Here's the short version: you are your own worst enemy or, more correctly, your ego is. The longer version will take up another 400 words or so, but if you want to just go ahead and start punching yourself before reading on, we understand completely.
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It's way too easy to walk into the game and take a little bit of confidence and turn it into a sincere belief that you have some kind of gift at the tables. That sort of thing short-circuits many players because a few winning hands happen, they think they can't be bluffed until they are and then it all goes horribly wrong. Players like this go from losing a single hand into tilt country in the blink of an eye and it can derail perfectly good poker careers.
You want to know how you win at poker? How you can improve at poker? You learn to divorce your feelings from what's happening on the felt. Mathematically, no player wins all the time and the number of true "masters" of the game can be counted on one hand, so what you need to learn how to do is maximize the probability of winning and avoid fancy poker play, particularly when you're just starting out.
Free play and lower-stakes poker tables feature players who chase hands and act irrationally. This means that you should always play the math, not the player, at least until you hit a certain level of play and you notice that players are actually considering their moves intend of automatically ticking off a box and letting the software do the work for them. You've got 2-3 offsuit? Toss it. 8-9 suited and you're the first in the hand? Toss it. KK and you're last in position? Pump the pot and play your heart out.
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Yes, even in the best of positions and in the best of hands, you will get outplayed, whether it's someone actually having great cards and playing well or just an obnoxious bad beat coming off a low-ended suited connector. Learning to take your lumps and move on is the single best thing you can do to improve your game. Ego doesn't win poker games: playing good poker does. Don't waste time and energy and, worst of all, money, by going into tilt. Keep your ego in check and you'll become the kind of player that others fear.
