How To : Recognise your Tilting.

How to :Recognise you Tilting

Tilting from the saying "on tilt" :on tilt : In a reckless manner, especially playing poker recklessly after experiencing bad or good luck.


this saying originated from the medieval sport of jousting, where if some one was on the verge of losing they would be "on tilt" meaning leaning over in the saddle. This then leant itself to the world of poker where if a player played a bad hand and let it effect them their decisions from then on would be bad and thus they were "on tilt" or "tilting".

Now we lead the term towards the world of E-sports and more importantly... DotA2

when one tilts in dota they are letting one bad game affect them for the rest of their time online. When someone allows this to happen a lot of their decisions made afterwards are bad, horrible or downright ****. The problem is... how do we know we are tilting? How does one tell another player that they are tilting? How do you Recognise tilting?

speaking from experience .... ill tell you
^ this is what tilting looks like.

look at them wins.... then look at them losses....

thats a tilt. i let one game affect me and **** hit the fan. i was playing consistently, i hit my timing windows, playing decent enough then boom. a few things a team mate said to me made me a tad annoyed (read: pissed the **** off) and i started to let it get to me... not the best way to play dota.

angry at friends
angry at dota
angry at yourself.

before that i was happy and laughing, i was focused and intent upon winning, i was in the zone. then i let someone pull me out of it and i played like ****.

really i played so bad it wasnt funny, i was reckless, stupid, dumb, i made stupid decisions and went full davai pinoy cyka blat bobo putang ina bobo.

i wasnt raging.
i wasnt abusing people.
i wasnt mad at people.

hell, i didnt even talk at all.

but i was seething.

*cue brooding music with heavy guitar solo's and creeping piano overtures*

honestly all i could think was "idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot" every time i did something stupid or rash or reckless. i was constantly berating myself over every decision made and EVEN THOUGH I KNEW THEY WERE BAD DECISIONS...

i kept making them...

to me that is the core of a tilt. knowing you are making bad decisions and some how some way not being able to stp yourself. its like your having an out of body experience, you can see what your doing but its like its not YOU doing them. Because of this its very hard to stop a tilt and it takes extreme will power to even contemplate stopping because when your on tilt in your head the only way for you to stop is if you win and because your tilting ... winning is very far away.

so after these games, as i am wont to do, i stepped back from myself and my thoughts and then i stepped even further back (i dont do that often cause its not good to be that far away from your sense of self) and objectively broke down everything i saw myself do, think and say, i examined my actions and my processes for making them. in doing so i noticed a pattern.

redemption.

tilting is what happens when we seek redemption.

redemption from a stupid act. redemption from a stupid moment or from something we said or did. by seeking it we try to do something that, in our minds, absolves that act,saying or deed.

every game after the bad one i was constantly trying to make a play that could FIX the bad play. 3 games after i was still trying... you know why?

because in trying to Fix the bad play, i made other bad plays until it was a self perpetuating cycle and all i was doing was bad, stupid or idiotic.

seeing how i went about this made me come to my own sort of Revelation.

forgiveness, i had to forgive myself for making that mistake. i had to say "hey smuggles everyone makes mistakes, its ok. focus on the game" it took me nearly 5 losses for me to see how simple it was.

i had to forgive myself and as soon as i did.... i stopped tilting.




IN DotA we try to be the best we can be, in every single game and when we dont live up to those expectations, we beat ourselves up, we berate ourselves. in some ways this is positive because it forces us to improve until we do live up to those expectations.. but every now and then, every 2nd game where we do something stupid, every 10th bad play i want you to laugh it off and forgive yourself. Forgive the bad plays and the supid ones and instead of beating yourself up say "hey everyone makes mistakes"

and move on.