Tilt wasn’t just a terrible show on ESPN with Michael Madsen by the creators of Rounders. It’s the collapse of your psyche after someone named “AAsine” or “WinsThePOT420″ or some other stupid play on words with an avatar of himself holding up pockets As into the camera chases his gutshot to the river and hits. That Ottoman Empire you called a chipstack has been reduced to the size of a summer camp’s outhouse and the urge to punch the players around you has grown irresistible.

But you continue to play, because “cutting your losses” aren’t words in your vocabulary and your competition is just so easy. “If I keep playing, I can win it all back”–nine words that built Las Vegas casinos up to the heavens, and words that will leave your bankroll crippled in the gutters. Another drink, another misstep, another huge pot, and you’re left with the remnants of a once illustrious result of weeks of disciplined grinding. Busto, kaput, broke, and you’re back at square one. Live by the sword and die by the sword. Bummer!

Below are a list of five things you can do to take your mind off the bad beats or bad decisions leaving you with your head in your hands and wanting to stab a stranger off the street:

5. Stop playing cash games

You lose a hand against a bigger stack, the counter reads $0.00. You lose a hand against a bigger stack in a tourney, you’re out and on to the next for a mere fraction of the price. If you can’t stand the swings of cash games, minimize your losses and expand your dollar over time further with tourneys and sit and gos.

4. Change up the variant

Your pocket As lose to Ks when the villain flops his improbable two-outer. The last thing you want to see is more no-limit hold’em, so put it in the rear-view. Feeling loose and reckless? Play a pot-limit Omaha freezeout. Want to have a reason to never fold? Play a stud h/l tourney. I prefer H.O.R.S.E. when other games bludgeon down my spirits, because people are rarely good at all five games and the variety keeps me occupied to a point where I don’t feel compelled to sit at down and blow more money at the cash tables.

3. Put down the booze

Sometimes, the levity of your loses won’t hit you if you’re thickly liquored up until the next morning, and downing another beer or 10 only helps mask the problem that will see you tossing away the rest of your bankroll well into the morning. Take a bad beat for a substantial amount sober and it will hit you like the bag of bricks it is, and you’ll be good and done before you even realize your coherent thoughts have already closed out the software in disgust.

2. It’s time for sex

What better form of stress relief: making tender, gentle love to your girl or the scantly dressed female you’re paying to pretend she is. You’ll forget your bad beats ever happened after giving someone the greatest 68 seconds of their life. Don’t have a significant other? You, my friend, are living in the dawn of a technological renaissance and are never more than a URL away from having one, if you catch my drift. By “catch my drift”, I mean internet porn. You know I’m right.

1. Stop playing

Easier said than one, but take the loss in stride. You lose a big hand, you can’t handle it, you walk away. There is no shame in taking one on the chin at the expense of your entire net worth in a series of ill decisions that you will inevitably make the drunker you get. Like the hangover you’ll have, sleep it off. That money you have left in your account didn’t get there by chance, and it will only be a matter of time and a series of intelligent decisions before your losses find their way back to poppa.