B
Black Swan
But first let's start with a funny; “Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.” Steven Wright.
I've highlighted some of my favourites..
”Most of the money you'll win at poker comes not from the brilliance of your own play, but from the ineptitude of your opponents.”
Lou Krieger
”There's opportunity in poker.... If Horace Greeley were alive today, his advice wouldn't be "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." Instead, he'd point to that deck of cards on table and say, "Shuffle up and deal.”
Lou Krieger
The game exemplifies the worst aspects of capitalism that have made our country so great."
Walter Matthau
"Nobody is always a winner, and anybody who says he is, is either a liar or doesn't play poker."
Amarillo Slim
"The most difficult aspects of playing poker professionally are coping emotionally with the losses and coping with the recurring idea that you're not doing anything worthwhile."
Mike Caro
"The guy who invented poker was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius."
Big Julie
"Whether he likes it or not, a man's character is stripped bare at the poker table; if the other players read him better than he does, he has only himself to blame. Unless he is both able and prepared to see himself as others do, flaws and all, he will be a loser in cards, as in life."
Anthony Holden
”Cards are war, in disguise of a sport."
Charles Lamb, "Essays of Elia" (1832)
"You call...gonna be all over, baby." during the 1998 World Series of Poker. Down to the final 2 players, he said this to his opponent while he held the best possible hand.
Scotty Nguyen
"Remember this: The house doesn't beat the player. It just gives him the opportunity to beat himself."
Nicholas (Nick the Greek) Dandalos
"A racehorse is an animal that can take several thousand people for a ride at the same time."
Author Unknown
"Luck never gives; it only lends."
wedish Proverb
"When I played pool I was like a good psychiatrist. I cured 'em of all their daydreams and delusions."
Minnesota Fats
"There is a very easy way to return from a casino with a small fortune: go there with a large one."
Jack Yelton
"Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing from something."
Wilson Mizner
"The best throw of the dice is to throw them away
English Proverb
"Gambling is the son of avarice and the father of despair."
French Proverb
"Never bet on baseball."
Pete Rose
"Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math."
Author Unknown
"Whether he likes it or not, a man's character is stripped bare at the poker table; if the other players read him better than he does, he has only himself to blame. Unless he is both able and prepared to see himself as others do, flaws and all, he will be a loser in cards, as in life."
Anthony Holden (from Big Deal)
"Mr. Moss, I have to let you go."
Nick "the Greek" Dandalos (after playing heads-up No Limit poker for 5 months at Binion's Horseshoe with the famous Johnny Moss
"If, after the first twenty minutes, you don't know who the sucker at the table is, it's you."
Unknown
"The game exemplifies the worst aspects of capitalism that have made our country so great."
Walter Matthau
"The guy who invented poker was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius."
Big Julie
"Your first duty is to the Game; then come Mother, God, and Country."
Motto at the National Press Club, Washington D.C.
"Is it a reasonable thing, I ask you, for a grown man to run about and hit a ball? Poker's the only game fit for a grown man. Then, your hand is against every man's, and every man's is against yours. Teamwork? Who ever made a fortune by teamwork? There's only one way to make a fortune, and that's to down the fellow who's up against you."
Somerset Maugham from Cosmopolitans
"Dear Lord, help me to break even. I need the money."
Unknown Loser's Prayer
"I've often thought, if I got really hungry for a good milk shake, how much would I pay for one? People will pay a hundred dollars for a bottle of wine; to me that's not worth it. But I'm not going to say it is foolish or wrong to spend that kind of money, if that's what you want. So if a guy wants to bet twenty or thirty thousand dollars in a poker game, that is his privilege."
Jack Binion
"Aces are larger than life and greater than mountains."
Mike Caro
"There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker. The upper class knows very little about it. Now and then you find ambassadors who have sort of a general knowledge of the game, but the ignorance of the people is fearful. Why, I have known clergymen, good men, kind-hearted, liberal, sincere, and all that, who did not know the meaning of a "flush". It is enough to make one ashamed of the species."
