quotations about poker
Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.
JACK LONDON
attributed, Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior
What's true of the poker game is true of life. Most people are suckers and don't realise it.
MICHAEL FAUST
Crapitalism
As batting practice is not baseball, reading about poker, or playing against computerized opponents -- while undeniably helpful -- is not the same as playing for real money, against live opponents, in public games.
LOU KRIEGER
Hold'em Excellence
The cardinal sin in poker, worse than playing bad cards, worse even than figuring your odds correctly, is becoming emotionally involved.
KATY LEDERER
A Girlhood Among Gamblers
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
Writing in Restaurants
The issue with poker is that poker is somewhat of a stagnant game. The rules don't change very often and if they do they're just little tweaks.
JONATHAN LITTLE
"Jonathan Little on GPL, Online Poker, & PokerCoaching", Poker Update, April 21, 2016
Poker asks, nay, commands all its adherents to cut the bullshit and embrace reality. It will toy with the deluded -- those who have everything figured out -- with the playful cruelty of a cat toying with a mouse. Bring all of your convictions and credentials, your anger and insecurities to the poker table and the Poker Gods will tease you and mock you and fill you with false hopes and send you to the ATM a few times before releasing you, broke and steaming, at 5am.
KATYA G. COHEN
The American Spellbound
Poker is a sport. It requires endurance and physical control as well as a good deal of mental aptitude and skill. Does that mean the best player always wins? No. But that doesn't happen in other sports either. Otherwise, why play?
TOBY DURANT
"Poker is a Sport", Real Sport, April 11, 2016
Poker is a fighting game, a game in which each player tries to get the better of every other player and does so by fair means or foul so long as he obeys the rules of the game. He may bluff or lie about his own strength, the object of the game being either to frighten the other players into believing that he has greater strength or else to prove it.
KARL MENNINGER
Love Against Hate
The poker players who make the most money are not the ones who understand odds better than the others or who read people better than the others, they are the ones who manage their bankrolls better than the others. The best poker players would never sit down on any table, anywhere with more than 10% of their total poker bankroll at risk. They limit their exposure by choosing which table to sit at.
JAKE HAYMAN
"Why Great Philanthropists Make Great Poker Players (And Vice Versa)", Forbes, April 7, 2016
Everyone knows that poker is a blend of skill and luck, but just how much of each ingredient is ladled into the gumbo is subject to some debate. Pros know that poker is really a long-term game. What happens today, or even this week, is too small a measure of one's skill to be meaningful. If a rank amateur were to sit down with an expert and play one hand of poker, the result would be almost all a matter of luck. If he were to play ten hands, it would still be mostly a matter of luck. If they played for hours or even played all day, short-term luck would still be strong enough to skew any results. But if the amateur and the expert were to play every day for a few months, or perhaps even a year, the distribution of cards to each player would begin to grow close to a theoretically normal distribution. In other words, once the cards come close to evening out, as they figure to in the long run, then the pro will have won much more money on his good hands and lost far less on his weak ones than his amateur opponent.
LOU KRIEGER & SHEREE BYKOFSKY
Secrets the Pros Won't Tell You About Winning Hold'em Poker
If a player is looking to have you fund their poker career, you need to look at why they are broke.
JAMES GUILL
"6 Considerations for Investing in Poker Players", Poker Update, April 27, 2016
The seductive game of poker is one that I do not understand. I do not care to understand it, because it cannot be played without the putting up of a good deal of the coin of the realm, and although I have nothing to say against betting, my own theory of conduct in the matter is this, that I want no man's money which I do not earn, and I do not want any man to get my money unless he earns it.
ROBERT BARR
"The Society for the Reformation of Poker Players"
Only losers and amateurs blame the cards. After all, cards don't care; they don't take sides, and they have no memory. They are blind justice holding her scales, and in the long run they'll tip evenly for the novice and the skilled alike.
LOU KRIEGER
More Hold'em Excellence
To ask whether poker is a game of chance or a game of skill is to assume that it is either-or. Yet the essential characteristic of poker is precisely that it is both. Poker is a game that requires a very particular set of skills related to the art of navigating in an environment that is ultimately governed by chance. Once it is recognized that there is an intricate interrelation between skill and chance in poker, and that the game does not fit unambiguously into either category ... it also becomes evident that poker does not really fit into the usual classification schemes of law, politics, morals, and public health.
OLE BJERG
Poker: The Parody of Capitalism
Life may deal you a bad hand or take away a good hand you were already dealt. The way you play the hand is how your life is defined. Just like in poker you can end up winning no matter how bad the cards are you have.
BENJAMIN BAYANI
The Nation
Because a computer does not experience emotions, it cannot play poker any more than a motorcycle can run a marathon.
STEVEN LUBET
"Here's betting a computer can't play poker", Chicago Tribune, April 6, 2016
Poker is game that requires the blurring of fact and fiction. After all, every single hand of poker that has ever been played has featured a combination of the known and unknown, with the distinction between the two purposely complicated by the efforts of everyone involved to hide or misrepresent details regarding what is and what is not.
MARTIN HARRIS
"Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America's Favorite Card Game", Poker News, May 3, 2016
They're holding flushes of face cards, and I think we're the pot.
HOWARD TAYLOR
Emperor Pius Dei
The motives of the professional poker player are not those of the typical Thursday-night player; those of the compulsive gambler are not those of the conservative family man seeking a night out with the boys. That, you may say, may well be, but these are differences of degree; after all, among adults poker is always played for money, and making money--or at least not losing it--is the objective of everyone who plays poker.
PETER O. STEINER
Thursday-Night Poker: How to Understand, Enjoy--and Win