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How big a factor would you say tilt control is for making a poker career viable?
Seems like some personalities might run too hot and cold to succeed.Example:
Player 1 has an elite “A” game, but often plays his “D” game or worse depending on mood.
Player 2 isn’t as accomplished, but can maintain a winning “B” type of game for months.In the moment, I wasn’t sure what was the best approach. My head kept saying “play for 1st”, but after lots of noodling around with ICM calcs, I seemed to remember that big money jumps can make SEVERE differences between chip EV and real money EV. Long story short, you need a significant edge to risk your tournament equity just short of a significant pay jump and the the first jump is always the most important in a relative sense.
So then – What to do? Shoving seemed bad for ICM reasons and folding seemed even worse. That’s when I invented plan C. Call and see a flop.
PROS
Getting 2.7 to 1 preflop
If we hit TPTK, our edge is now big enough to overcome the “ICM penalty”CONS
We’re going to miss the flop 2/3rds of the time and have to say goodbye to another 12% of our stackI imagine one of the best things about being a pro in Vegas is the occasional EXTREMELY wealthy whales. Based on your description of his play, if this had been a 25-50 cent $100 cap home game, we all probably make the river call based on his tendencies. The thing is, he could easily be rich enough that $3000 is the same as $100 is to the rest of us. Seems like the trick is to disconnect yourself from the stakes and play the player. Great job Brad!!
I’m curious though… You seem like you have a decent grip on handling the swings that go with professional poker and thank you for being so honest with all of your ups and downs (including the occasional mistake). But even so, I can remember several times where you mentioned that tilt/being stuck crept into your decision making. Do you think that if he actually had “it” and you lost the pot, it might have dented your emotional armor?
Fair Enough. Here is some more background info.
Opponent is a circuit pro who had earlier been talking to another guy about the next stop in Belgium or some such place. (Career Cashes = $555K). He hadn’t been abusing the bubble too badly, but I suspected that was about to change. I’d estimate his stack between 300K & 400K.
I must have seemed pretty straightforward to him as I had probably been one of the least active players at the table. However, I did 3bet him light about 15 minutes prior to this hand in an attempt to gather enough chips to join the bigstack bubble bullies. That didn’t work out so well. He put me all in and I pretended to have a tough decision before folding. (He showed QQ)
We were playing hand for hand, so there was a lot of time for chatter between hands. The big topic was that a woman with approx 2 blinds was 5 hands away from taking the BB at another table.
Without bubble considerations AK with 18 blinds is an auto 3bet shove. But, I’ve noodled around with ICM enough to understand that the penalty for going out on the bubble is severe and you need a HUGE edge to get allin as the shorter stack.
So rather than shove or fold, I went with option 3… Call and see a flop. Thoughts?