Mark Twain
"In a game of poker, I can put the players' souls in my pocket."
Beausourire, Haitian Poker Player
"The commonest mistake in history is underestimating your opponent; happens at the poker table all the time."
General David Shoup
"These two have no idea what they're about to walk into. Down here to have a good time, they figure, Why not give poker a try? After all, how different can it be from the home games they've played their whole lives? Luck. All the luck in the world isn't gonna change things for these guys. They're simply overmatched. We're (the pros at the table) not playing together, but we're not playing against each other, either. It's like the Nature Channel. You don't see piranhas eating each other, do you?"
Mike from Rounders
"Patience. And shuffle the cards."
Cervantes, Don Quioxte
"This was the first time he had seriously confronted what he was doing, and the force of that awareness came very abruptly - with a surging of his pulse and a frantic pounding in his head. He was about to gamble his life on that table, and the insanity of that risk filled him with a kind of awe."
Paul Auster, "The Music of Chance" (1990)
"Well, tomorrow's another day."
John Hennigan, high-stakes ring game player and 4th Place finisher in the opening World Poker Tour tournament
"I must complain the cards are ill shuffled till I have a good hand."
Jonathan Swift, "Thoughts on Various Subjects" (1728)
"How long does it take to learn poker, Dad?" "All your life, son."
David Spanier, "Total Poker" (1977)
"I've lost money so fast in these clubs it's left me reeling. I've read every poker book ever written, but the only way to get better at the game is to go out and play with people who are really good. The problem is, you stand to lose a lot of money doing it."
Matt Damon, who was quickly eliminated from the $10,000 main event at the WSOP in 1998.
"He said, "Son, I've made a life out of readin' people's faces, and knowin' what their cards were by the way they held their eyes."
Kenny Rogers, "The Gambler"
POKER, A game said to be played with cards for some purpose to this lexicographer unknown."
Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" (1906)
"It's hard work. Gambling. Playing poker. Don't let anyone tell you different. Think about what it's like sitting at a poker table with people whose only goal is to cut your throat, take your money, and leave you out back talking to yourself about what went wrong inside. That probably sounds harsh. But that's the way it is at the poker table. If you don't believe me, then you're the lamb that's going off to the slaughter."
Stu Unger, three-time WSOP Champion
"The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent."
David Mamet, playwright. "Things I Have Learned Playing Poker on the Hill," in Writing in Restaurants (1986)
"Poker is the game closest to the western conception of life, where life and thought are recognized as intimately combined, where free will prevails over philosophies of fate or of chance, where men are considered moral agents and where - at least in the short run - the important thing is not what happens but what people think happens."
John Luckacs, "Poker and the American Character" (1963)
"Industry executives and analysts often mistakenly talk about strategy as if it were some kind of chess match. But in chess, you have just two opponents, each with identical resources, and with luck playing a minimal role. The real world is much more like a poker game, with multiple players trying to make the best of whatever hand fortune has dealt them. In our industry, Bill Gates owns the table until someone proves otherwise."
David Moschella, "Computerworld"
"See, in my world - the world of high-stakes gin and poker - we play for cold, hard cash. It's all business, pure and simple. Anyone who thinks cardplaying is a 'game' - I'll show you a loser. Money... M-O-N-E-Y. That's how you measure success. One dollar at a time. One chip at a time. That's how you keep score."
Stu Unger
"I've always had confidence, but I never let my ego get to the point that I think I'm the superstar, because I know that ego has destroyed many a poker career."
Jim Boyd, modern-day road gambler
"I think that we are all in the right place at the right time almost every day. It's the people who are prepared to be lucky who can take advantage of being there. How do these people position themselves to be lucky? It was Goethe who said, 'Anytime that you take the first step toward trying to achieve something in life, all manner of good things will mysteriously fall into your path to help speed you along your way.' Amen to that!"
