Quotes About Poker

Poker players live in a world where that risk is made explicit. They can get comfortable with uncertainty because they put it up front in their decisions. Ignoring the risk and uncertainty in every decision might make us feel better in the short run, but the cost to the quality of our decision-making can be immense. If we can find ways to become more comfortable with uncertainty, we can see the world more accurately and be better for it.

Pete Carroll was a victim of our tendency to equate the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome. Poker players have a word for this: "resulting." When I started playing poker, more experienced players warned me about the dangers of resulting, cautioning me to resist the temptation to change my strategy just because a few hands didn't turn out well in the short run.

And pros are just better at that choice, playing a mere 15% to 25% of the two-card starting combinations they are dealt in Texas Hold'em. Compare that to an amateur, who will stick with their starting cards over half the time.

What good poker players and good decision-makers have in common is their comfort with the world being an uncertain and unpredictable place. They understand that they can almost never know exactly how something will turn out. They embrace that uncertainty and, instead of focusing on being sure, they try to figure out how unsure they are, making their best guess at the chances that different outcomes will occur.

By treating decisions as bets, poker players explicitly recognize that they are deciding on alternative futures, each with benefits and risks. They also recognize there are no simple answers. Some things are unknown or unknowable.

Deciding which hands are worth playing and which hands are not is the first and most consequential choice a player makes. And pros are just better at that choice, playing a mere 15% to 25% of the two-card starting combinations they are dealt in Texas Hold'em. Compare that to an amateur, who will stick with their starting cards over half the time. In the battle of whether to hold 'em or fold 'em, amateurs usually hold 'em. Professionals usually fold 'em.

might have been absurd, but I was making the point that a necessary part of succeeding in poker is to fold some hands that might have won. To be good at the game you just have to learn to live with that. Playing every hand you are dealt is an easy and fast way to go broke since you would be playing too many hands that aren't profitable in the long run.

So in loose multi-way action games, the math says play tight. In tight games, where the pots are tiny, the math says play loose.

Over time, those world-class poker players taught me to understand what a bet really is: a decision about an uncertain future.

In order to maximize your profits at the poker table, your goal should be to play completely opposite of the way other players at the table perceive you. Simply put, if opponents label you a conservative player who never bluffs and only plays premium hands, you'll do better playing aggressively and bluffing frequently.

The value of small pocket pairs comes from the possibility of flopping three of kind and winning a sizable pot. To that extent, playing this type of hand is a low risk/high reward proposition.

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.

You have to play more hands than usual to be successful in tournament poker. While a conservative approach can help you squeak into the money, the only way to win is to mix it up and get involved with a wider range of starting hands.

The goal of hyper-aggressive poker is to create a wild and crazy image that will return dividends when you're eventually dealt a monster hand.

Before you even consider making a value bet, try to determine if the bet will have any value at all. Attempt to put your opponent on a hand that he'd likely call a bet with on the river. To do this, you'll have to mentally play back the details of the hand. Think about your opponent's playing tendencies.

Of course, Rockefeller's poker face concealed deep rage.

I was mad-keen on poker as a kid. It was like the snooker, pulling me into that same smokey atmosphere I loved.

It's kind of cool being at a poker table with the guys from NOFX, a guy from Bad Religion, a guy from Lagwagon, all these cool punk bands you've always dug.

The most important reason why it's dangerous to risk all your chips pre-flop is that you simply can't be certain that you are even in a coin flip situation at that time.

Playing deep-stack, no-limit hold'em is a very complex game where the most critical and difficult decisions come after the flop.

Table talk is a part of the game, and frankly, it's the part of the game that I enjoy most.

I dropped out of school to play poker, and at 21, I moved from Toronto to try my luck as a pro in Vegas. I ate the typical meat-heavy diet of most poker players in the '90s: burgers and steak, along with French fries, mash, and a bucket-load of wine, beer, and vodka. There was nothing fresh in my diet, and I felt terrible.

My mother is Turtle Mountain Chippewa, and she lived on her home reservation. My father taught there. He had just been discharged from the Air Force. He went to school on the GI Bill and got his teaching credentials. He is adventurous - he worked his way through Alaska at age seventeen and paid for his living expenses by winning at the poker table.

The pros really like all the new people playing poker because they love the dead money; but when the money wins they don't like that very much at all.