Before becoming a full blown tilt, tilt has several stages. Its not a one time occurrence. Its starts off pretty harmless and its cause by a number of little brush of bad luck such as a bad beat, an outdraw, a miracle in your opponent etc. And almost because of a bad day. At this level you experience a little amount of distraction and can still play the game well.
Stage 1 is the bridge to stage 2 tilt. Its only a close gap. So better settle down the issue on the first stage ASAP. At stage 1 you are still you, only a little bit distracted but you still have the power to stop yourself from doing craziness when you are in a full blown tilt.
But you’re not that lucky when you are already on stage 2. At this stage, you are aware that you are on tilt and possessing steam that can burn anything. Here you make reckless bets with lousy hands, stupid bluffs and many more. You’ll also experience a variety of emotional feelings when you’re at stage 2. Like dejection, hopelessness and anger. These emotions will get worst if you didn’t stop. You steam, you make a stupid play, then you steam again. It is a very upsetting circle that you didn’t have to go through.
At this stage you are aware that you are on tilt. You understand that you have to stop but the problem is you can’t. If you’re really unfortunate not break off from this crazy ride you will find yourself into stage 3 called life tilt. This is the place where every poker player don’t want to be. You’ll be so irritable that you can’t think straight. And will make you do things that will cause really, really bad consequences. You can lose your entire savings if you’re still playing actively at this level.
What’s the best thing that you should do? We can’t stop emotions setting in into our lives. The best prevention you will have is to know the earliest symptoms of tilt when you can still handle yourself to stopped playing. Because at the fullest level of tilt you won’t be identifying anything anymore because you’re overwhelm by emotions which will distract you full time.
Another way to prevent this tilt is to be vigilant. Don’t bring too much money or even your bank and credit accounts. This will stop you in rolling to a stage wherein you’ll bet all the savings on your account.
Being on the losing side happens in poker. You only need to deal with it. You don’t have to put blame to all your opponent when you don’t get lucky and also don’t blame yourself. Blaming is one symptom that can cause tilt. Just move on when you encounter a bad beat or holding a set of bad cards.
Its really better to deal with infrequent bad beats than having to throw all your savings on tilt.