Upswing Poker: Ryan Fee On Dealing With Tilt

Want to get better at poker? Tired of losing in your local home game or looking to go pro playing no-limit hold’em?

Who better to learn from then World Series of Poker bracelet winner and high stakes cash game regular Ryan Fee, who has more than $3 million in lifetime live tournament earnings. Fee has teamed up with friend and fellow bracelet winner Doug Polk to offer the Upswing Poker Lab

The Upswing Poker Lab is a poker training course taught by Fee and Polk that is updated regularly with in-depth learning modules, theory videos, and a wealth of information to make you a better poker player.

Upswing Poker has teamed up with Card Player to bring you some exclusive poker strategy content. In this video, Fee offers up his one perfect solution to dealing with ‘tilt’, the term used to describe when one plays poorly as a result of emotional distress.

“If you play any kind of poker, especially live, it is really obvious when someone is tilting… and what do tilting players do? They act irrationally and impulsively, playing much different than the way you would normally expect,” says Fee in his introduction to the video. “One of the interesting things about poker is that you are constantly faced with decisions and adversity in rapid succession, in a way this is not that prevalent in many other domains of life. So it’s a giant question: how do you deal with adversity? How do you deal when your emotions might flare up?”

“Once you’ve reached the point where your emotions are high and your ability to rationally analyze the problem [is gone], when you go from looking for the fish.. to being the fish, then it is time to quit. That’s it, there’s no two ways about it,” continues Fee.

Fee contends that, at a certain point, the build-up of frustration during a bed session or downswing becomes too much for one to deal with in the moment, and the only thing to do is to walk away from the game until you regain control.He then goes on to say that learning to deal with tilt is incredibly important for the following reason: “If you play great 90 percent of the time and terrible 10 percent of the time, that can be your entire win rate. You can go from a winning to a losing player based solely on that.”

Make sure to check out the full video at the top of the story for more of Fee’s advice regarding managing tilt, including some anecdotes about his experience dealing with the mental side of the game.

Sign up for the Upswing Poker Lab today for step by step instructions and examples to master both the fundamental theories and situational exploits to greatly increase your skill and earnings.

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