Phil Hellmuth, 1989 WSOP Champion
"Cards are war, in disguise of a sport."
Charles Lamb, "Essays of Elia" (1832)
"It's not enough to succeed. Others must fail."
Gore Vidal
"Perception is reality."
Immanuel Kant
"Poker is a microcosm of all we admire and disdain about capitalism and democracy. It can be rough-hewn or polished, warm or cold, charitable and caring, or hard and impersonal, fickle and elusive, but ultimately it is fair, and right, and just."
Lou Krieger
“Whether he likes it or not, a man’s character is stripped at the poker table; if the other players read him better than he does, he has only himself to blame. Unless he is both able and prepared to see himself as others do, flaws and all, he will be a loser in cards, as in life.”
Anthony Holden
”With spots quadrangular of diamond form, Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife, And spades, the emblems of untimely graves.”
William Cowper
”The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent. “
David Mamet
”Poker is a microcosm of all we admire and disdain about capitalism and democracy. It can be rough-hewn or polished, warm or cold, charitable and caring, or hard and impersonal, fickle and elusive, but ultimately it is fair, and right, and just.”
Lou Krieger
”Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he's losing; nobody wants you to quit when you're ahead.”
Jackie Robinson
”God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e., everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”
Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens, 1991
”Hold'em - like life itself - has its defining moment. It's the flop. When you see the flop, you're looking at 71 percent of your hand, and the cost is only a single round of betting.”
Lou Krieger
”Poker is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find outside an advertising agency.”
Raymond Chandler
”You have it in your power to turn a bad-beat around simply by realizing this simple truth: The more bad beats you encounter, the luckier you are. It's a sign that you are playing against opponents who continually take the worst of it, and if you can't beat someone who always takes the worst of it, you can't beat anyone.”
Lou Krieger
”Industry executives and analysts often mistakenly talk about strategy as if it were some kind of chess match. But in chess, you have just two opponents, each with identical resources, and with luck playing a minimal role. The real world is much more like a poker game, with multiple players trying to make the best of whatever hand fortune has dealt them. In our industry, Bill Gates owns the table until someone proves otherwise.”
David Moschella
”Most of the money you'll win at poker comes not from the brilliance of your own play, but from the ineptitude of your opponents.”
Lou Krieger
”I've often thought, if I got really hungry for a good milk shake, how much would I pay for one? People will pay a hundred dollars for a bottle of wine; to me that's not worth it. But I'm not going to say it is foolish or wrong to spend that kind of money, if that's what you want. So if a guy wants to bet twenty or thirty thousand dollars in a poker game, that is his privilege.”
Jack Binion
”Your best chance to get a Royal Flush in a casino is in the bathroom.”
VP Pappy
”There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker. The upper class knows very little about it. Now and then you find ambassadors who have sort of a general knowledge of the game, but the ignorance of the people is fearful. Why, I have known clergymen, good men, kind-hearted, liberal, sincere, and all that, who did not know the meaning of a flush. It is enough to make one ashamed of the species.”
Mark Twain
”The commonest mistake in history is underestimating your opponent; it happens at the poker table all the time.“
David Shoup
“I could think of worse ways of going than at the poker table.”
Al Alvarez
“I think one of the interesting things about poker is that once you let your ego in, you're done for.”
Al Alvarez
“It's going to finish when I fold my hand and go up to the big poker game in the sky.”
