Tilting

[RBerenguel]

I haven't found a topic specially focused on the subject, and I thought I may as well start one.

Tilting: Gambling term (most common in poker) descibing an angry or "reeling" state of mind usually caused by a big or unluck loss. People playing on tilt play below their usual abillity and usually make larger and more aggressive bets to try to quickly recover their loss. In poker, this is very valueble to other players at the table, hence worth keeping track of and/or attempting to cause. People known to be prone to tilting are often taunted or generally aggrivated when they take a loss and then egged on when they do tilt in order to keep them in this state as long as possible.

I'd rewrite this for go as:

People playing on "go" tilt play below their usual abillity and usually make more and more aggressive plays to try to get the game back to their side.

I've found that I have the tendency to tilt in blitz (just yesterday I lost 3 straight to it, and the mood was still today in my only game so far), and of course I need to address it, because it is also probably appearing in slower games in one form or another. The process is more or less as follows:

• I'm playing fine, and I start an attack that seems decent and relatively safe for my attacking stones/surrounding positions
• In general, I get hooked in the attack/chase, and my surrounding position suffers, but not that badly. I'm still in control of the game, but I lost control of my own flow. This is where "tilt" starts
• I start another attack, sometimes still good/safe, sometimes not. It misfires and my positions suffers.
• ---
• Eventually either I lose some big group (most often) that I couldn't defend on time or my opponent just manages to live "everywhere" and I am short on points
• The "tilting" continues for the next blitz games I play on that day, hence ruining my playing mood and quality.

How do you cope with this? I guess it is specially significant in blitz games, because in a slow game I may take a breath and stop, whereas in blitz time is too limited. Of course, the underlying problem will still be present in my slow games, so I'd rather get to the cause and not just stop it when I see it, because this may just mask the symptoms and don't get to the real problem.

[Bonobo]

Very interesting, thank you. May I ask — do you experience this more often when you play Black against a stronger player, when you play White against a weaker player, or in even games?

I also have some psychological issues — I just don’t like losing and I tend to get depressed when I lose a game that I believe I “could have” won … interestingly the corresponding euphoria when I win a game that I “should have” lost seldom happens, or only for a very short time.

Anyway, I’m not a strong player, oscillating between 11 and 13 kyu, but what I have noticed quite often when playing W against a weaker B player is this:

B stubbornly attacks W everywhere where W just wants to live (esp. in Handicap games), B tries to deny W any territory, and during these fights B neglects defending “their own” (i.e. intended) territory and life. Sometimes I want to cry out, “Hey, what about securing your own stones before you try killing mine?”

Is this B behaviour what you call “tilting”?

Also, when I win such games, often by capturing huge groups, I sometimes have a bad conscience — the larger the capture(s), the worse the bad conscience After all W has lured B into attacking W, no? W played so lightly that W actually was thin, W played very risky, W played “va banque” and “should have” lost.

[RBerenguel]

Very interesting, thank you. May I ask — do you experience this more often when you play Black against a stronger player, when you play White against a weaker player, or in even games?

I also have some psychological issues — I just don’t like losing and I tend to get depressed when I lose a game that I believe I “could have” won … interestingly the corresponding euphoria when I win a game that I “should have” lost seldom happens, or only for a very short time.

Anyway, I’m not a strong player, oscillating between 11 and 13 kyu, but what I have noticed quite often when playing W against a weaker B player is this:

B stubbornly attacks W everywhere where W just wants to live (esp. in Handicap games), B tries to deny W any territory, and during these fights B neglects defending “their own” (i.e. intended) territory and life. Sometimes I want to cry out, “Hey, what about securing your own stones before you try killing mine?”

Is this B behaviour what you call “tilting”?

Also, when I win such games, often by capturing huge groups, I sometimes have a bad conscience — the larger the capture(s), the worse the bad conscience After all W has lured B into attacking W, no? W played so lightly that W actually was thin, W played very risky, W played “va banque” and “should have” lost.

It is more self-directed than anything. Happens more or less when I made a stupid mistake (even if small) and then my thinking goes downward from there.

I don't know if that B behaviour is tilting, it depends on their motives. It is more like, losing the focus of the game and just trying to kill/attack/deny territory (in this, it fits) but tilting is 100% psychological. So, denying territory may be caused by it or not, it is not a necessary condition. I guess that to be 100% sure the other player has to say something like "I just tried to keep you from getting points and nothing else" or something like that.

So far is happening in what "should" be weaker opponents, but since it is blitz I'm not so sure I'm actually stronger than them, so it's more of an even setting. I don't mind B trying things in handicap games: I have the greater knowledge, so I should be able to handle it.

[EdLee]

"tilt" in poker or Go has been mentioned here and there on the forum, but probably no dedicated thread yet until now.


Perhaps take a break, walk to the bathroom and splash some cold water on the face. I have done this many times at the US Open. I dunno if it does any good, but at the very least, it prevents me from playing more bad moves immediately. It gives me a chance to calm down and compose myself, look at the board again, and, hopefully re-assess the situation more objectively.

