When asked what qualities a poker player must possess people mention talent, mathematical thinking, the ability to take risks, etc. But by far the most commonly mentioned quality is psychological endurance.

No doubt many of you have heard about "tilt" in poker: the term implies a certain change in the game - a change for the worse. The term stands for a specific poker-related psychological condition, a state of affect in which a player is emotionally influenced into playing the way he would never play in a normal state. Usually a player in a tilted state is taken to start a sudden spell of loose-aggressive play, becomes an unmanageable maniac, though there can be other more or less similarly undesirable changes in the players normal game. Some players are driven into tilt by fear and so become tight-passive. In any case, the result is usually a complete defeat.

The wise player will avoid being tilted in the first place rather than attempt to undo the damage it will inevitably cause. The best way to avert this type of disaster is to gain a thorough knowledge and understanding of the game of poker. You need to familiarize yourself with what distance and dispersion mean in poker to enable you to more easily get through the tough times. In many aspects of life, not just at the poker table, knowledge of mathematical statistics and the laws of probability will lead to a firmer grasp of reality.

A simple understanding of statistics allows you to understand that certain combinations do not always guarantee success: for example, AQs is a combination which has only 68% of success and may in fact loose something like 1 out of every 3 deals.

Unfortunately, knowledge alone does not always help. You may fully realize that stuff happens and that you are in a positive expectation situation. Still bad spells can be very upsetting, lucky “morons” (nothing personal, only professional jargon) very annoying, etc, and before you know, despite your reigning reason’s best efforts, your passions have got the better of you and you are running amuck. You are on tilt and now there is no way out and all you can do is wait for it to subside?

So besides theoretical knowledge, you might try another means to avoid the tilt and that would be an awareness of your personal triggers or hot buttons that when pushed send you off into the cosmos.

To have any control over the event, you must have a clear conception of it beforehand, so that you can recognize it in advance, be ahead, as it were, of that worst enemy in you. Rather than simply slipping blindly into an uncontrollable tilt, observe yourself before, during, and after the event, so that it no longer feels like inevitable doom out of nowhere and acquires instead clear-cut characteristics which can probably be controlled.

Pragmatism is what you are after here. When you feel a tilt coming on, you will be able to recognize the signs and be far more capable of controlling it, if not being able to completely avoid it.

The author is this article is a full time online poker player. He plays poker and receives rakeback from http://www.rakebacksolution.com and participates in the promotions at http://www.racesandrollsrakeback.com .