Al Alvarez
“Yes, I think poker really isn't gambling”
Al Alvarez
“Last year people won more than one billion dollars playing poker. And casinos made twenty-seven billion just by being around those people”
Samantha Bee
“The best part about poker is there's no down side”
Samantha Bee
“What I know about poker, you can fit into a thimble with room left over, but I'm learning”
Wilford Brimley
“No, that's poker. To win, you've gotta get damned lucky”
Wilford Brimley
“If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability”
Vannevar Bush
“As for poker, I've stayed away from that, even though when I was in Vegas for Ocean's Eleven, I would get accosted by these guys begging me to play. They just want to take my money. They see me, think "actor" and see some easy money”
Matt Damon
“Air power is like poker. A second-best hand is like none at all - it will cost you dough and win you nothing”
George Kenney
“Abruptly the poker of memory stirs the ashes of recollection and uncovers a forgotten ember, still smoldering down there, still hot, still glowing, still red as red”
William Manchester
“If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you”
Paul Newman
“Being able to pit your wits against literally hundreds of other people is really exciting and ultimately the biggest single challenge for a poker player”
Tim Page
“Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he's losing; nobody wants you to quit when you're ahead”
Jackie Robinson
“I've been playing Texas Hold 'em and other forms of poker since I was about 12”
Richard Roeper
“You're not allowed to give yourself a nickname. This holds true in life as well as in poker.”
Richard Roeper
“Living in the past is a Jethro Tull album, not a smart poker strategy”
Richard Roeper
“Meanwhile, there's more poker than soft porn on cable TV these days - and the broadcast networks are getting in on the game as well”
Richard Roeper
“And there's the World Series of Poker, known as the last American Gold Rush. In the 2005 tourney, more than 5,600 players competed for the top prize of $7.5 million”
Richard Roeper
“But when you're playing poker, you don't know the answer to that until after the cards are laid down, and then it's too late”
Fred Thompson
“I'm absolutely gonna win it, because I'm ruthless. I sit at the poker table and my job is to destroy people”
James Woods
"Poker is alot like sex, everone thinks they are the best, but most don't have a clue what they are doing!"
Dutch Boy'd
"These two have no idea what they're about to walk into. Down here to have a good time, they figure, Why not give poker a try? After all, how different can it be from the home games they've played their whole lives? Luck. All the luck in the world isn't gonna change things for these guys. They're simply overmatched.”
Mike from Rounders
"Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand. "
Cool Hand Luke, 1967
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits"
Anonymous
"I never go looking for a sucker. I look for a Champion and make a sucker of of him."
"Amrillo" Slim Preston
"Really Bad Players Joining Daily. Come Win Some of Their Money."
"Superior Poker"
"It is better to make people think you are a bad poker player, then to play and remove all doubt. Don't play to impress, play to win."
Michael Gersitz
"Don't get mad that you lost, get mad because you didn't win."
Michael Gersitz
“When we play, we must realize, before anything else, that we are out to make money.”
David Sklansky
"Poker may be a branch of psychological warfare, an art form or indeed a way of life – but it is also merely a game, in which money is simply the means of keeping score."
Anthony Holden, Big Deal
"Poker reveals to the frank observer something else of import—it will teach him about his own nature. Many bad players do not improve because the cannot bear self-knowledge."
David Mamet
"You cannot survive without that intangible quality we call heart. The mark of a top player is not how much he wins when he is winning but how he handles his losses. If you win for thirty days in a row, that makes no difference if on the thirty-first you have a bad night, go crazy, and throw it all away."
Bobby Baldwin
"Limit poker is a science, but no-limit is an art. In limit, you are shooting at a target. In no-limit, the target comes alive and shoots back at you."
Jack Strauss
“The strong point in poker is never to lose your temper, either with those you are playing with or, more particularly, with the cards. There is no sympathy in poker. Always keep cool. If you lose your head you will lose all your chips.”
William J. Florence, From The Gentleman’s Handbook on Poker
“The real things to know is that folks will stand to lose more than they will to win. That’s the most important percentage there is. I mean, if they lose, they’re willin’ to lose everything. If they win, they’re usually satisfied to win enough to pay for dinner and a show. The best gamblers know that.”
Pug Pearson
“The cardinal sin in poker, worse than playing did cards, worse even than figuring your odds correctly, is becoming emotionally involved.”
Katy Lederer, A Girlhood Among Gamblers
“It never hurts for potential opponents to think you’re more than a little stupid and can hardly count all the money in your hip pocket, much less hold on to it..”
