Going on a tilt is much more common in online poker than in live poker. When there's only a mouse-click separating a player from a bad decision time and time again, emotions can take over and the tilt runs rampant eating up bankrolls and making players feel disgusted with the game.
There are several factors that come together and send someone over the edge. Knowing and recognizing these factors can save you a lot of nerves not to mention money.
Probably the most important of these factors is the bankroll you play on. Playing while properly backed up by a generous bankroll has many advantages. The bankroll will swallow the variance that inevitably hits everyone in poker, it makes it possible for a player to survive bad beats and to live to fight another day, and it gives the player the ability to dominate opponents and thus force them to make bad calls. One should never underestimate the power of a proper bankroll in keeping the tilt at bay.
The type of the game one is involved in also has a lot to do with the tilt. Heads up games make some players thrive under the constant pressure, while other players are just not cut out for handling the stress. These guys will find it much easier to tilt in a speedy heads-up than in a normal-pace full table ring game.
Bad beats are the primary reason for tilting. No other factor brings about the emotional outburst and sets players up better for the tilt. Tilting over bad beats has a lot to do with the nature of the game, as well as with the psychology behind it. For some reason, we humans are programmed by society (maybe not by nature) to categorize things to right or wrong, or fair and unfair. For that reason, whenever we hold superior pot odds and lose, we feel cheated, as if something unfair had happened to us. This feeling of revolt we get when a newbie takes our solid hand down for the third consecutive time on a two outer is the seed that will soon grow into a tilt. There's really not much one can do against bad beats but try to educate him/herself, as the understanding of the mechanisms behind online poker's no 1 menace, the bad beat, might alleviate emotions to some extent.
To begin with, there are no fair or unfair things in online poker. There's no emotion in the game whatsoever, and if you're about to tell me the room is rigged and that's why all these bad things happen to you: don't even go there.
Online poker, as well as its live variant is simple yet infinitely intricate. They are simple because the theory behind what it takes to be a winner is extremely straightforward. A player needs to play only positive expected value situations and he'll be a winner at the end of the day, no matter how many bad or good beats he takes. He wins a small amount (the expected value broken down to a single bet) whether he loses or wins the hand in question. Likewise, if a player plays on negative EV he loses all the time. The practice that comes with this theory though, is infinitely intricate. Positive EV doesn't just sit there ripe for the picking, players can influence it in a variety of ways. The amount of the expected value is also very important, because it adds up to form the hourly rate. The rake and possible rakeback deals the player is engaged in also influence this hourly rate. The bottom line in this respect is, if the hourly rate is below a certain value, even if it's positive, it's no longer lucrative for the player to invest any more time at the table.
The hourly rate is also influenced by the number of hands played per hour. In online poker there are far more hands played per hour than in live poker, so online poker players can afford to settle for a smaller edge on each particular hand they play. This loosens up play a little (mind you that it only happens at low limits) and thus bad beats will come about much more often. (loose play brings about schooling too, which is an important prerequisite of the bad beat).
I hope that the above lecture makes it clear for you why there are indeed more bad beats in online poker than in live poker, and why schooling is more prevalent too. Now that you see there are logical explanations to it, maybe you won't tilt so easy next time you get outdrawn by one of the fish that schooled up on you.
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