Tilt.

I think of all things beginners have to learn, this is probably the hardest one to figure out. When I started, I used to think that going on tilt meant when you get reaaaallly pissed off a bad beat, and you start blowing money on purpose.

But that's just a bad form of tilt... I've found that I can even slightly tilt AND NOT KNOW IT thus losing lots of money. I noticed today after I was on that slight tilt that I started playing hands like KJo from UTG, and calling a preflop raises with AJo, etc. I would also do things like ignore pot odds (within reason) when I'm drawing for a straight or flush.

Do you advanced players have any tips or tricks to recognizing when you're even slightly tilting? I think tolerance to bad beats comes with time, but even making small mistakes can be costly.

If I start getting bored I just quit immediately before I start doing something crazy/stupid. It's good that you noticed you were doing stuff like that.. once you notice it I think it is a good time to take a break from your session.

I think you just identified one of the biggest signs of when you are tilting ... when you are convincing yourself to make marginal and suboptimal plays because your hand is almost good enough or the pot odds are almost good enough. Really, for this kind of tilting, you just have to learn the discipline of not 'talking yourself into a bad play'.

Well the good thing is your realizing it. If your playing tourneys and your not too deep in it i'd sit out for a bit and take a piss, get a drink or something. I like doing pushups or something to get my mind off poker for a minute or two.

I'm glad you asked this because I just had a tiny tilt turn to a big tilt to lose 120bb in 2 hands. I like what others said and want to see more ways everyone identifies and handles it.

I think if I would have asked myself, "Am I acting real quick and impatiently? Or, am I reasoning my way through (planning, observign/taking notes to put opps on a range, just taking a few seconds before each play...)," then I would've realized I had the slight tilt creeping in.