Amarillo Slim
I've highlighted some of my favourites..
”Most of the money you'll win at poker comes not from the brilliance of your own play, but from the ineptitude of your opponents.”
Lou Krieger
”There's opportunity in poker.... If Horace Greeley were alive today, his advice wouldn't be "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." Instead, he'd point to that deck of cards on table and say, "Shuffle up and deal.”
Lou Krieger
The game exemplifies the worst aspects of capitalism that have made our country so great."
Walter Matthau
"Nobody is always a winner, and anybody who says he is, is either a liar or doesn't play poker."
Amarillo Slim
"The most difficult aspects of playing poker professionally are coping emotionally with the losses and coping with the recurring idea that you're not doing anything worthwhile."
Mike Caro
"The guy who invented poker was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius."
Big Julie
"Whether he likes it or not, a man's character is stripped bare at the poker table; if the other players read him better than he does, he has only himself to blame. Unless he is both able and prepared to see himself as others do, flaws and all, he will be a loser in cards, as in life."
Anthony Holden
”Cards are war, in disguise of a sport."
Charles Lamb, "Essays of Elia" (1832)
"You call...gonna be all over, baby." during the 1998 World Series of Poker. Down to the final 2 players, he said this to his opponent while he held the best possible hand.
Scotty Nguyen
"Remember this: The house doesn't beat the player. It just gives him the opportunity to beat himself."
Nicholas (Nick the Greek) Dandalos
"A racehorse is an animal that can take several thousand people for a ride at the same time."
Author Unknown
"Luck never gives; it only lends."
wedish Proverb
"When I played pool I was like a good psychiatrist. I cured 'em of all their daydreams and delusions."
Minnesota Fats
"There is a very easy way to return from a casino with a small fortune: go there with a large one."
Jack Yelton
"Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing from something."
Wilson Mizner
"The best throw of the dice is to throw them away
English Proverb
"Gambling is the son of avarice and the father of despair."
French Proverb
"Never bet on baseball."
Pete Rose
"Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math."
Author Unknown
"Whether he likes it or not, a man's character is stripped bare at the poker table; if the other players read him better than he does, he has only himself to blame. Unless he is both able and prepared to see himself as others do, flaws and all, he will be a loser in cards, as in life."
Anthony Holden (from Big Deal)
"Mr. Moss, I have to let you go."
Nick "the Greek" Dandalos (after playing heads-up No Limit poker for 5 months at Binion's Horseshoe with the famous Johnny Moss
"If, after the first twenty minutes, you don't know who the sucker at the table is, it's you."
Unknown
"The game exemplifies the worst aspects of capitalism that have made our country so great."
Walter Matthau
"The guy who invented poker was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius."
Big Julie
"Your first duty is to the Game; then come Mother, God, and Country."
Motto at the National Press Club, Washington D.C.
"Is it a reasonable thing, I ask you, for a grown man to run about and hit a ball? Poker's the only game fit for a grown man. Then, your hand is against every man's, and every man's is against yours. Teamwork? Who ever made a fortune by teamwork? There's only one way to make a fortune, and that's to down the fellow who's up against you."
Somerset Maugham from Cosmopolitans
"Dear Lord, help me to break even. I need the money."
Unknown Loser's Prayer
"I've often thought, if I got really hungry for a good milk shake, how much would I pay for one? People will pay a hundred dollars for a bottle of wine; to me that's not worth it. But I'm not going to say it is foolish or wrong to spend that kind of money, if that's what you want. So if a guy wants to bet twenty or thirty thousand dollars in a poker game, that is his privilege."
Jack Binion
"Aces are larger than life and greater than mountains."
Mike Caro
"There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker. The upper class knows very little about it. Now and then you find ambassadors who have sort of a general knowledge of the game, but the ignorance of the people is fearful. Why, I have known clergymen, good men, kind-hearted, liberal, sincere, and all that, who did not know the meaning of a "flush". It is enough to make one ashamed of the species."
