Just as I take my seat in the $1/$3/$6 game, I see a player curse, hurl his cards angrily into the muck, leap out of his chair, curse again, and kick the wall. Naturally curious, I look to the board to see what has happened and am surprised to find nothing there. In fact it is still pre-fl0p, and the action was not even on this player when he threw his cards away. Perhaps he just lost a big pot the hand before then?
Nope, this is just his way. He goes on like this for at least an hour, “Two hours of these fucking cards,” “What am I supposed to do with these shit hands?”, “Un-fucking-believable”, “Can’t you deal me anything I can play?”, hanging his head and cursing to himself, angrily throwing his cards away out of turn, occasionally storming off from the table to go kick the wall. While he’s gone, some of the regulars talk about how he was hear last weekend putting on the same show.
The player on my right, in between the Tilt Monkey and me, leaves, and another guy, probably in his late 50s or early 60s with a Lou Reed leather jacket look going on moves into the vacant seat. The next time Tilt Monkey starts muttering under his breath, Lou asks him, “What’s that?”
Tilt Monkey looks up. “Huh?”
“I couldn’t hear you, what did you say?”
“Nothing.” His face is red and he looks miserable.
“Hey are you alright, buddy?” Lou asks with faux-genuine concern.
“No I’m not alright. Do I look fucking alright?”
“Whoah, what’s the matter?”
“I been getting my fucking ass kicked.”
Lou looks shocked. “What? Who kicked your ass?”
Tilt Monkey glares at him. Feigning ignorance, Lou forges ahead. “What happened? Who kicked your ass?”
“They’ve all been kicking my ass.”
“Oh you mean in the card game.”
Tilt Monkey lowers his head and returns to cursing his luck.
Lou looks around the table, shaking his head. I’m not the only one stifling laughter. “You all need to stop kicking this guy’s ass,” he scolds us.
It’s the same business when the Tilt Monkey wins a pot. “Finally. About fucking time. Gimme that pot. A fucking pot. One fucking pot in an hour.”
Finally another guy at the table has had enough. After losing to the Monkey and getting this act, he tells him to shut his fucking mouth and stop whining. Soon both are on their feet pointing and shouting at each other. The floor intervenes and tells Tilt Monkey that one more comment and he’s getting thrown out.
To his credit, he settles down well after that and swallows a lot of abuse without saying anything more. People at the table are talking about him like he’s not there, and if I can hear it he can hear it, but he doesn’t react.
It helps that he’s winning now. A few hours later he’s actually up and in better spirits, actually chatting cordially with Lou. “You work out at the Y? I teach right around the corner from there.”
“Oh yeah, where?” Lou asks.
“At the community college,” the no-longer-tilted monkey tells him.
“What do you teach?”
“Statistics.”
The story and picture tell me something about human perception of themselves.
People seems to perceive themselves a single unified self, uniform field of continuous consciousness.
They seems to perceive others as unified selves too.
The case of this individual shows that this is not the case.
He,we have series of personalities .
The personalities are isolated from each other by barriers of unawareness and triggered by stimuli.
There are defenses or isolation buffers between identities .
There is no underlying actor to play the part. No one who remembers and coordinates all of the roles.
Usually we are consumed by the personality of the moment.
By the way the 6000$ pot could be such stimuli.It is very important which personality will make decision.
When we make post-hand analysis we consume different personality from personality involved in the hand.
The post hand personality believes that is analytical and logical one.
But is often unaware of the real-time factors like internal risk aversion in big pots or ,autopilot mode(check), deterioration over a session of conscious acuity,etc
This personality finds mental comfort in analyzing ranges,%,combination.The personality does not want to analyze for example internal risk aversion or check-back autopilot mode in big pots.
Minor spelling mistake: “how he was hear last weekend”
Sry I am not sure about spelling one.But I am sure I made at least 10 grammar mistakes.
Thanks. Also I checked my dictionary and it looks like “pre-fl0p” is conventionally spelled with the letter “o” rather than the number “0”. Live and learn I guess.
“Live and learn” -I try my best.
I do enjoy very much feedback to my posts.
When I post I do not expect feedback loaded with emotional candies.
I love when feedback contains sarcasm,judgement,emotions.
If those ingredients come I will treat them as invitation to explore its source.
Emotions are the reason I play poker.
Emotions are the herbs and spices that give extra flavor to the dinner of life.
It does not matter if the emotions are good and bad.
Today I feel a little “bad” that my English grammar draw more response than your great story.
Not that I buy into this adage, but this phrase has to come to mind for that story.
‘those who can, do … those who can’t, teach’
Long time lurker first time poster. Fantastic story Andrew.
Even moreso than the cognitive dissonance of a supposed statistics teacher not understanding variance and sample size, I am baffled why someone would spend so much time doing something that they do not enjoy. Unlike you, he’s not there to earn his living; for a civilian, poker is supposed to be “fun”. If you’re doing something with your leisure time that you do not enjoy, that makes you frustrated, continuously, always.. then why would you keep doing it? For hours upon hours.
I used to play tons of online poker, reaching as high as $50 NL on PokerStars (ooh! aah!). Then I hit a cold streak – or maybe I just wasn’t a very good player in the first place, and was riding a wave of positive variance to begin with, who knows – and either lost or tilted off most of my online bankroll that I hadn’t already cashed out. So.. I stopped playing nearly so much. There are more interesting things I could be doing with my time.
Andy, your English is very good, don’t take it personally that no one has replied!! And it’s not like they’re have an in-depth discussion about Andrew’s typos.. one sentence answers.
I admit I was disappointed with my grammar and no feedback to my post.
I am not sure if I took personally.I do not perceive myself a uniform field of continuous consciousness.
Great stuff. Sometimes the best part of sitting at the table is seeing what happens off the felt.
That image is from Scanners? Great movie and a great, if grotesque, scene.
As for tilt, my experience is somewhat different from this guy. I find it a lot more frustrating to continually have the second-best hand rather than just dead starting cards. More costly too (I suspect there’s a link there).
I can empathise with the tilted guy enormously having recently been through something similar. Assuming he’s somewhat like me (I’m an actuary and have a very deep understanding of statistics applied to real life), it isn’t the bad run of cards that is frustrating; it is the sense that you are somehow ‘getting it wrong’ while you are folding or raise/check-folding or whatever. His bad behaviour is essentially the same as the nit who shows every monster or the maniac who shows his bluffs. They just want the table to understand them.
He’s probably aware of public perception of rocks / fish, etc. and generally isn’t one so it hurts him to sit there and have to fold all night because the table might legitimately see him as a rock if he weren’t to make a scene. It also hurts him to perceive the table as thinking he’s a passive fish if he has to check/fold a lot since he may well be a winner overall but today he can’t play his normal game and he can’t win.
All he needs is some empathy; some way of sharing that pain and to find someone who can understand and re-assure him that, yes we all get very long runs of terrible cards and yes, we do have to fold each and every one of them (strategic deviations notwithstanding). It’s not even tilt control skills necessarily, he may well know them.
Those people who cashed in during the good times most likely have no way to empathise with his situation since they’ll never experience it. Any bad run they have will now be off the back of huge winnings over many years allowing them the emotional space to look at their strategy and check it is still ok or adjust. Newer players have to try and do the same thing without the buffer of firstly cash to absorb losses and secondly the internal reassurance that their fundamental strategy is sound.
Clearly a subject close to my heart so I’m stopping now.