I also don't play any serious games blitz. The US Open's 90 minutes initial time per player is the fastest time for a tourney game, for me. I don't play any other tourneys with faster time controls.

I don't always play in tourneys.
But when I do, it's the US Open.

[amatterof]

I find that game reviews help a lot here. A misread at the end or some other obvious failure can be very frustrating, but in reviewing the game, I can often find 3-4 earlier places where I also missed opportunities to pull ahead. This reduces the importance in my mind of the final mistake, and helps me view the entire game as more of a learning opportunity.

It's not a perfect system though, and sometimes the only option is to go for a walk.

[daal]

I'd rewrite this for go as:

People playing on "go" tilt play below their usual ability and usually make more and more aggressive plays to try to get the game back to their side.

I have never seen "tilt" in the context of one game - only in a series of games, but I guess the principle is the same. When I view my tilts in retrospective, what I see myself as having done is to enter a vicious cycle in which I blame myself for bad play or a loss and then unconsciously try to assert the correctness of the claim by mentally highlighting the bad aspects of my further play or further games. Self-confidence drops, more games are lost, self-berating begins.

Essentially, this has stopped happening to me since I started meditating. The driving idea behind this as I see it is that one is constantly distracted by one's thoughts, particularly emotionally charged ones, but you don't have to latch onto them like a pit-bull. Instead, you learn a simple trick. Acknowledge the thought, and get back to what you were doing. With just a little practice, the thoughts just dissipate.

I haven't been playing any better since I started this, and I still have long losing streaks, but instead of making me feel miserable, I see the losses and bad moves as events that occurred because at that time I wasn't able to play better. Nothing to dwell on, it's just a fact; by acknowledging this, I can continue to play the game on the board instead of the one in my head.

[EdLee]

daal's suggestion of meditation is nice.

[skydyr]

I know I've talked about going on a tilt in games in the past, but I can't say I was using it exactly as defined here. My thinking was more that after I get a bad result in a certain area, there game has been thrown out of balance, and so to get back in the game, I try to escalate the tension. This often involves an overplay that punishing correctly leads to a lot of complication. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Arguably, what really needs to happen is a calm assessment of the situation before I get myself in more trouble than I'm already in, and taking a break, etc. is probably a wise decision. I suspect that, provided one is playing an opponent of roughly the same level, opportunities to reverse the situation would arise if one continued to play calmly, but I often lack the patience for this, and it can be hard for me to distinguish between calm and slow play.

[tentano]

I kinda wonder, does anyone else actually take a mental pause in the middle of a game?

I sometimes use my time to not think about what to play, but simply to calm down, rebalance myself and look at the board with reduced frustration or anxiety or whatever negative emotion I need to shut down.

I won't move around or anything. I just take a small moment to tell myself to calm down, realize that my negative feelings are unproductive and disproportional, and then look at the game more objectively.

It obviously won't work 100%, but I find it as valuable as trying to read out a situation. Definitely worth spending 40-60 seconds on if I notice myself getting upset. Come to think of it, I actually do this when I get a little too excited by being clearly ahead, too.

Sometimes the new assessment means I should just resign, since I'm trying to fight a lost position, but that's good too. No need to waste everyone's time on a game that's already over, is it? There's nothing left to prove after I've already lost.

[Fedya]

I kinda wonder, does anyone else actually take a mental pause in the middle of a game?

Yes, but it's usually a result of the first half of the game going really badly. If I feel like the game is going at least reasonably OK I'll spend my time trying to count to see if I've got a way to 181.

[Bill Spight]

The opposite phenomenon is worth mentioning, what Billie Jean King calls raising the level of your game. That is related to the advice a 5 dan, a former insei, gave me when I was shodan. He told me just to play as a 2 dan, that one dan is not that much difference in play. I did not follow his advice until later, when I was not happy about being a 3 dan for a year and a half and decided to play as a 4 dan. It took me six weeks to raise my game that one stone.

There is also the concept of playing in The Zone. That is, the zone of competence, of relaxed concentration. The Zone is something that you can definitely feel.

[EdLee]

It took me six weeks to raise my game that one stone.

Hi Bill, that's nice. Do you remember your approx. age at the point ?

[Bill Spight]

It took me six weeks to raise my game that one stone.

Hi Bill, that's nice. Do you remember your approx. age at the point ?

33.

[PeterN]

This is something I get a lot, lose a few games in a row due to obvious mistakes (at least in retrospect) and it quickly turns into a self fulfilling cycle of demented agression causing me to lose more and go more on tilt. Even if I win a game it doesn't help as then I go further into it because I know full well I shouldn't have won that game!

Only way out of it is to sleep I find.

PeterN

[Bill Spight]

This is something I get a lot, lose a few games in a row due to obvious mistakes (at least in retrospect) and it quickly turns into a self fulfilling cycle of demented agression causing me to lose more and go more on tilt. Even if I win a game it doesn't help as then I go further into it because I know full well I shouldn't have won that game!

Only way out of it is to sleep I find.

"Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,"
-- Macbeth