Mark Twain
"In a game of poker, I can put the players' souls in my pocket."
Beausourire, Haitian Poker Player
"The commonest mistake in history is underestimating your opponent; happens at the poker table all the time."
General David Shoup
"These two have no idea what they're about to walk into. Down here to have a good time, they figure, Why not give poker a try? After all, how different can it be from the home games they've played their whole lives? Luck. All the luck in the world isn't gonna change things for these guys. They're simply overmatched. We're (the pros at the table) not playing together, but we're not playing against each other, either. It's like the Nature Channel. You don't see piranhas eating each other, do you?"
Mike from Rounders
"Patience. And shuffle the cards."
Cervantes, Don Quioxte
"This was the first time he had seriously confronted what he was doing, and the force of that awareness came very abruptly - with a surging of his pulse and a frantic pounding in his head. He was about to gamble his life on that table, and the insanity of that risk filled him with a kind of awe."
Paul Auster, "The Music of Chance" (1990)
"Well, tomorrow's another day."
John Hennigan, high-stakes ring game player and 4th Place finisher in the opening World Poker Tour tournament
"I must complain the cards are ill shuffled till I have a good hand."
Jonathan Swift, "Thoughts on Various Subjects" (1728)
"How long does it take to learn poker, Dad?" "All your life, son."
David Spanier, "Total Poker" (1977)
"I've lost money so fast in these clubs it's left me reeling. I've read every poker book ever written, but the only way to get better at the game is to go out and play with people who are really good. The problem is, you stand to lose a lot of money doing it."
Matt Damon, who was quickly eliminated from the $10,000 main event at the WSOP in 1998.
"He said, "Son, I've made a life out of readin' people's faces, and knowin' what their cards were by the way they held their eyes."
Kenny Rogers, "The Gambler"
POKER, A game said to be played with cards for some purpose to this lexicographer unknown."
Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" (1906)
"It's hard work. Gambling. Playing poker. Don't let anyone tell you different. Think about what it's like sitting at a poker table with people whose only goal is to cut your throat, take your money, and leave you out back talking to yourself about what went wrong inside. That probably sounds harsh. But that's the way it is at the poker table. If you don't believe me, then you're the lamb that's going off to the slaughter."
Stu Unger, three-time WSOP Champion
"The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent."
David Mamet, playwright. "Things I Have Learned Playing Poker on the Hill," in Writing in Restaurants (1986)
"Poker is the game closest to the western conception of life, where life and thought are recognized as intimately combined, where free will prevails over philosophies of fate or of chance, where men are considered moral agents and where - at least in the short run - the important thing is not what happens but what people think happens."
John Luckacs, "Poker and the American Character" (1963)
"Industry executives and analysts often mistakenly talk about strategy as if it were some kind of chess match. But in chess, you have just two opponents, each with identical resources, and with luck playing a minimal role. The real world is much more like a poker game, with multiple players trying to make the best of whatever hand fortune has dealt them. In our industry, Bill Gates owns the table until someone proves otherwise."
David Moschella, "Computerworld"
"See, in my world - the world of high-stakes gin and poker - we play for cold, hard cash. It's all business, pure and simple. Anyone who thinks cardplaying is a 'game' - I'll show you a loser. Money... M-O-N-E-Y. That's how you measure success. One dollar at a time. One chip at a time. That's how you keep score."
Stu Unger
"I've always had confidence, but I never let my ego get to the point that I think I'm the superstar, because I know that ego has destroyed many a poker career."
Jim Boyd, modern-day road gambler
"I think that we are all in the right place at the right time almost every day. It's the people who are prepared to be lucky who can take advantage of being there. How do these people position themselves to be lucky? It was Goethe who said, 'Anytime that you take the first step toward trying to achieve something in life, all manner of good things will mysteriously fall into your path to help speed you along your way.' Amen to that!"
Phil Hellmuth, 1989 WSOP Champion
"Cards are war, in disguise of a sport."
