Addictions | Are you in control or are you under their control?

Yesterday I played a live Poker tournament in a Casino for the first time in the last 8 years. My last experience playing with a two card hand using five common cards, took place when I was in my first year of University and even though it went well, I didn't have the money nor the time to keep spending my evenings feeding my betting hobby.

The game hasn't changed a bit. Poker stereotypes are still the same today as in 2010. Texas hold’em players behaviour fits what you have in mind when you hear the words casino and tournament.

I like the Poker ecosystem but, as any other social group of people, there are some that come off as negative for the development of the community as a whole, perhaps because of their attitude towards the game or the people, maybe it is because of their approach to the poker table, sometimes it is because thye just don´t know when to quit.

One thing we all have to bear in mind while playing poker is that it is just a game, and we shouldn´t let it control ourselves.

If you don´t know when to quit, and keep losing and losing hand after hand you might go into Tilt mode. To keep it simple, Tilt mode means you start making wrong decisions after a big loss and you get dragged into a negative spiral that keeps dragging your game down.


This is a pretty good example of players playing while on Tilt mode. Credit goes to More TV, visit their Youtube channel here

Yesterday I played a Texas Hold´em Satellite tournament where the entry fee was around $15 dollars.

Anyone who reached the final table of this tournament got a spot for a tournament on Saturday where the prize pot is $25k usd. As you can imagine, I didn´t reach final table, but my final place was very good considering this was my first live tournament in a while, I feel satisfied with the results.

The thing is, as this is a Satellite tournament, the re-buys - a re-buy means getting a new stack of chips every time you lose all of them - are unlimited until the break, four hours after the tournament starts. This means there are people who don´t spend only $15 usd because they keep re-buying their entry.

One rule I have when I´m betting online in Soccer matches or when I´m playing poker online is to set myself a limit before starting, if I loose certain amount of money, I won´t keep betting. You have to know your limits and you have to know when to quit. But if you don´t set your limits before getting into business - or gaming should I say? - it´s going to be very hard to know your limits once you are already inside, so to speak, you won´t know where is the exit of the forest if you already walked 3 miles without leaving a bread trail to the entrance.

On my table there was a guy who kept losing and kept re-buying his way in, he must have spent around $90 - $120 dollars on a table where he was losing badly. He was on tilt mode and he kept making silly mistakes, his game was low tier and everytime he lost he would rant about it, sometimes even borderline insulting the other players - you can´t insult, that´s a penalty and they will kick you out after a few - and overall he got the table´s mood to a shitty status, making everyone uncomfortable and even getting some comments back saying he should drop out and stop playing.

Overall, I know the poker world has people like him. Every social group or community has them. But this brings up my question.

Are you in control of your addicitons, or do you let them control you? How do you deal with them? How do you keep them in line to not become this type of person, pernicious to that community you are part of?
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