On Tilt! A Lesson From The World Of Poker

I was playing in a tournament tonight and won the final table, largely because I was able to put the other player “on tilt.” That’s a poker term for when a player loses his emotional balance. They get angry or lose their confidence and start making poor decisions.

When we began as the two last players, the other guy had twice as many chips as I did. At one critical point, I bluffed by going all in when I had a poor hand.

When he folded, I did something that I rarely did; I turned over my cards to show my hand. Why? To shake his confidence, and it worked. He told me what hand he had folded, and it was clearly the better hand.

From that point on, I slowly began to take more and more of his chips. He’s a very good player and he started against me with great confidence. Then he lost it to some degree and never regained it. 

Why?  Because he had made one mistake.

It reminded me of how important it is to recover from our mistakes as quickly as possible.

Everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes we make big mistakes.

 When we do, it’s good to remind ourselves that “there’s always another hand” to be played.  We can get back in the game and move forward. But to do that successfully requires a clear head and self-confidence.

Both are needed to enjoy playing the game of life or business. Emotional self-control, emotional intelligence, requires perspective. We can put our mistakes or losses in perspective, stay calm and perform at the top of our game.

When we do that, our losses don’t hit us as hard and our success won’t lead to overconfidence.

So, the next time you make a mistake, don’t go “on tilt.” Learn from the mistake, gain perspective and move on.

Alan Allard, http://www.alanallard.com