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Poker, Tilt, AI, and Why I Still Love the Game

Poker has been part of my life for nearly 20 years online… and even longer if you count the matchstick battles against my Nan when I was about 7 years old.

Back then, my brother and I would stay at Nan’s house while Mum and Dad went out for a meal. We’d always get chicken or salmon butties for tea, then the poker chips would come out — except they weren’t poker chips, they were matchsticks. I used to win most of them too. Apparently, I had one of those innocent faces where nobody could tell if I was bluffing or sitting there with the nuts.

After leaving home at 17, I drifted away from poker for years. Then around the age of 30, I discovered Sky Poker and instantly fell back in love with the game. Back then, Sky used to televise the tournaments on TV, and honestly, I’d get excited all day before a big tournament started. I’d satellite my way into larger events, grind my stack up, and occasionally I’d find myself deep in a tournament with a real shot at the final table.

The funny thing is, whenever I got close to something big, I’d suddenly feel boiling hot and completely shook up. Pure adrenaline.

Thankfully, that part eventually disappeared with experience. These days, I stay calm. Mostly.

The Real Problem Was Never Poker, Here’s the truth most poker players don’t like admitting: My biggest losses didn’t happen at the poker tables.

They happened AFTER the poker tables. Tilt was always my downfall. Not the screaming-at-the-screen kind of tilt either. Mine was worse. If Poker hit me hard, with bad beats or coolers, I’d leave the tables frustrated… then take the rest of my bankroll onto the slot machines.

And slots don’t care how good your poker strategy is.

So even during periods where I was technically winning at poker, I’d still somehow end up broke because tilt dragged me somewhere else entirely.

That’s the dangerous thing about poker. You can study ranges, solvers, GTO charts, bankroll management, and hand histories for years… but if your emotions aren’t under control, eventually the game will find the crack in your armour.

And poker WILL test you.

AA cracked five times in a row pre-flop? Yep. Kings losing to J-10 offsuit after someone punts their stack? Seen it. Someone calling huge raises with 10–4 off suit because “they had a feeling”? Every week.

One of my favourites was a player calling me a “lucky idiot” after jamming J-10 off suit into my pocket Kings… then hitting a straight. The best part? My stack held up, I stayed patient, and I ended up taking the rest of his chips later in the tournament.

Poker has a strange sense of humour.

Why I Started Creating Poker Books With AI.

After years of battling tilt, I realised something important:

Before strategy… you need discipline.

So instead of creating another “how to crush poker” guide first, I decided to focus on the part that actually destroys most players: Emotional control, bankroll discipline, and avoiding self-destruction during bad runs.

That became the foundation for my first book:

Poker Discipline: Bankroll Management & Emotional Control

This is the book I honestly wish I had years ago. Because the reality is: Most poker players don’t go broke because they don’t understand poker. They go broke because they can’t handle variance emotionally. Tilt can quietly destroy months of hard work in a single evening.

This book focuses on:

Then Came the Strategy

Once discipline was handled, I moved into strategy. And this is where AI became incredibly interesting to me.

AI has something humans never will: Zero emotion. No tilt. No revenge calls. No panic jams and No ego. Just mathematics, logic, probability, and pattern recognition.

You’ve probably seen those videos where AI bots battle professional poker players. Eventually, AI adapts and learns because it never gets emotionally attached to losing a hand.

That fascinated me.

So I started using AI to help organise, structure, and refine poker strategy concepts into practical books players could actually use.

Not overcomplicated solver madness. Not 500 pages of unreadable theory. Just solid, structured poker guidance. And then I made my second book.

The Winning Edge: Complete Poker Strategy Guide

This is the full strategy playbook.

Inside are:

  • Positional play
  • Hand selection
  • Bet sizing
  • Aggression vs passive play
  • Bluffing concepts
  • Reading player types
  • Tournament adjustments
  • Common mistakes players make

    • Poker is a game of small edges repeated consistently over time — and this book focuses on finding those edges. Next I wanted a book that builds a bankroll without tilt creeping in, so by starting off at small micro stakes with a large bankroll. $100 and if I lose 5 games in a row it doesn't matter, with a spreadsheet and my results log ranging over 20 games tilt does not seem to creep in, especially when I get through 20 games and find I am in profit. You knew I had something. And I made my next book with printable results sheets.

    Crush the $2 Sit & Go: The Complete Winning Strategy for 9-Player Turbo Sit & Go Tournaments

    Micro-stakes poker is chaos. Absolute chaos.

    You’ll see players shove with hands that make no logical sense whatsoever. But that’s also what makes the games beatable if you stay disciplined.

    This guide walks through:

  • CEarly game strategy
  • CMid-stage adjustments
  • CBubble play
  • CHeads-up concepts
  • CStack-size decisions
  • CPush/fold fundamentals
    • Perfect for players wanting to build confidence and consistency at lower stakes. So I wondered if there is any difference between the $2 & $5 SNG and working with AI, I found out there were a few adjustments to make. So I created that e-book to as an upgrade.

    The $5 Sit & Go Upgrade: What Changes — And What Doesn’t —

    When You Step Up From the $2 to the $5 Sit & Go.

    The players get slightly sharper, aggression increases, and mistakes become more expensive.

    This book focuses on:

  • Adapting to stronger opponents
  • Better exploitation strategies
  • Tournament momentum
  • More advanced adjustments
  • Building confidence moving up stakes

    • Eventually, I bundled everything together into:

    The Complete Collection — TiltFree Poker—

    Because poker success isn’t just about strategy.

    It’s about:

  • ADiscipline
  • AEmotional control
  • ABankroll protection
  • APatience
  • AAdaptation
  • AConsistency

    • That’s what separates long-term winners from players constantly redepositing.

    Ironically, poker tilt is also what pushed me to write poker books and into building a website. After taking a couple of weeks away from the tables during a rough stretch, I started wondering what I could create. So I asked myself: “Could I build a website for basically nothing using AI?”

    Turns out… yes.

    The whole thing only cost me about £5 for the domain name.

    When one AI ran out of free credits, I’d move to another one:

  • AClaude
  • AChatGPT
  • AGemini

    • I just kept piecing everything together using free tools and persistence. And since I didn’t exactly have a warehouse full of products to sell, I decided to put my poker books on the site.

    Now I’m experimenting with faceless AI videos. Possibly poker comedy videos, involving fish, whales, donkeys, and absolute maniacs punting stacks with ridiculous hands while believing their poker geniuses right before the whale arrives and wipes them out.

    Honestly… poker practically writes comedy by itself.

    Final Thoughts, After 20 years around poker, I still love the game. Not because it’s easy. Definitely not because it’s fair. And certainly not because variance is kind. I love poker because no matter how much you think you’ve seen, the game still finds ways to surprise you, frustrate you, amaze you, and occasionally make you laugh out loud.

    The people are what make it unforgettable. The madness. The aggression. The insults. The hero calls. The impossible rivers. Poker is part mathematics, part psychology, and part complete chaos. And maybe that’s why I’ll probably never fully walk away from it.

    Anyway, if you’ve made it this far through my rambling poker story, I genuinely hope the cards are treating you well.

    And if not… Stay disciplined. Protect the bankroll. Ride out the bad beats.

    I wish you the best of luck. And until I see you at the tables…

    Stay Diciplined till I get there, then feel free to go tilty agressive,

    All The Best From TiltFree Poker.

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