How To Avoid "Going on Tilt":

Greetings Fellow Traders,

“Going on Tilt” is a poker term which means making a series of horrible plays after making a bad mistake or taking a bad loss.

What happens is the emotions take over and your rational mind, and disciplines, are destroyed and you become helpless to stop making bad plays
even if you have a trading plan.

I play chess, poker, and I trade.

“Going on Tilt” happens in chess and it causes you to lose the game.
“Going on Tilt” in poker is a million times worse and has wiped out many accounts quicky.
However, “Going onTilt” in trading is the worst of all and has ruined many, many accounts.

The purpose of this thread is to identify what triggers “Going on Tilt” and how to get off tilt IMMEDIATELY after gettng on.

I have learned two useful strategies to get off of tilt:

  1. After getting on tilt I immediately decrease my size so that it doesn’t even feel like I am trading. This takes all the emotions out of the game and it is easy to return your game.

  2. If I make a bad mistake by, let’s say, not taking a winning trade that I know I should have, I put the money back in to my account equal to the winning trade. This makes me feel much, much better and my play returns to normal.
    Also, If I get into a trade that I know I should not have, I put the money equal to the loss back in to my account. This, also, makes me feel a whole lot better and I am able to get off tilt right away and go back to my disciplines.

What are your thoughts and experiences?

Poker Dealer and long time player here…

I find ‘tilt’ much easier to control in trading. In poker, being in the presence of others seems to magnify the reasons I go on tilt. In trading, I am alone and only have to answer to myself with no witnesses.

When I have gone on tilt trading, I turn off the computer and stop trading. I don’t have to physically stand up and walk away from the table, which is something that has kept me playing long past the point I should have stopped.

On the computer, I can just close the platform and open my Facebook, or forums and read other people’s experiences or distract myself with reading things for pure entertainment.

I find so many similarities between playing no limit poker and trading. Perfecting each has made me better at the other and seems to open up another dimension in terms of my psychological makeup.

I would be interested in hearing more about what you think the similarities are.

Hey Shana,

Nice to hear from another poker player who trades.
Actually, I am a trader who plays poker.

I only play poker online, so the presence of others doesn’t put me on tilt.

I have learned a good way to go off tilt in trading.
Instead of turning off my trading platform, I physically calm myself down and make sure I learn from the mistake.
Also, I have a post-it on my desk that says: “don’t go on tilt today”.

I find a striking similarity in trading and poker.
Here is what I have observed:

In both trading and poker it isimportant that you only play certain cards.
For instance, in poker you really need certain openers to go in.
Same in trading, you have to be waiting for a certain trade to set-up.

It really pays to only wait for these set-ups andplay them every time they occur.

I hope this helps.

“When in doubt stay out”.

It’s odd, while I don’t find trading online boring AT ALL, I get bored quite easily playing poker online and I found boredom to be a killer in terms of keeping my bankroll intact and now only play live. But I am the opposite of you, a poker player with the goal of being a full time trader.

And yes, I totally agree with your point about waiting for the right setup. The difference I have found though is that there are so many different ways to trade that the psychological control is much more important. AA will ALWAYS be the best hand, and the math percentages are finite within a 52 card deck while trading systems can differ from person to person. Both fascinate me to no end!

I turn off the platform because I have found that I can then reorient my mind and remember my goals, then it becomes easier to learn the lesson. I may try that sticky, though!

What country are you from, if you don’t mind me asking?

I live in Long Island, New York. You?

I agree that psychological factors are very important and there are times when it is a great iea to shut off the screen.

How long have you been trading?

I also belong to a better forum than baby pips.
It is called trade2win.com

You might want to check it out.

My brother is a professonal poker player and will be playing in the world series in Vegas.

Just remember it’s return OF capital not return ON capital.

“When in doubt stay out”.

Any other good trading forums you found?

Keep in touch.

Michael

Los Angeles. I will also be in Vegas during the World Series. My husband is playing in the Main Event and I will be happily playing in the cash games as I do not like tournaments.

I have been trading off and on for over 10 years. You?

I was trading futures when there was no such thing as mini accounts and charting online. The resources available now are incredible. The last futures account I had, I lost $3k, cashed out and took the rest to Vegas(!) which at the time was a much better bet. It’s been a long road, in poker and trading.

I am familiar with trade2win. I like forexfactory.com, I have found some good information sifting through a lot of noise. This site has been good for me, as I decided to go back to the ‘beginning’ and approach trading from a more serious perspective so that I can do it full time.

I have found that I like currency the best, the stock market the least and commodities something I will revisit again someday. I will always play poker. I am happy dealing or playing.

I enjoy playing chess but am a total amateur without the discipline to be better at it, although I enjoy the mental challenge of playing with someone better than me. My son loves to play and we play sometimes. He usually wins, then we play heads up poker (my all time favorite) and I win.

eta: I am surprised that there aren’t more responses to this thread… I would think there would be more poker players who trade and vice versa.

I agree. I am very surprised there are not more responses to this thread.
I posted the same thread on trade2win.com and I received over 50 replies.

I, too, started trading back in the old days. I actually started in 1980 when the only tools available were a quotron and chart books that you had to fill in with a pencil and update them every week.

There was no internet and electronic trading at the time so you would have to phone in your orders to a broker.
I had horrible problems with the brokers front running my orders.
Trading is hard enough, but to have brokers stealing your money made it impossible.

I wish I had the internet when I was twenty and trading in 1981.
I would have had no front running brokers to deal with and plenty of trading tools as well as instant execution which you didn’t have phoning a market order into a broker. The delays were unreal and sometimes you hade to wait 3 minutes for the market order to be filled.

One didn’t stand a chance in those days.

With the advent of electronic trading it is alot easier.

The biggest piece advice I can give you is to find an indicator that works a good percentage of the time to get you into the market, then setting stops and profit targets is easy- any other way to trade is very difficult, but certainly possible.

I used to live in Hermosa Beac, back in 1990, though I am originaly from New York.

Believe it or not Shana, I just went on “mini” tilt today.

I got stopped out a couple of times (which is okay since it is part of my trading plan) so I decided to take a trade on the seat of my pants (spanish style). It lost and I had NO business being in the trade in the first place, but I calmed down, learned, and vowed NEVER to do that agian.

Some times traders have to fight that inner trading demon.

Anyhow, I am always happy to have a trading conversation.

Happy Trading