After a few months of playing, and reading a few strategy books (and blogs and forums), I’ve noticed that I seem to have my least profitable stretches right after I learn something new about poker strategies. I’ve seen other people on forums say they suffer from the same problem. I’m going to call it “Book Tilt”.
Book tilt happens when you find what you think is a good bit of advice, and then, maybe subconsciously, you want to take advantage of this advice so badly that it screws up your game completely.
For example, maybe you read somewhere that during an SNG tournament, when the blinds get up over $100, it’s a good idea to start trying to raise more pre-flop and steal the blinds. You load up a few games, and every time the blinds hit $100, you start raising like a madman hoping to steal, and end up donking off your entire stack in a few minutes and losing several buy-ins in record time. You’ve stopped thinking. You’ve stopped playing YOUR game. You’re trying to play someone else’s game, and you’ve got a bad case of book tilt.
I find that after I learn something new I have to consciously remind myself to just go into my next game as if it were any other game and play the way I would always play. Advice from a book or a forum is only good in certain situations, and that’s the key. You have to let those situations come to you, you can’t make them happen. I think that’s a big part of poker itself, waiting for things to happen, not trying to make them happen. The cards determine the situation, not the player.
You have to let new ideas become a part of your game, not let them take over your game. There will be a time to use your super sneaky new trick, but it won’t be every time you load up a game. Sometimes it won’t work because of the cards. Sometimes it won’t work because of the level of your opponent(s). That’s where the skill comes in…figuring out when it will work, and more importantly, when it won’t work.
It’s also very important to determine where the advice you like is coming from. Tips meant for a cash game don’t work very well in an SNG game. Tips for playing against experienced, high-stakes, players don’t work very well against low-stakes newbies who aren’t thinking on the same level.
You should always be thinking about the particular situation you are in, and the players involved. Many poker players will say that the two worst words to describe anything in poker are “always” and “never”.
You should never always do anything…
But the only thing you should always do, is never make a move without thinking.
May the fish be with you…