Charles Lamb, "Essays of Elia" (1832)
"It's not enough to succeed. Others must fail."
Gore Vidal
"Perception is reality."
Immanuel Kant
"Poker is a microcosm of all we admire and disdain about capitalism and democracy. It can be rough-hewn or polished, warm or cold, charitable and caring, or hard and impersonal, fickle and elusive, but ultimately it is fair, and right, and just."
Lou Krieger
“Whether he likes it or not, a man’s character is stripped at the poker table; if the other players read him better than he does, he has only himself to blame. Unless he is both able and prepared to see himself as others do, flaws and all, he will be a loser in cards, as in life.”
Anthony Holden
”With spots quadrangular of diamond form, Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife, And spades, the emblems of untimely graves.”
William Cowper
”The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent. “
David Mamet
”Poker is a microcosm of all we admire and disdain about capitalism and democracy. It can be rough-hewn or polished, warm or cold, charitable and caring, or hard and impersonal, fickle and elusive, but ultimately it is fair, and right, and just.”
Lou Krieger
”Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he's losing; nobody wants you to quit when you're ahead.”
Jackie Robinson
”God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e., everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”
Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens, 1991
”Hold'em - like life itself - has its defining moment. It's the flop. When you see the flop, you're looking at 71 percent of your hand, and the cost is only a single round of betting.”
Lou Krieger
”Poker is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find outside an advertising agency.”
Raymond Chandler
”You have it in your power to turn a bad-beat around simply by realizing this simple truth: The more bad beats you encounter, the luckier you are. It's a sign that you are playing against opponents who continually take the worst of it, and if you can't beat someone who always takes the worst of it, you can't beat anyone.”
Lou Krieger
”Industry executives and analysts often mistakenly talk about strategy as if it were some kind of chess match. But in chess, you have just two opponents, each with identical resources, and with luck playing a minimal role. The real world is much more like a poker game, with multiple players trying to make the best of whatever hand fortune has dealt them. In our industry, Bill Gates owns the table until someone proves otherwise.”
David Moschella
”Most of the money you'll win at poker comes not from the brilliance of your own play, but from the ineptitude of your opponents.”
Lou Krieger
”I've often thought, if I got really hungry for a good milk shake, how much would I pay for one? People will pay a hundred dollars for a bottle of wine; to me that's not worth it. But I'm not going to say it is foolish or wrong to spend that kind of money, if that's what you want. So if a guy wants to bet twenty or thirty thousand dollars in a poker game, that is his privilege.”
Jack Binion
”Your best chance to get a Royal Flush in a casino is in the bathroom.”
VP Pappy
”There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker. The upper class knows very little about it. Now and then you find ambassadors who have sort of a general knowledge of the game, but the ignorance of the people is fearful. Why, I have known clergymen, good men, kind-hearted, liberal, sincere, and all that, who did not know the meaning of a flush. It is enough to make one ashamed of the species.”
Mark Twain
”The commonest mistake in history is underestimating your opponent; it happens at the poker table all the time.“
David Shoup
“I could think of worse ways of going than at the poker table.”
Al Alvarez
“I think one of the interesting things about poker is that once you let your ego in, you're done for.”
Al Alvarez
“It's going to finish when I fold my hand and go up to the big poker game in the sky.”
