rafe turned an only slightly profitable table into a mad cash crop was almost worth the price of admission alone.
So it had to be this way, with success comes the eventual downfall, one gets too confident, optimizes their plan a little for extra extraction. Suddenly exposes some holes in the armor and when dealing with sharks like the TiltBoys, your throat can only be exposed for a second before they have it. Thus I got cleaned out like so many before, why would I be any different.
So I had heard all the tales, Dice boy is the luckiest man alive. It does not matter how many outs he has, he will get there. They all said “If are in a pot with him, just fold early and keep the pot small so you do not loose even more money to him later”. In my previous games I had seen him hit against Perry, Ralph and Phil and crush them after the money was all in and he was way behind. I had seen the tilt it induced and the table suddenly light on fire.
Yet I could not help myself, there I sat with the nut str8 in blogass ( omaha h/l with 6 cards and a twist ), two flush cards sat on the flop. Dice boy bet 150 and was called before it got to me, what can you do. You can not call and let them both draw for cheap, if you push all in you will get called by the str8 flush wrap around draw and would be slightly behind. So I tried to re-raise enough to get rid of the bare str8 or flush draw but leave myself the ability to fold if needed on the turn. Sure enough Dice boy though for awhile and then called, he was undecided to call and let the others in or re-raise all in with his massive draw.
Sure enough the turn is the 3 rd flush card, I check and he moves me all in. Of course he hit it, i think for a little while but i have to fold. I have seen way to many people pay him off and can not join their ranks. I fold and he shows me med flush, it was risky just flat calling can letting a better flush draw in. But things seem to work out for him a lot.
Well he did that to me a few more times and I was starting to go on tilt. Normally if I have having a bad run and do not have a good table image I get the hell up and go home. But sadly I was there on business and could not leave yet. Dice Boy then busts another Tiltboy that re-raised all in against him, so now he had table images as the finisher and was betting a lot. Given my tight image so far I had to start calling down against people because they were calling every raise and coming after me, and then betting every time a scare card fell. Even a Lucky Chances Fish would have started bluffing against me the way I had been playing up to that point.
The was the beginning of the end for me. Every time I had to look one of these guys up, they had it and more. They were running good and I was running bad, I felt like Daniel Negreanu on High stacks poker looking at Gus Hansens Quads over and over again all night. Thanks for holding my money for me TiltBoys. But easy come and easy go. I will be back to even the score. Not even Dice Boy can run that lucky forever.
After teaching my friends all these crazy games and spending a month playing them during our lunch break, I though I knew what I was doing. I found another excuse to get into the next Tiltboy home game and was off. Boy did I get lucky, for the first 1/2 hour before everyone showed up we played Omaha h/l and I could not loose a hand. That was good it gave me a little extra confidence before we got into the Tiltboy home brew games. When we did get into the crazy games they only introduced one completely new game and only 2 new variations to the other ones. Since I was not totally bogged down with learning I did not have to fold almost every hand and could play a lot more. It was great, once you know these games you realized they are designed for pure crazy fun. The declare and another round of betting is pure evil, the person that finds themselves the only one on the high or low side gets to bet the max and delight in the groan’s of pain as everyone else puts in their money hoping their not quartered or completely out.
All the games they play are ante games, they have this rule that if the dealer does not put in the ante before he is done dealing cards, he has to double the ante. I must of caught Phil and Dice boy on it a dozen times that night. Now I understand the name Tiltboy, when someone is stuck a couple of thousand and you call them on double antes a bunch of times in a row. You can literally see the steam coming off them. And in this group, if you look like you might be tilting even a little bit, everyone comes after you. The only good night in there minds is when someone has bought in several times and has to get up and walk it off just to keep from going off the handle. If it is Phil Gordon then it is extra satisfying and the table gets really excited. Not sure if it is just because he is the pro or there is another inside story I do not know.
It looks all care free and fun but don’t let that fool you, it is your typical shark filled semi-pro game. Someone takes a bad beat the mind games start and the rest immediately start convincing him that he played it wrong. Start running bad they come after you and put you to the test. Split the pot in a hand and they try to ro-sham-bo you for the whole pot. Never ro-sham-bo these guys for anything, I never won a split pot in 5 hours. If you want to have a little fun, split most of the pot and then ro-sham-bo them for the smaller leftover amount.
Then we got to the no limit part and this time I was up and could afford to stay. What a completely different environment as one would expect. A no limit split pot game gets very large very quickly. They allow you to pull part of your buy in behind the line for each hand so your not risking it all right from the beginning. But people are still getting busted every few hands and there are more buy ins and more tilt than you can keep track. Once again I was way out of my level and had to resort to playing super tight again. Still by far the most fun I have ever had at a poker table in my short poker career.
I finally left a little bit up, much to their disappointment I am sure. Can’t wait to try again. Which I did in “Round three”
