Welcome to the wonderful world of poker.

This is one of the most difficult things to master, and it will most likely take you a long time.

But the good news is there are a few things that you can do right away to help take your emotions out of play.

1. BANKROLL MANAGEMENT
Play well within your bankroll. Maybe even go to the extreme for a while and do not sit down with any more than 25-30 times your total bankroll. This way, if you loose, it is only a small amount compaired to your overall bankroll. And you will not care as much. You will not have the same emotional reactions and you will be able to keep your focus on proper, objective strategy.

I know it sounds kind of crappy since if you deposit only $50-$100, you will only be playing for pennies (i.e. $100 bankroll = $4 table buy-in = $0.02/$0.04 NL Stakes), but that is exactly the point. You don't want to be upset about loosing a big pot. At this point you should just be looking at the stakes and your bankroll as a way to keep score. Those $0.02/$0.04 Stakes could be $200/$400 for all you care. You don't care about the money right now. You care about making the correct decisions and increasing your "score" . Taking your emotion out of play right now and worrying about correct strategy and winning is the most important thing right now. Don't worry about the money.

2. UNDERSTAND AND ACCEPT VARIENCE
Understand that you WILL loose. And you WILL LOSS OFTEN. If you have a good day and double or triple your buy-in, fully expect to lose a little over the next couple days. Accept this and don't worry about it. Even good players only make a couple big bets an hour (or per 100 hands). So, if you make a big score and make 10 big bets per hour one day, you are going to have some bad days to even that it. That's variance. That's poker. Accept it and move on.

Don't worry about how much you are loosing on your bad days or worry about trying to get even. Just continue to play the correct strategy and know that by not giving away more chips than you have to (not giving in to TILT) will actually make you money in the long run. A penny saved, is a penny earned!

I oftenhave weeks where I'll have a +$200 day, -$100 day, -$40 day, +$60 day, -$55 day. Notice I lost more often than I won. But since I played well and I did not give in to TILT on my bad days, I ended up winning more on my good days and loosing less on my bad days, giving me a net profit for the week of $65.



The only other thing I might suggest right now is maybe giving Limit a shot. You will actually experience more variance due to a bunch of silly fish drawing to any crap. But it will slow down how much you spew when you might be experiencing tilt. It can also limit how much you can loose at any given time, also helping to cut down on tilt.