How to avoid Tilt
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GM Noël Studer: [00:00:00] Hey, I am Grandmaster Noel Studer and you're listening to my brand new podcast next level chess. On this podcast, I want to give you actionable chess improvement advice to make sure you're training the right way, you have the right mindset, and then when you do these things properly, you'll see constant improvement.

And today on this very first episode, I want to talk about tilt. Tilt is something that annoys everyone. And if you've had it,, I'm sure you want to find ways to avoid tilt. Tilt in video gaming terms, is when you play in a state of emotional discomfort or you get demotivated and you are frustrated and you don't play at your best and that usually happens because you lose one or more games.[00:01:00] 

The big problem with tilt is that you are in this weird emotional state where once you enter tilt it gets harder and harder to get out of it. So today I want to talk you through what I think are the five stages of tilt and then give you a method to try to avoid tilt from the get go. So I think it's extremely hard to get out of tilt once you're in it.

So my idea is to prepare yourself before you start playing With some tricks and some ideas so that you don't enter tilt at all Or when you enter you make sure that you have already prepared for that moment and you can go out of it very quickly So let's shortly walk through the five stages of Tilt.

As I mentioned, the step number one usually is losing [00:02:00] an unfortunate game. And that can happen very, very quickly. So let's say you're completely winning, you played an amazing game, and boom, you blunder a piece and you end up losing the game. Now, because that's so annoying, right? You get a little bit angry, you maybe get frustrated with yourself, but you want to get back these rating points.

So what are you doing? Instead of getting up and maybe walking, taking a short break, you're clicking next game, play game, or even revenge, right? You, you might just, you know, Just get a rematch against this person that you just blundered against because you're feeling like I, you know, I should have won this game and I need to get back my rating points.

And now what happens is that you're playing a game already slightly agitated, slightly emotional, slightly frustrated. which usually doesn't lead to the best moves possible. Now, if you're lucky, you might win that game and escape tilt for now, but what happens more [00:03:00] often is that the second game, you again, play agitated, you play worse and you end up losing that game again.

Then that's where we enter stage number three. Which is losing another game, forgetting about the world around you, and you just have one single objective, getting back your well deserved rating. Because now you're not only upset that you lost the game, but you're also upset at seeing your rating dwindle down, even though, according to your emotions at least, You deserve to win rating points because you probably outplayed somebody you might have gotten unlucky You might have only lost because of you know, time trouble or because you've plundered something So you tell yourself this story that you actually deserve getting the rating back and now a very important Psychological effect kicks in which is called the sunk cost fallacy, which means that we [00:04:00] are You Reluctant to abandon an strategy because we already invested time and energy into it.

In that case, it means you're reluctant to stop playing because you've invested time and energy and you've already lost rating. So what your mind is telling you, you'll play until you get back all your rating points. Then it's not like you waste the time and energy and rating points. So at least you get back to even, and then you can stop.

The problem is now you're continuously playing games where you play not at your best because you're frustrated, you're demotivated, you're angry at yourself, angry at the world, maybe angry at the server because you feel like there was lag and that led to your losses. So you're playing. in a bad state of mind.

And what happened with me mostly when I was tilting is that then I play so bad that at some point I realize I'm [00:05:00] on tilt. So that would be stage number four. I realize I'm on tilt and I'm tilting even more because I'm upset at myself for tilting. But because I feel like, well, but I've gone so far already.

Now, at least let me really get back those rating points because otherwise I'm tilting. I'm upset at myself for tilting and I lost time. I lost energy and it just doesn't make sense. So my brain tells me the only way. That this whole, you know, , two hours of playing, , randomly until that makes sense is by getting back my rating points.

So I'm trying to run more for rating points and I play even worse. And it usually ends at two in the morning in stage number five, where you're just like, what the heck, just one more game, just one more game. And at some point you're so exhausted. You're so upset that just quit, , close the server, [00:06:00] tell yourself you'll never play chess again, and then you go to sleep because in four hours you have to get up for your job or for,, for some exam or whatever.

So that's usually how Tilt looks like. Again, stage number one, losing an unfortunate game. Stage number two, playing slightly agitated. Stage number three, losing another game. And now you're just wanting to get rating back. Stage number four is you realize you're tilting and you're tilting even more because you're angry at yourself for letting yourself go so far.

But again, the only solution in your mind is, well, I just want to get back my rating, then at least that's not as bad. This whole session isn't as bad. And then stage number five is when you just continuously say, say yourself, just one more game. And in my case, if I win that game, I feel, well, now I won. Now I can, you know, now I feel better again, so I can get back even more rating so I can play one more game.

Or if I lose, [00:07:00] I'm, yeah, it's getting worse. And I think, well, I just have to keep going on to, , recover all those points. And the deeper you go into these five stages, the harder it will get to get out of tilt. So I mentioned at the beginning, my idea is not, , you know, somehow having this incredible emotional control that you're tilting and then you tell yourself to stop.

