Tilt Demon - Stop Loss Tilt Prevention, How much WOULD you have saved!
Hello,
I'm releasing some new software very soon, the website is at www.tiltdemon.com but thats not in public beta yet for a few days but in the meantime im releasing a program that connects to your holdemmanager database and tells you how much you would have won/lost if you applied a stop/loss system and stopped playing when you:
Were losing -$300 (or any amount you specify)
Were winning +$300 (or any amount you specify)
You reached 1000 hands (or any amount you specify)
You played for more than 1.5 hours
Now the idea for this came from my own tilt issues, im not a bad tilter as in i dont play while drunk, or shout or roar or throw the cat at the dog or anything but when im on a losing run too often it turns into a shocking 6+ buyin downswing simply because i stop playing my A game and im continuing to play the rest of that session at a -bb/100 rate. However much i knew i was tilting i couldnt stop and kept going until i won something back, this occassionaly worked but more often than not the opposite happened and i turned a mole into a mountain.
I did manage to restrict my games to 2 hour sessions which helped alot but i still have trouble stopping sometimes specifically when im down as i hate finishing on a negative. I know from reading various forums this is a big problem for alot of people so i decided to start this project.
Quite ironically i also find that when im up a couple of buyins im actually playing -EV which was a surprise, its not something i was even aware of but in heinsight i do tend to take more risks and also lose interest when im running good so i do advise checking your bb/100 when your up 2,3 or 4+ buyins as you maybe surprised.
So the idea of this saving calculations software is to let you experiment and see when your 1) wining/losing 2) playing for long periods or 3) playing alot of hands per session if your bb/100 is good or bad. It should tell you whether its profitable or not to continue playing in those situations so feel free to try it out to see if its a leak. btw a session is defined as any group of hands where there was no consecutive break of more than 1 hour between each hand. I set it at 1 hour because i really feel this is the minimum time you need to forget about the last session and feel like your starting fresh.
You can download this software via the website www.tiltdemon.com/savings.html
The site is still under construction in other areas but the savings calculator should work fine. All the instructions are at that site. As you can see below it highlights each session that exceeded our limit, shows the start and end time of the session, the hand that triggered the exceed, the total hands played after the exceed and finally the total lost/won after the exceed in $ and also bb/100 which is basically what we would have won/lost had we had a stop/loss system in place.
Now i'm not saying you should just stop playing for the day as ive heard people say if i stopped playing everytime i had a downswing id lose a fortune on rake, thats not what im saying, if you can play through a long or losing/winning session and the calculator shows your making close to the same bb/100 you make on average then its fine to keep playing. But if your win rate is still positive but only half your normal winrate by rescheduling and doing something else like bringing the dog for a walk and then play poker after an hour break you should return and be able to double the bb/100 rate compared to the winrate you could have won had you continued to play when you weren't on your A game. If your running at a negative bb/100 when you exceed any of those limits then its certainly a big potential leak assuming the sample size is reasonable. I'm sure there are cases due to family commitments or work commitments where your poker hours are limited but for the most part we all have some leeway in when we can play to a certain extent. Whether you want to continue to play when your losing money is up to you, if you don't want to continue to lose then read on.
The Solution
Now if you find your bb/100 is suffering when your exceeding one of the stop/loss limits then the best way to eliminate that leak is to stop when this happens. However the compulsion to keep playing and recover losses is extremely difficult to overcome for a lot of people. If your one of those people then the software we will be releasing should be a big help.
Now this software isn't groundbreaking, many respected posters and poker players have written tons of articles on how tilt can affect your game, this software just makes it easier to stop. Im sure there are some players that will have no use for this software as they have already conquered tilt or there tilt isnt directly related to long sessions or losing session but i know for myself and many others out there it is a big problem.
Basically what our software does is track your win/loss, hands played and time played. You configure a stop loss that you want to stop playing when you exceed that figure, that could either be an amount won/lost like -$300 or 1000 hands played or 1.5 hours played.
When you exceed the applicable stop/loss our software will allow you 4 mins to close your tables and if you don't close down within that time it will automatically close the poker client. (you can specify which username and pokersites you can be excluded for)
Now i know some sites have a 12 hour exclusion or week long exclusion but our software aims to give you as much control as possible, if you feel you need 1 hour break when tilting then you set it to 1 hour, if you need 3 hours then set that, as soon as that time passes it will allow you to play. This is extremely important for players who rely on rake and want to be able to exclude themselves but come back and play again when tilt subsides.
If you attempt to play before the excluded time it will not allow you. We've put in place a lot of controls that prevent you bypassing the lockout by changing the time/changing databases/trying to uninstall etc while still allowing you to continue to use your computer interrupted. There are possibly situations we haven't considered but well catch those during beta and patch them up but our main concern is that its not easy to bypass but if there was a program that couldn't be stopped or killed somehow then it would be the ultimate virus so we obviously don't want to create that but most average PC users will find it extremely hard to bypass this to the point the exclusion period will probably be over before they get near to figuring it out.
Again you can choose the site your locked out, you might have a separate account you just keep a few bob for playing tournaments in, if so then don't add this site and if you tilt and get locked out you can still blow off a few bob on the other site. Our aim is to give you as much control as possible.
Theres other details on the website if you want to check it out further and if you want to beta test it please visit our forums www.tiltdemon.com/forum and look for the beta testers thread.
This version is only compatible with Holdem manager however well have a poker tracker version available soon too.
If your worried about downloading from a newbie which i know is a concern for any poker player then just thought id mention i worked for holdem manager support for about a year as you can see by my post count
Id be very interested to hear what trends people are finding with the savings calculator or if they're are any bugs, heres my findings but i'm sure depending on your tilting tendencies other peoples may differ a lot
At 100nl over 100k+ sample where i ran over +5bb/100 for the total sample
stop loss (-$300) i was -2bb/100
stop loss (-$250) i was +3bb/100
stop loss (-$200) i was +6bb/100
stop loss (-$150) i was +6.7bb/100
stop loss (-$100) i was +8.7bb/100
stop loss (-$50) i was +8.5bb/100
stop loss (+$300) i was -2.5bb/100
stop loss (+$200) i was -2bb/100
stop loss (+$150) i was +0.57bb/100
stop loss (+$100) i was +1bb/100
stop loss (+$100) i was +2.5bb/100
So in my example its pretty obvious the more i win the poorer my game becomes (as i mentioned due to being overly aggro and willing to gamble more and also i feel i lose interest/concentration rather than when im breakeven or losing a small amount and trying to turn it into a winning session i concentrate more but i just didnt realise the extent of this before this calculator) and also i can play good up until i lose 2 buyins, after that point i suspect i begin to feel frustrated as ill struggle to make it a winning session and start to drop my levels, however been aware of this might help me that i know when i reach the -$200 threshold i need to compose my concentration or stop playing and possibly set my limit at -$250 and keep an eye on how i do between -$200 and -$250 and if i continue to run at +3bb and dont improve then its better to decrease my stop level to -$200 as i can play better than 3bb/100 when im concentrating fully and ironically i seem to concentrate better when i have a small loss and im trying to turn it into a winning session.
Now that was during a time i felt i controlled tilt by restricting my sessions to 2 hours max most of the time but i hadnt realised how obviously + or - 2 buyins were effecting my winrate, previous to that i often played 2-5 hours sessions. So you should use a similar approach to find the threshold where your win rate starts to decrease. You can also use the time and hands feature as well as this can be very useful too.
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Originally Posted by ibombonato
