Playing online poker is addictive. Ask anyone who has won a few hundred or thousand dollars at their favorite online poker room, and they will tell you exactly how addictive the game can be. Eventually, however, lady luck will abandon you at a crucial time. You will feel her presence right before laying down your trip kings, convinced that she is with you, and instead she will just stare at you in cold contempt as your opponent presents their full house. That kind of beat will happen... no matter how tight you play. In the online poker world it's tough to discern a players poker hand. The only tells you have are betting patterns, and those will only tell you so much.

At this point it's easy to loose it... to simply wig out and start playing recklessly. It's what poker pros call going "on tilt". Your nerves are shot, and you begin making bad choices as a result of a bad beat.

Most of the time you're just trying to recupe your losses. You bet too much, went too far on a hand you shouldn't have. On the flip side, there's a less talked about form of tilt called "winners tilt". In this scenario, you took your big American Airlines right to the river, not having caught another Ace anywhere down the line. There are three hearts on the table, and you've got two opponents who are betting large. You bet overtop of them, and somehow, you pull out a win, taking a huge pot.

Lady Luck is with you... and you might be convinced she's going to stick around for a while. You win a couple more hands, and your tall stack is giving you the kind of freedom only provided by holding all those chips. You're still using all that poker strategy you learned from those online poker strategy articles you've been reading, but it doesn't seem to matter... you're riding high on chance. You're now on tilt. The only difference is now it's a "winners tilt" - but it's causing you to play the same way a "losers tilt" would, and eventually it will catch up with you.

Slow down, read the table as best you can, and know when to ditch the hand. It's important to never loose sight of the tight-aggressive play, and while it's intoxicating to imagine the prospect of pushing people out of a big pot with low pair, it will eventually come back to bite you - until you're out of chips altogether.