Al Alvarez
“Yes, I think poker really isn't gambling”
Al Alvarez
“Last year people won more than one billion dollars playing poker. And casinos made twenty-seven billion just by being around those people”
Samantha Bee
“The best part about poker is there's no down side”
Samantha Bee
“What I know about poker, you can fit into a thimble with room left over, but I'm learning”
Wilford Brimley
“No, that's poker. To win, you've gotta get damned lucky”
Wilford Brimley
“If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability”
Vannevar Bush
“As for poker, I've stayed away from that, even though when I was in Vegas for Ocean's Eleven, I would get accosted by these guys begging me to play. They just want to take my money. They see me, think "actor" and see some easy money”
Matt Damon
“Air power is like poker. A second-best hand is like none at all - it will cost you dough and win you nothing”
George Kenney
“Abruptly the poker of memory stirs the ashes of recollection and uncovers a forgotten ember, still smoldering down there, still hot, still glowing, still red as red”
William Manchester
“If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you”
Paul Newman
“Being able to pit your wits against literally hundreds of other people is really exciting and ultimately the biggest single challenge for a poker player”
Tim Page
“Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he's losing; nobody wants you to quit when you're ahead”
Jackie Robinson
“I've been playing Texas Hold 'em and other forms of poker since I was about 12”
Richard Roeper
“You're not allowed to give yourself a nickname. This holds true in life as well as in poker.”
Richard Roeper
“Living in the past is a Jethro Tull album, not a smart poker strategy”
Richard Roeper
“Meanwhile, there's more poker than soft porn on cable TV these days - and the broadcast networks are getting in on the game as well”
Richard Roeper
“And there's the World Series of Poker, known as the last American Gold Rush. In the 2005 tourney, more than 5,600 players competed for the top prize of $7.5 million”
Richard Roeper
“But when you're playing poker, you don't know the answer to that until after the cards are laid down, and then it's too late”
Fred Thompson
“I'm absolutely gonna win it, because I'm ruthless. I sit at the poker table and my job is to destroy people”
James Woods
"Poker is alot like sex, everone thinks they are the best, but most don't have a clue what they are doing!"
Dutch Boy'd
"These two have no idea what they're about to walk into. Down here to have a good time, they figure, Why not give poker a try? After all, how different can it be from the home games they've played their whole lives? Luck. All the luck in the world isn't gonna change things for these guys. They're simply overmatched.”
Mike from Rounders
"Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand. "
Cool Hand Luke, 1967
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits"
Anonymous
"I never go looking for a sucker. I look for a Champion and make a sucker of of him."
"Amrillo" Slim Preston
"Really Bad Players Joining Daily. Come Win Some of Their Money."
"Superior Poker"
"It is better to make people think you are a bad poker player, then to play and remove all doubt. Don't play to impress, play to win."
Michael Gersitz
"Don't get mad that you lost, get mad because you didn't win."
Michael Gersitz
“When we play, we must realize, before anything else, that we are out to make money.”
David Sklansky
"Poker may be a branch of psychological warfare, an art form or indeed a way of life – but it is also merely a game, in which money is simply the means of keeping score."
Anthony Holden, Big Deal
"Poker reveals to the frank observer something else of import—it will teach him about his own nature. Many bad players do not improve because the cannot bear self-knowledge."
David Mamet
"You cannot survive without that intangible quality we call heart. The mark of a top player is not how much he wins when he is winning but how he handles his losses. If you win for thirty days in a row, that makes no difference if on the thirty-first you have a bad night, go crazy, and throw it all away."
Bobby Baldwin
"Limit poker is a science, but no-limit is an art. In limit, you are shooting at a target. In no-limit, the target comes alive and shoots back at you."
Jack Strauss
“The strong point in poker is never to lose your temper, either with those you are playing with or, more particularly, with the cards. There is no sympathy in poker. Always keep cool. If you lose your head you will lose all your chips.”
William J. Florence, From The Gentleman’s Handbook on Poker
“The real things to know is that folks will stand to lose more than they will to win. That’s the most important percentage there is. I mean, if they lose, they’re willin’ to lose everything. If they win, they’re usually satisfied to win enough to pay for dinner and a show. The best gamblers know that.”
Pug Pearson
“The cardinal sin in poker, worse than playing did cards, worse even than figuring your odds correctly, is becoming emotionally involved.”
Katy Lederer, A Girlhood Among Gamblers
“It never hurts for potential opponents to think you’re more than a little stupid and can hardly count all the money in your hip pocket, much less hold on to it..”
Amarillo Slim
