The problem
Something just went badly. A bad beat, a missed forecast, a project that imploded, a comment that landed wrong. The next 20 minutes of your decision-making are not the same as the previous 20. Your brain is now operating from a different state: heightened emotion, narrowed focus, distorted probability assessment. This is tilt.
Most people treat tilt as a single condition: "I'm tilted, I should calm down." Jared Tendler's framework, as Wired to Win sets it out in Chapter 11, argues that tilt is actually seven distinct conditions. Each has its own trigger, its own underlying belief, and its own cognitive correction. Generic "calm down" advice fails because the right correction depends on which type of tilt you're in.
This page maps the seven tilts, with the correction Wired to Win writes for each. The whole list fits on a card you can carry.
The mechanism
Three things make the taxonomy useful.
Each tilt has a flawed belief. Tendler's insight: tilt is downstream of an underlying belief that's wrong. Running-Bad tilt is downstream of "results should match decision quality in the short run." Hate-Losing tilt is downstream of "losing reflects negatively on me as a person." The cognitive injection works by surfacing and correcting the belief, not by suppressing the emotion.
Reading the correction gives the spiral somewhere to go. Wired to Win (Chapter 11) describes a player who built a "tilt first-aid kit": a short written correction for each tilt type, in her own words, read during a break. Reading, rather than only thinking, gives you something concrete to do in place of the spiral.
Naming comes first. Identifying which type of tilt you're in tells you which correction to reach for. The diagnostic act ("this is Mistake Tilt, not Running-Bad Tilt") is itself a moment of system 2 engagement in the middle of a system 1 reaction.
The protocol
Five steps. Step 1 is the diagnostic; steps 2-5 are four of the seven types and their injections. The full seven are on the printable card.
Diagnose first: name the type
Before applying any injection, identify which tilt type is firing. The triggers help: did you just have a streak of bad outcomes (Running-Bad)? A specific unfair-feeling event (Injustice)? Any loss at all (Hate-Losing)? A loss to someone you perceive as inferior (Entitlement)? A specific opponent (Revenge)? A deep losing session you want to recover (Desperation)? A mistake you knew was wrong as you made it (Mistake)? Pick the one that fits.
Running-Bad → variance is math, not punishment
Trigger: a cluster of negative outcomes. Belief: "results should match decision quality in the short run." Injection (read aloud): "Variance is a mathematical certainty, not a personal attack. A 5bb/100 winner can be behind over a 50,000-hand stretch; with a typical standard deviation, that happens about one stretch in ten. My strategy doesn't become wrong because the last 500 hands went against me. The sample is too small to draw any conclusion. Keep playing correctly. The math takes care of the rest."
Injustice → opponent's mistake = your long-term profit
Trigger: a specific bad beat that feels fundamentally unfair. Belief: "the game should reward good play and punish bad play in real time." Injection: "My opponent's mistake is my long-term profit source. If they always played correctly, I'd have no edge. The specific hand where their mistake got rewarded is the price of admission to a game where their mistakes fund my income across thousands of hands. I want them to make that call every time."
Hate-Losing → losing is structural, not personal
Trigger: any loss, even a correct one. Belief: "losing reflects on me as a player and as a person." Injection: "Losing is a structural feature of the game, not a failure. Even very strong winning players lose a large share of their sessions. My job is to make correct decisions, not to win every hand. Decision quality is the metric that matters, and it is only loosely connected to short-term results."
Mistake → recover, don't compound
Trigger: making an error you knew was wrong as you made it. Belief: "one mistake means I've lost control. If I can't play my A-game, I might as well give up on this session." Injection: "Everyone makes mistakes. The best players in the world make multiple mistakes per session. The difference is that they don't let one mistake become five. Acknowledge the error, note it for post-session review, and reset. The next hand is independent of the last one. My ability to recover from a mistake is a more important skill than never making one."
The printable: the seven-tilt card
Print this. The card lists all seven tilts with their triggers and injections. Build your own "tilt first-aid kit": write the injections in your own words, with examples from your own history.