Poker is one of the most emotionally demanding games you can think of. So much so that one of the words youll hear most often is tilt.

Being on tilt, roughly speaking, is when you allow bad feelings to dictate your behavior.

Everyones been there. But not everyones aware that there are at least two reasons for this to happen. And knowing the difference between the two may change the way you approach your next poker session.

Lets start by refining our understanding of what it means to be on tilt.

As Ive suggested, this is when you let your emotions hurt your game. This is often an insidious process, which can manifest itself in different ways.

But, if we pay enough attention, well be able to identify some common behavior patterns.

The most obvious form of tilt is when you start entering pots with marginal hands more often, in the hope of hitting a monster on later rounds of betting.

Not all players on tilt may do this. But all of them become more subject to some kind of speculative play. In short, they disregard most of what they once learned about the fundamentals (hand selection, pot odds, position, etc.).

Sometimes, its great. Nothing in poker is bad per se. After all, you have to know how to change gears and how to manipulate your table image.

And speculative plays can help you with that. Against skilled opponents, you wont go too far if your game is too predictable. But when those plays arent done in the proper state of mind, this means that youre simply relying on luck.

Knowing ones own state of mind is, in itself, a full-time job, because it requires constant attention. But its easy to put into words how a person is feeling when he/she is on tilt.

In fact, we can summarize it with a single wordfrustration.

Frustration is an interesting word. According to the 3rd edition of the Longman Active Study Dictionary, heres how its defined:

[] the feeling of being impatient or angry because you cannot do what you want to do[.]

I dont need to tell you what it means to be impatient or angry, do I? Any human being knows those feelings all too well.

Still, it requires a good deal of self-awareness to identify certain emotions as soon as they show up during a poker session. And it requires an even greater deal of self-regulation to not let them interfere with your game.

Self-awareness and self-regulation are emotional intelligence skills. As such, they deserve an article of their own. For now, lets continue analyzing our definition of the word frustration.

Once again, according to Longman (and most dictionaries, by the way), its a feeling that comes because you cannot do what you want to do.

And its here that I ask you, do you know what you want to do when you play poker?

I suspect that, for most poker players, the question What do you want to do? isnt even the most relevant because theyre way too concerned about what they want to have.

That is, theyre all about the results Im not here to say you shouldnt be results-oriented. After all, this is a common trait among successful people.

But these people have also learned that your results should come in direct proportion to what you do and also, your level of being, if you want to sustain your success.

This sounds obvious, right? But how many players fail to notice this?

Poker is demanding not only because of its individualistic nature but also because of the luck factor. This makes it all too easy to blame the deck when things dont go your way, especially when playing no-limit. Here, you can lose a lot (or all) of your chips in one hand.

When that happens because of a bad beat, thats enough for many players to start playing much worse. And thats how most of them go on tilt.

Theres a fine line between being focused on results and being attached to them. And we all tend to cross that line more often than wed like to admit.

But we must know that attachment is exactly what makes it difficult to have the necessary emotional stability to play poker.

At the felt, anything can happen in the short run. Unfortunately, it seems that most players only learn this at a cognitive level (if that).

What do those players need to develop, then?

First of all, a desire to play well. Second, the habit of seeing their results from a larger perspective. Bear in mind, though, that none of that will necessarily save you from going on tilt.

Theres another reason why this happens to poker players.

When you decide to get serious about improving your game, its common to develop a series of habits.

You start reading books, joining forums, and watching tutorials about poker. You keep track of how long you spend at each session (both online and offline). You spend hours analyzing different hands youve played searching for what couldve been done differently.

Then, you pay attention to your nutrition, sleep, exercise routine, and so on. You even experiment with different kinds of meditation, visualizations, and affirmations.

In short, you do everything you can think of to give yourself even the slightest edge at a poker table. And you definitely should. But, as great as those habits are, they may present a certain danger.

The danger is not in any of those practices themselves, but in how you relate to them. Because, if you do everything right, you might expect to play as close to perfect as humanly possible.

And when youre not able to do this, youre bound to get frustrated.

Poker player and author Mike Caro calls this second type of tilt the scratched-car syndrome.

He named it as such because of something that happened to a neighbor of his a long time ago. His neighbor just bought a new car, of which he seemed to be very proud of. And he polished it frequently. That is, until a scratch appeared on it.

After that incident, the man felt it wasnt worth it anymore to do anything about his once precious car. As Caro observes, such is the case for those poker players who come into a table expecting to play great all the time.

All it takes is a costly misjudgmenta bad call on the river, for examplefor them to feel like their whole session was ruined. Although the circumstances behind this type of tilt are different from the other, the underlying reason is the same.

Both types of players get frustrated because of some kind of attachment. In our first case, as weve seen, that attachment is mainly to amassing chips. In this second case, players tend to be attached mainly to their self-image as poker players.

These would do well to ponder on the following advice from Caro:

[] You are where you are and the past is the past. Are-are, past-past. Try to play perfectly, but expect to fail.

I know, I said Id talk about only two types of tilt, but theres another one which deserves at least a brief mention here.

Sometimes, you go on tilt not because of a bad run of cards, a hand poorly played, or anything else thats part of the game.

Sometimes, you just cant get some personal problems out of your head.

Maybe your mother is sick. Or youve argued with your spouse. Or youve had an altercation with another player about something unrelated to poker.

Whatever the case may be, its unlikely that youll be able to focus on that game you happen to be in. I say its unlikely because some players are actually able to do it. Somehow, theyre able to detach from anything else that may be bothering them outside the felt.

If thats you, I salute you. If thats not your case, maybe its better to skip that particular poker session. Or, at the very least, try to make use of some techniques that involve some kind of relaxation.

None of us are immune to going on tilt when playing poker. This can happen even to top pros (as you may have seen on TV).

The secret, if there is one, is to learn how to bounce back quicker each time it happens. And the first step towards this goal is to learn to develop an accepting attitude.

Tilt, as weve seen, comes from frustration. And frustration comes from one thing, and one thing onlya lack of acceptance.

So, as long as you can stop wanting things to be different from the way they are, youll be a winner. Thats a tricky feat, because you do want to improve and develop. But you dont want to be attached to neither the cards nor to your performance when playing poker.

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What is Tilt When Playing Poker? - Different Types of Tilt at Poker - BestUSCasinos.org