But my main idea is to prepare yourself before you play games to avoid entering tilt or to stop yourself because you've planned for it in the first few stages. The earlier you can stop yourself, the better it is. Our goal, best possible way, would be to never tilt again. It's very hard, we don't want to be perfectionist, but we just want to limit the amount of times we tilt.

And, if we go into tilt, we want to have structures and [00:08:00] habits that help us get out of it faster. As quickly as possible, and you can summarize my ideas in two phrases, play with good focus and only when you can focus and number two would be avoid long streaks of games without taking a break. Those are the two simple ideas.

We only want to play when we can really focus and I'll tell you all of the things that actually go into that. And the second thing is to avoid playing for a long time, because sometimes a short break, like just getting up for 20 seconds, 30 seconds might help us get out of tilt, stop the session and get back to playing when we feel like it.

Okay. So here are my tips for you from now on, whenever you want to play chess, do the following. Okay. Again, avoid playing when you are Not able to focus when you [00:09:00] are emotionally on edge, when you just had a discussion with somebody that is close to you, when your boss is so annoying and you just want to, you know, empty your head, do not play serious chess in these moments.

Because you are basically already on tilt, right? You are already in an emotional, not ideal stage, so you just set yourself up to make everything worse. I promise you, I've tried it a few times, but your argument with your, you know, loved one is not getting better if you also, you know, spend 3 hours playing until 2am and you lose 200 rating points.

Life is not gonna seem better. So just don't do it. Do something else. Go for a walk, whatever you want to do. But don't play chess when you aren't fully ready to focus and when you aren't emotionally ready to focus. To, you know, play a difficult game and [00:10:00] ready to suffer losses, and it can be hard. Step number two, or idea number two, is to make sure, and I said this already in the first one, but this is connected a bit different, it's not about your emotional state, but it's to make sure that you focus properly to avoid blunders.

Because, well, stage number one is basically always blunder or losing on time, for example. So what can you do to avoid that? For example, you can avoid playing on your phone when you're in public transport. Let's say you go to the subway and you play a game. It might be that at some point you lose connection to the internet and you just lose the game even though you were completely winning.

And this in itself can be extremely annoying, but we human beings, we aren't rational in this moment. We aren't saying, Oh yeah, I just lost because I played on the subway. So maybe let's stop playing on the subway instead. You're saying, well, now I want to get my back, my rating points because I played well.

So I deserve to win. It [00:11:00] was only this little problem. And then you continue and you start already playing. Again, you're in the first tilt phase, you're annoyed, you're emotional, you're not playing your best. So don't play when the internet coverage could be a problem. It's one thing. Another thing is don't play with several open tabs.

So, you know, you might play a game of chess, but simultaneously you might watch a YouTube video or work on something Or you are waiting for a meeting to start and you might, you know, just get a quick phone call, , while you play a game. That's a bad idea because all these things set you up for your mind not being fully focused.

When you're not fully focused, you're much more prone to make blunders. And when you make more blunders, you enter tilt more often. So just think about for yourself, like, what are the things that distract you most? When do you play where? You can't fully focus and then stop [00:12:00] playing in these moments. You can do other things.

You can solve puzzles. You can try, you know, watching a video. You can if you have a course, you can continue this course. If you have these in between moments where you want to do a little bit of chess. Probably my preferred suggestion would be to solve tactical exercises. You can always stop. You know, tactics rating is not as important, so it's not a problem if you do something wrong because you're stressed or if you stop mid session.

So just go do tactics and only play when you can really focus. Now my next suggestion is very important, is one I learned from my previous coach, my last coach I had in my active career. Grandmaster Marcos Rugger. He told me to, before I start playing any game, to always set myself a clear amount of games I want to play.

So, before a playing session, I would usually say, I play 6 [00:13:00] games, 3 plus 0 chess, and after those 6 games there is a hard cut. I stop, I take a break, then I analyze all of those games, And then I can decide, do I want to play another set of games? Yes or no. And this is extremely crucial because it does several things.

First thing it does is that you actually analyze your games. Because if you're playing a marathon of 20 or 25 games, no way you're going to look at those, right? So already six games is actually quite a lot to analyze, but I felt confident that I basically nearly Always, when I did this, I always analyze my games and this just helps improve myself and it helps me with it to play with a mindset of improvement, right?

I'm not playing to win as many rating points as possible because it's capped to six games, but I'm playing to try to give my best [00:14:00] to analyze and learn from it. So that's amazing. And now the second thing it does is if we go back to the stages of tilt. If you're thinking about or if you lose a game, right, you lose one or two games and you're entering slowly the stage of tilt, you don't let yourself go as deep if you only play six games, because even if you would lose annoyingly on the first game, you only have five more games as a maximum that you told yourself.

And then You stop, you have to analyze and you realize, Oh shit, I played so badly. I blundered in every single game. I don't think I'm ready to really focus. So let me stop playing. Let me play another time. So this is really super important. And if you just take a one way, one thing from this podcast, then so be it.

