Poker quotes

Poker is generally reckoned to be America's second most popular after-dark activity. Sex is good, they say, but poker lasts longer.

-- Alfred Alvarez (2001)

It is easy to smile at an insult and pretend it's funny when the person insulting you is hosing you with money.

-- Alfred Alvarez (2001)

Serious poker is no more about gambling than rock climbing is about taking risks.

-- Alfred Alvarez (2001)

Hold'em is a game of calculated aggression: If you cards are good enough for your to call a bet, they are good enough to raise with.

-- Alfred Alvarez (2001)

Losing is like smoking. It's habit forming.

-- Puggy Pearson, 1973 WSOP winner (2001)

Fear is the basis of all mankind. In cards, you psyche 'em out, you shark 'em, you put the fear of God in 'em.

-- Puggy Pearson, 1973 WSOP winner (1975)

Everything is mental in life. The butt was made to lug the mind around.

-- Puggy Pearson, 1973 WSOP winner (1975)

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.

-- Crandall Addington, Texas oil millionaire

If you reraise a raiser, and he doesn't raise you back, you know he has kicker problems.

-- Crandall Addington, Texas oil millionaire (2001)

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 poker table until someone proves otherwise.

-- David Moschella

You have to learn what kind of hand this guy shows down, what that one's moves, watch the veins in his neck, watch his eyes, the way he sweats.

-- Johnny Moss (1975)

Hold'em is to to stud and draw what chess is to checkers.

-- Johnny Moss, 3x World Champion

Money isn't everything … unless you're playing in a rebuy tournament.

-- Anonymous

Your first duty is to the Game; then come Mother, God, and Country.

-- Anonymous, Motto at the National Press Club, Washington D.C.

When a man with money meets a man with experience, the man with experience leaves with money and the man with money leaves with experience.

-- Anonymous

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.

-- Anonymous

The commonest mistake in history is underestimating your opponent; happens at the poker table all the time.

-- General David Shoup

Put yourself in their shoes before you decide on the best way to take their shirts.

-- David Sklansky

Omaha is a game that was invented by a Sadist and is played by Masochists.

-- Shane Smith

The odds are merely a framework for play, like the lines of a tennis court.

-- David Spanier (1901)

Poker... I hardly even know her!

-- Jack Styles

I must complain the cards are ill shuffled till I have a good hand.

-- Jonathan Swift (1728)

It’s easy to be a tough competitor and still be the kind of person with whom people love to compete.

-- Chuck Thompson

If you always start with the worst hand, you never have a bad-beat story to tell.

-- Chuck Thompson

In poker, money is power.

-- Alvin Clarence "Titanic" Thomson, A legand of hustles & cons, 1892-1974 (1982)

I won my ticket on Titanic in a lucky hand of poker...a very lucky hand.

-- Jack, in the Movie Titanic

Aces are larger than life and greater than mountains.

-- Mike Caro

Sometimes you'll miss a bet, sure, but it's OK to miss a bet. Poker is an art form, of course, but sometimes you have to sacrifice art in favour of making a profit.

-- Mike Caro

The only bad luck for a good gambler is bad health. Any other setbacks are temporary aggravation.

-- Benny Binion

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

Try to decide how good your hand is at a given moment. Nothing else matters. Nothing!

-- Doyle Bunson

If you’re a competitive person and you commit yourself to something, you have no choice but to endure.

-- Vince Burgio

The next best thing to gambling and winning is gambling and losing.

-- Nick "The Greek" Dandalos

Life is too long to play bad cards.

-- Frank Di Elsi

It's unlucky to be superstitious.

-- Dave Enteles, Card Player

Is that the game where one receives five cards? And if there's two alike that's pretty good, but if there's three alike, that's much better?

-- W C Fields

A person should gamble every day, because think of how bad it would be to walk around being lucky and not know it.

-- Robert Turner

There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker. The upper class knows very little about poker. Now and then you find ambassadors who have sort of a general knowledge of poker, 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

Learning to play two pairs is worth about as much as a college education, and about as costly.

-- Mark Twain?

The two things you need to be successful in poker are, first, find the muck, and second, don’t play your own money.

-- David "Devilfish" Ulliott

Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser.

-- Stu Ungar

Marriages may come and go, but the game must go on.

-- Felix "The Odd Couple" Unger

Sir, I really like poker. Every hand has its different problems.

-- Henry Fonda, playing Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine

To master poker and make it profitable, you must first master patience and discipline, as a lack of either is a sure disaster regardless of all other talents, or lucky streaks.

-- Freddie Gasperian

I never saw a poker player’s money that I did not like.

-- Oklahoma Johnny Hale

Poker is not a game in which the meek inherit the earth.

-- David Hayano (1982)

Play like a champ. Win like a champ. Act like a champ.

-- Henderson, Frank

The winner is not the player who wins the most pots. The winner is the player who wins the most money.

-- Anthony Holden, author of Big Deal (1990)

The good news is that in every deck of fifty-two cards there are 2,598,960 possible hands. The bad news is that you are only going to be dealt one of them.

-- Anthony Holden, author of Big Deal (1990)

Whether he likes it or not, a man's character is stripped bare at the poker table; if the other poker 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 poker, as in life.

-- Anthony Holden, author of Big Deal (1990)

Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you criticize him, you will be a mile away, and you will have his shoes.

-- Chuck Humphrey

It's morally wrong to let a sucker keep money.

-- Canada Bill Jones

Cards are war, in disguise of a sport.

-- Charles Lamb (1832)

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.

-- Johnny Luckacs (1963)

Life is like a game of poker: If you don't put any in the pot, there won't be any to take out.

-- Jackie "Moms" Mabley, Dirty old lady comedian

Opportunity may knock, but it seldom nags.

-- David Mamet

The game exemplifies the worst aspects of capitalism that have made our country so great.

-- Walter Matthau

Poker is the only game for a grown man. Then, your hand is against every man's, and evern man's hand is against yours. Teamwork? Who ever made a fortune by teamwork?

-- Somerset Maugham

If you know poker, you know people; and if you know people, you got the whole dang world lined up in your sights.

-- Brett Maverick

To be a poker champion, you must have a strong bladder.

-- Jack McClelland

There is more to poker than life.

-- Tom McEvoy

Everybody blows their first money.

-- Lorne Michaels