Tilt usually follows a bad beat, a long losing run or a bruised ego, and it shows up as playing too many hands, calling too wide and betting too large.
It is the most expensive leak in poker because it compounds: worse decisions produce worse results, which produce more tilt. Unlike a technical mistake it does not correct itself with study.
The only reliable countermeasure is a rule made in advance and obeyed without negotiation: a stop-loss, a session length, or leaving after a specific hand type. A rule decided while tilting is not a rule.
Tilt is not only anger. Winner's tilt, where a good run produces looser play and larger bets, costs plenty of players more than the losing kind, precisely because it feels like confidence rather than a problem. The tell is the same in both directions: your decisions have started depending on recent results rather than on the cards.
Where the numbers come from
Related terms in poker
- Pot odds — The price a call is getting, compared against how often it needs to win.
- Outs — The cards remaining that would improve your hand to a likely winner.
- Equity — Your share of the pot, meaning how often you win it if the hand plays to showdown.
- Implied odds — The money you expect to win later if your draw comes in, beyond what is in the pot now.
- Position — Where you act in the betting order, and the largest structural edge in poker.
- Button — The dealer position, which acts last on every postflop street.
Where an entry quotes a number, that figure comes from the computed sections of this site rather than from another glossary, so the definition and the derivation cannot drift apart. Each entry links to the page where the number is worked out.