Tilting – Danger and Reality

You've all read about it:

I put him on tilt.

You're on tilt!

If you think you‘re on tilt, stop playing!

Yet the exact nature of being “on tilt” is never clearly explained.
After many months of playing poker I've noticed that I'm slowly becoming able to tell the difference between the times when I’m just having some bad luck and the times when I've lost control of my game.

To lose control of one's game is almost certainly the best definition of being “on tilt”.

Being “on tilt” doesn't necessarily mean that you're capping every hand like a maniac or that you've turned into a rock.

The origin of the term “tilt” is likely in reference to tilting a pinball machine. When the ball’s path was certain to pass between the flippers, players would literally tilt the machine in order to alter the path of the ball. Often times this would trigger a mechanism within the machine which resulted in the flippers freezing simultaneously while the word TILT appeared on the scoreboard. The metaphorical sense of the term is that when one plays in an overly-aggressive manner, thanks to frustration, one’s game is likely to suffer.

In this article, I hope to provide a window into the various symptoms and causes of tilt using my own experiences as well those of others with whom I have discussed this issue. I do not claim to have actually overcome tilt myself. I only hope to explain what I have learned of this condition so that others can learn to recognize and deal with any of the symptoms of tilt that appear in their own game.