The guy who invented poker was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius.
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.
W. Somerset Maugham
Your best chance to get a Royal Flush in a casino is in the bathroom.
V.P. 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
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
If, after the first twenty minutes, you don’t know who the sucker at the table is, it’s you.
“How long does it take to learn poker, Dad?”
“All your life, son.”
Michael Pertwee
Poker: the art of civilized bushwhacking.
Nick Dandalos
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
Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.
Charles Lamb
I believe in poker the way I believe in the American Dream. Poker is good for you. It enriches the soul, sharpens the intellect, heals the spirit, and – when played well, nourishes the wallet.
Lou Krieger
Poker’s a day to learn and a lifetime to master.
Robert Williamson III
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
Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.
Seven Wright
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
Poker, n. A game said to be played with cards for some purpose to this lexicographer unknown.
Ambrose Bierce
You will show your poker greatness by the hands you fold, not the hands you play. Dan Reed
Poker is… a fascinating, wonderful, intricate adventure on the high seas of human nature.
David A. Daniel
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
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
[Poker] exemplifies the worst aspects of capitalism that have made our country so great.
Walter Matthau
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 to cards and games what jazz is to music. It’s this great American thing, born and bred here. We dig it because everybody can play.
Steve Lipscomb
You can shear a sheep many times, but you can skin it only once.
Amarillo Slim
In a game of poker, I can put the players’ souls in my pocket.
Beausourire
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
I must complain the cards are ill shuffled till I have a good hand.
Jonathan Swift
[Poker is] as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find outside an advertising agency.
Raymond Chandler
Think of how stupid the average poker player is. By definition, half of them are dumber than that.
Famous last words before he became a eunuch; ‘I’d bet my bollocks on this hand.’
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
No river, no fish.
The one who bets the most wins. Cards just break ties.
You can’t let it get you down when somebody knocks you out of a tournament playing a hand they shouldn’t have played. Without these types of players, nobody would win any amount of money, so sometimes you just have to take your medicine.
T J Cloutier
Concentrate. Don’t do anything stupid. Catch some cards.
I guess if there weren’t luck involved, I’d win every time.
Phil Hellmuth
Welcome to kicker school!
The all-in play works everytime but once.
Son, when a man bets you that the jack of spades will rise out of the dwck and squirt water in your ear, son don’t take that bet, for as sure as eggs is eggs, you’ll end up with a wet ear.
Fold and live to fold again.
I dont play any two suited cards. I play any two non suited cards. That way I am drawing at two different flushes.
Sometimes doing the right thing loses you money and the wrong thing gains you money. The trick is figuring the right time to do the wrong thing and the wrong time to do the right thing.
Poker is 100% skill and 50% luck.
Phil Hellmuth
Poker is like life, most people don’t learn from their mistakes, they only recognize them.
C Arel
You get your chips your way, I’ll get my chips mine.
Phil Ivey to Howard Lederer
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 the 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
Seldom do the lambs slaughter the butcher.
Amarillo Slim
They called it Poker because the word ‘Fuck!’ was taken.
If you can’t quit the best hand, you can’t play.
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
No Limit Hold’em. Hours of boredom followed by moments of sheer terror.
Tom McEvoy
After a particularly bad beat…
Player 1 That was a terrible call.
Player 2 It’s called gambling.
Player 1 No, it’s called really sucking at life, especially poker, and trying to throw your money away because your life is useless and you have been pondering suicide for the last week, but getting lucky enough to keep it.
Don’t look at when a player sucks out on you with a trash hand as a loss. Think of it as an investment that will be returned with interest.
Just play every hand, you can’t miss them all.
Sammy Farha
If only I’d read, ‘Internet Poker For Dummies.’ ‘Til now, I never thought I qualified.
Two cowboys at a table… One suddenly plunges a dagger through the hand of the other player, pinning the hand to the table. Says to his wounded opponent, ‘Sir, if that is not an ace of spades hidden beneath your hand, then I owe you an apology.’
Old card players never die, they just shuffle away.
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
My luck is so bad, if it were raining pussy I’d get hit in the head with a dick.
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
Don’t challenge strong players, challenge weak ones. That’s what they’re there for.
John Vorhaus
Never educate a stupid poker player.
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