Tilt is playing worse out of emotion: frustration after a bad run, the urge to get even, rage over a bad beat. It's invisible and very expensive: no level of technique survives decisions made in the heat of the moment.
Types of tilt
- Bad-beat tilt: you lost with the best hand and you want revenge.
- Injection tilt: you chase losses by moving up in stakes or playing more hands.
- Boredom tilt: you play bad hands just for the action.
Recognize it and cut it
Signs: you play more hands than usual, you call “out of curiosity”, you bet out of rage, you tell yourself “one more hand to get it back”. The moment you notice them, apply your stop-loss: a loss limit (in money or in big pots in a row) that, once hit, gets you up from the table no arguments.
✓ Consejo: Pre-session routine: decide how long you're going to play and your stop-loss BEFORE you start. Deciding cool-headed prevents decisions made in the heat of the moment.
💡 Clave: Judge decisions, not results. Have a stop-loss and respect it. The money you don't lose on tilt is, literally, money earned.