Tilt spells are very difficult to deal with once they have begun as it is the nature of the tilt to cause a loss of control. Tilts, like aggression, are part of homo sapiens make up and cannot be eliminated altogether. But fits of aggression and fits of tilt cause us to run amok for a reason. They are always triggered by an event, bad news, bad bruise, a gross insult, or any other fardle as Hamlet would call it, toying with his bare bodkin. Discomfort is the main catalyst to bring on an instant fit of aggression – discomfort such as pain or a really, really empty stomach.

As we go through our day, we do not think about the causes of our immediate aggression. So we are not able to cope with the triggers of our aggression because we do not understand which buttons are pushed to cause such raging behavior, so we pound our heads against the wall. In poker you must understand what throws you into an instant rage. To be a well-controlled, disciplined, cool player, you must know well the situations leading to your reactions. It is a requirement for the cool player to identify his triggers, from the smallest to the largest.

Once you learn to do this regularly, you will be able to effectively say to yourself, even aloud: “Alright, this is precisely the kind of dumb good luck on the part of an aggressive “moron” which starts inching me ever closer to a tilt – look out. When that happens again, I will not tilt; I will recognize it and relax; I will play cool straightforward poker for some minutes.”

You will be able to admit even as you maintain control that in poker you do not have full control and that you, a good poker player, play poker not because you expect to win no matter what – precisely the kind of blind ideals which lead to disillusionment and despair when they collapse in any field of human endeavor – but because you enjoy the challenge of doing your best against the specific odds of the game: a combination of chance and your opponents’ skill.

By behaving as in the above example, your energy will be spent in a positive manner and you will have less to expend in the negative behavior of building up an uncontrollable aggression. You will have more energy to put toward the task of maintaining your equilibrium so even if you feel a tilt coming on, you can keep your cool and be in control of yourself and your game.

A few common triggers are:

General discomfort, like plain hunger or insufficient sleep: since we are probably not talking about any exceptional circumstances – like poker under torture – even sleepiness and hunger can be curbed if the person is introspective enough about the problem and his immediate purpose in relation to it;

Bad mistakes: poker is a highly competitive sport, which perhaps makes it hard for players to forgive themselves; artists, most of the time, it seems, are somehow less hard on themselves, perhaps because to any practicing artist rough drafts and revisions are an obvious and necessary part of the otherwise more or less satisfactory creative process; any good artist will proudly admit that before they managed that amazing line they had to erase and rewrite pages’-wroth of limp, turgid verbiage or that before they had finally written that one true masterpiece of their career they had to write a series of “serious” well-meaning flops. You should not numb yourself to self-criticism, but you should be sufficiently immune to it to learn and improve from you own mistakes without plunging into despair.

There are many, many other triggers to be aware of, any of which, can be coped with as long as you can identify them. Become aware of what puts you on the defensive (yet another tilt trigger). It may be stupid mistakes (think bad instead of stupid), loss to a terrible beginning player (who probably goes on to lose everything in another game), fatigue, lack of focus, tedium, fight with girlfriend/boyfriend, one too many or one not enough, etc.