Set yourself an amount of games that you're going to play before [00:15:00] you start any playing session. And then strictly stop after that amount of games, analyze all the games and only then allow yourself to decide if you want to play again, yes or no. And then if you want to play again, again, start from zero, set yourself amount games.

Now, some of you might say, well, I can do that, but I don't have the self control to actually stop after these four or six games. Yeah. that I want to play. By the way, if you play longer time controls, type 10 plus 5, 20 plus 10, something that sense, then I would, you know, drastically shorten the, the, the limit of game.

So you can say, I play two games, I play three games. And that's actually also what I do when I write training plan for my students. I always say not play games, but play three games and analyze them. And they are [00:16:00] forced to do that or they are likely to do that because I can also observe what games they play and how many games they play in a certain day.

And I might say, Hey, guy, what are you doing? You played seven games. You should have played two. What happened there? Right? So that's very important. So going back to the question of like, I'm not disciplined enough to do that. I can set myself six games, two games or four games, but then if I lose an annoying game, I just keep going on.

In that case, I highly recommend you set a timer before you start playing again. This is very important because in the moment you don't have the emotional control to execute what you want to. So you need. When you still have the emotional control, when you're, you know, not playing yet in a good emotional state, you want to set yourself the alarm and then with this alarm, you take yourself out [00:17:00] of this emotional state and hopefully remind yourself of a few important things.

So what you can do, for example, is if you play six games, 3 0, that would be maximum of 36 minutes, right? Six minutes per game, six times. So you can put yourself an alarm at 36 minutes, and if at this moment, the alarm rings and you're still in a game, I hope this will be enough of a reminder for yourself, oh, I wanted to stop.

And yes, this alarm might cause you to stop. You know, play badly in the, in the game seven or eight that you're already playing because, well, you didn't have the mental strength to stop, but it will force you to then stop after this game. and to take a break to analyze your games. And the more you do this, the more you [00:18:00] will be able to stop after a certain amount of games.

And also additionally, knowing that there will be an annoying alarm, you will want to, you know, not be in a game anymore at this point, right? So you can also put an alarm after 40 minutes. So you can say, well, if I'm not in break yet, I did something wrong. And so. Knowing that already, you will have more strength to actually do what you want to do.

And then last but not least is just a general mindset. Whenever you play a game of chess, if you want to improve your game, obviously improving your rating is part of that. But the most important thing is improving your skills. Once you improve your skills, the rating will follow. So remind yourself before every playing session that you want to play because you want to have fun.

This is your hobby after all, and you [00:19:00] want to learn something. So you want to give your best and that's all you can do. No matter the results. You want to analyze those games, you learn something out of it, and that's amazing. Okay? Another way of framing it would be to shortly ask yourself, before you have the intention to play a game, it's like, why do I want to play?

And if the answer is, I just want to get some rating points, then it's probably not the right moment to play. Because when you play just for the result, you are much more prone, get annoyed when you lose a game. And then go into tilt, then you lose many more. And then what happens is instead of winning 50 points, what you wanted, you will lose 200.

And the next time you come back, you want to get back this rating points and it just gets worse and worse and worse. Okay. So that was a lot of information. I [00:20:00] just want to recap what I said in this podcast and what exactly you should do to avoid going on tilt. So tilt is just an emotional state where you're not fully ready to give your best, where you're frustrated, you're emotional because of a few losses.

And tilt, in my opinion, has five stages. First stage is losing due to a blunder. Second stage is playing agitated, emotional. Third stage is losing another game and then just really just wanting these rating points back. Fourth stage is realizing your own tilt and getting even more angry at yourself because, well, you've wasted time and rating points and that leads to you wanting to get these rating points back even more.

And then step number five is usually late in the morning where you should have already slept for a long time [00:21:00] and tell yourself just one more game, just one more game. At some point you're emotionally, physically so exhausted, finally go to bed with a rating, maybe 200 points lower than what you started with.

And because that is so hard to get out of tilt. I recommend strategies to avoid getting into tilt. Those are, don't play when you're emotional, only play when you can really focus, set a limit of games before you start playing, play these games, take a break, analyze these games and only then decide if you want to play more games.

Point number four would be if you're prone to tilting, set yourself an alarm. This alarm should remind yourself that you want to stop playing at this very moment. So set yourself an alarm that should ring just a little bit after your amount of games that you set for yourself. with finish and then [00:22:00] last but certainly not least before every game you start playing remind yourself that you play for fun you want to learn something you want to test and improve your skills and you're not playing strictly only for winning rating points and if you realize that you just want to win some rating points stay away and maybe play the next okay guys so that was my first podcast episode i hope you enjoyed it if you liked it, please give me a five star review on your podcast platform.

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[00:23:00] Again, link will be in the podcast description. Thank you so much for listening and see you next time.