The most likely etymology I’m aware of is via pinball, where a pinball machine would disable its controls and drain the ball if it detected that something was applying too much unexpected physical force to the machine. Anecdotally, the generalization of that to the “losing one’s ability to make controlled plays after winding up in an unusual agitating situation” sort of meaning later made its way into poker, whence at least one LW-popular personality is definitely familiar with it. From Zvi’s “Book Review: On The Edge: The Gamblers”:
Phil’s entire strategy is based on using a pattern designed to provoke the opponent into playing exploitatively or drive them into various forms of tilt. And then, through decades of experience, to know all the different ways players respond to that, and what to do about each one. Its seemingly obvious weaknesses and patterns are a feature.
and:
Sports betting took more emotional bandwidth than I expected. I don’t think I went on tilt or became addicted to sports betting at any point—but sometimes it’s hard to know. (3793)
I most definitely did go on tilt at various times. The good news was I (mostly?) responded to that by taking a break, rather than chasing losses, doing heat checks or getting sloppy. Poker puts you in situations where you are on tilt, but you don’t want to pass up opportunity. Sports certainly gives you opportunities you don’t want to miss, like NFL sundays, but it’s not like when you have that amazing poker table.
If you have this same class of question in the future, Wiktionary is often a reasonable place to look for quotations; the page for “tilt” describes this sense as sense 8 (both noun and verb) and gives several examples.
I heard this usage of “tilt” a lot when I used to play League of Legends, but almost never heard it outside of that, so my guess is that it’s gamer slang.
Losing control due to strong negative emotions elicited by elements of the game, and the resulting reduced quality of poker decision making, is commonly known as tilting. Game elements that often elicit negative emotions and induce tilting include (but are not limited to) i) losing in a situation where losing is perceivably highly improbable (encountering a bad beat), ii) prolonged series of losses (losing streaks), and iii) factors external to the game mechanics, such as fatigue, or “needling” by other players. Evidence suggests that tilting is a very prominent and common cause of superfluous monetary losses for many poker players (Browne, 1989; Hayano, 1982; Tendler, 2011). Superfluous losses during tilting often result from chasing (of one’s losses), which refers to out-of-control gambling behavior where players attempt to quickly win back the money that was previously lost (see Dickerson & O’Connor, 2006; Lesieur, 1984; Toneatto, 1999, 2002). Tilting essentially represents an overt condition where emotions have a direct and detrimental influence on poker decision making.
I have never heard of this usage of “tilt” before. Do you perchance have any links to examples in the wild?
The most likely etymology I’m aware of is via pinball, where a pinball machine would disable its controls and drain the ball if it detected that something was applying too much unexpected physical force to the machine. Anecdotally, the generalization of that to the “losing one’s ability to make controlled plays after winding up in an unusual agitating situation” sort of meaning later made its way into poker, whence at least one LW-popular personality is definitely familiar with it. From Zvi’s “Book Review: On The Edge: The Gamblers”:
and:
If you have this same class of question in the future, Wiktionary is often a reasonable place to look for quotations; the page for “tilt” describes this sense as sense 8 (both noun and verb) and gives several examples.
I heard this usage of “tilt” a lot when I used to play League of Legends, but almost never heard it outside of that, so my guess is that it’s gamer slang.
It’s in live usage among Magic players, who may have gotten it from poker — or even from Zvi specifically for that matter.
That is surprising. We often used the word in high school ~10 years ago and I’m not even a native speaker. Example
This thesis on poker players has a section on it: