Dealing With Tilt – Can Playing Slots Help Poker Players Master Their Emotions?

Tilt is one of the most common terms used in poker, and it can occur to even the best players. It refers to when a turn of the cards goes against you despite the fact that you had done everything right in the build up to it. For example, you may have controlled the hand and made the right size bets, only for a player who should have folded two streets ago to get lucky and hit the nuts on the river. When you get tilted, it can lead to bad decisions in the following hands which can be detrimental to your chances of winning. Players need to learn about variance and get used to handling their emotions.

First of all, it should be noted that getting angry with the way things go in a poker game is a completely natural reaction. If you didn’t feel some form of stimulation in the brain when things happen in poker you would be a robot. Some of the best players in the business have been known to lose it from time to time. Phil Helmuth, for instance, is famous for blowing up when things don’t go his way. Weaker players often make non-optimal calls against the Poker Brat, and when they end up hitting the card they need the 1989 World Series of Poker Main Event winner goes into meltdown.

One thing that should be noted about Helmuth, though, is the fact that even though he is visibly tilted a lot of the time he usually doesn’t let this affect his normal game plan. Although he often feels hard done by when things don’t go his way, he also understands that some instances in a poker game do come down to chance. This is referred to as variance, and experts know that during a game there will be swings of good and bad fortune.

To get a better idea of these swings, poker players can consider other games which are completely down to chance. Online slots are hugely popular because they provide players with a rush of emotions as they wonder whether the reels will spin a win into view. A lot of the time, the symbols won’t match. But when the symbols align and the money counter starts rocketing up it can be an incredible rush. To get a taste of this feeling, poker players can check out no deposit bonus Slots Calendar UK for some free ways to play before staking any money.

Slots are set to have a certain return to play percentage, which means there will be a mixture of wins and losses. By playing for a long time, poker players will be able to see that the swings in each direction usually balance each other out. If they take this knowledge to the poker table, it could mean they are less adversely affected when a coin flip situation doesn’t go in their favor. They will simply remember that the law of averages says that they will be the recipient of some good fortune if they keep playing their pre-planned strategy.