1) We tilt very easily - As beginners, we have the tendency to tilt ourselves at every opportunity. It often doesn't even matter if we're winning or losing. If things aren't going exactly how we want them to, our focus quickly decreases -- and our profit goes with it.

2) We hope for too much - Why do we hope to get lucky to win instead of playing profitably? Why do we make blind calls every round hoping that we'll spike a pair? And why do we beat ourselves up after we lose money to these foolish decisions? I can't hope to know the answers myself, but I do know that hoping too much tends to lower our profit.

3) We don't see what's profitable - We don't see what the best choices are when it's our turn to make them. Instead, we base our thoughts on the need to win, even when it may not be profitable to continue. We need to think twice and hard about whether to hold or to fold -- as long as we want to make some money, that is.

4) We don't think enough - Sometimes, we see a big pot and all we think about is win, win, win. What about predicting the cards your opponents might have? What are the odds that you might actually be beat? Did you think about pot odds? Or your outs? Or your opponents possible outs? There are times like these that we don't think enough, and then there are times that we don't think at all.

5) We don't pay attention - Many times, we are so focused on what's happened and what we hope to happen that we don't pay attention to whats actually happening. We get stuck on how we lost our last hand and how we want to win the next one. Next thing we know, we've stuck ourselves in an even worse situation, hoping even more to get lucky and losing even more in the long run. Keeping yourself in the moment and your mind in the action is the only way to make a profit.

6) We are too set on not losing - Why does it matter so much to us if we had to fold? It's because as beginners, we don't think of it as folding -- we think of it as losing. We tend to make a correlation between the two and end up folding less as a result. As one of my personal rules, folding less means earning less. Don't be fooled as a beginner -- folding is not losing.

7) We are too focused on winning - This applies to most poker players, not just beginners, in that we're always expecting more from ourselves. We always expect to win. True, the goal of poker is to win money, but many times we let this consume us. What happens when we end up losing? We need to win it back, of course. We don't think about what it takes to be profitable, we think about what it takes to win. This mindset is actually a negative one which tends to give us more tilt than profit in the long and short run.