Going on tilt will destroy your bankroll.
This tip is here for encouragement, although the wording might not appear to be elevating. Tilt would be a poker player’s enemy when it was to happen to him, and friend when it was to happen to other poker 
players in the game. You could use tilt to your advantage by not falling victim to it, even though your rivals would.
What is tilt? Quite plainly, tilt would occur when a run of bad luck would cause a player to make irrational decisions in a poker game, letting emotion guide him instead of reason. Tilt could be prompted by the turn of a single unfortunate card, or as the culmination of a two-week streak of bad luck. Each poker player would have a different ‘tilting point,’ and it would be important to recognize your own.
Regrettably, it would often be awfully difficult to admit to yourself when enough would be enough. If you were to insist on staying in a game after you would have reached your tilting point, you would be likely to ‘tilt off’ a considerable number of chips to your undeserving rivals.
Any poker player who would be able to admit to himself when he is emotionally unfit to play further, perhaps due to some bad luck in the game, and would be strong enough to stand up and leave, would be way ahead of the competition.
A true understanding of the nature of poker would be one of the best ways to avoid going on tilt. You must realize that this game would have an incredible amount of short-term luck, letting less skilled or even poor poker players to win improbably for extended periods of time.
This shouldn’t dispirit you, though; rather, you should realize that this would be the lure for the weaker players. If the best poker players were to always win, there wouldn’t be any poker games. The losers would take up War or some other game in which they would have a fighting chance.
Every poker player at one time or another would suffer an ostensibly endless bad streak in which his pair of aces or a pair of kings would never seem to hold up, his ace and king would constantly be greeted with a flop of a seven, an eight, and a nine, and his pair of jacks would be pummeled by a flop ace, king, and five. What you would have to realize when this happens to you would be that you wouldn’t be alone. Games Encyclopedia.
This would merely be part of the expected statistical divergence in the game. It would happen to you just as surely as it would happen to everyone else at one time or another. By the way, it would normally not be recommended to share your pain with your neighbors in a poker game. Although they could pretend to lend a sympathetic ear, they wouldn’t really be listening. They would simply be waiting for a pause into which they might add their own tales of woe.*
You would have to remember that poker is a long-run proposition. It would be of key importance that you play poker correctly in all circumstances, even on days when nothing were to be going right. If you were to give in and start ‘playing like them,’ you would just lose more money.
Regardless of how well you would play, though, you would have some losing days. It would have to be your goal to walk away from these losing sessions saying to yourself, ‘I lost hundred dollars today, but any other poker player would have lost three hundred dollars.’
Striving for perfect play, rather than perfect results, must eventually help you to avoid going on tilt. If you could come to terms with the fact that intermittently someone would hit a forty-to-one draw on you, you would be better equipped to handle the swings of the poker game.
You should focus on what you could control, and you would sustain the emotional balance that would be necessary to beat the game. And, if you were to feel that balance slipping away, you should quit the game for the day, week, or month – until you would have salvaged your self-control.
* These are called bad-beat stories: No one would want to hear yours, and you wouldn’t want to hear those of others.
Practicing good game selection adds to you profits.
Recognizing profitable games would be an underrated poker skill. It would be quite possible that a poker 
player adept at choosing the right game would win significantly more money than a far more skilled player who would lack judgment in game selection. You should not underestimate the value of choosing the right game. Here are some guidelines:
- Don’t sit in games full of tight-aggressive players.
This would be the mode of play that would get the money in holdem poker. If several of these poker players were to be in your game, they would snatch up whatever profit would be available from the weaker poker players. You should look for another game.
- Look for games with loose-passive players; those are the easiest games to beat
This would imply that the most profitable games might not have the biggest pots, as passive play would be likely to promote smaller pot sizes. Nonetheless, these poker players wouldn’t charge you the maximum when they would be holding the best hand. Provided you wouldn’t be returning the favor, the chips would be heading in your direction.
- Avoid wild and crazy games when your bankroll is short.
Games with big pots would be alluring, but might not be your best move when you would be on short money. You would have both your biggest wins and biggest losses in wild poker games. It would often be best to seek out more passive opposition, especially when you couldn’t afford a big loss.
- Winning at poker is all about the edge you have over your opponents.
Poker would be a long-term proposition, and if you were to play in circumstances in which you were to have an advantage, you would be a long-term winner. You would have to impartially seek out games in which you would have an edge, and avoid games in which you would not.
- That said, it might still be correct occasionally to sit in a game that you can’t beat, due to the presence of a few excellent players in the game.
You would be doing this for educational purposes, as you would be spending your time in this game monitoring everything the experts would, so that you could imitate it in your own play. You just shouldn’t do this at a limit you couldn’t afford.
- It’s okay to play with great players, as long as bad ones are present.
In limit holdem poker, the amount of money you would lose to players who would be better than you would be much smaller than the amount you would win from very poor poker players. This would be true, of course, only if you would have to be at least a fairly good poker player. So, you shouldn’t be afraid to sit in a game with a few poker players whom you would classify as being particularly adept, if some poor poker players were there as well.
Most of your profit would come from these bad poker players. Also, the experts would likely stay out of your way most of the time, which would allow you to play chiefly against the live ones*. You would be much better off in this type of game than in one in which every poker player were to be fairly good, although none would be extraordinary.
* Live one: A very loose poker player, usually implying one who loses.