Quotes About Strategy

Although Meade's Army of the Potomac, under the personal direction of Grant, did suffer high casualties (41 percent) during its drive to the James River, it imposed even higher casualties on Lee's army (46 percent). In

Jarrett favored "the Chicago Way." Let Obama pat Clinton on the back so he would know later where to stick the knife.

In politics, you either eat the baby or you are the baby.

you cannot operate on the sea during war unless you have command of the sea, the air above it, and the depths beneath it.

Instead of assaulting sales resistance by direct attack, he is interested in removing sales resistance.

If you represent the plumbing and heating business, you are the mortal enemy of the textile industry, because warmer homes mean lighter clothes. If you represent the printers, how can you shake hands with the radio equipment man?…

The clinician's challenge is to find a way to allow the ADD person to put on the brakes. From a biological perspective, one of the most successful strategies has been the use of medications.

Too bad. Lesson: It doesn't pay to push the other party to their absolute limit. A small extra gain is generally not worth the substantial risk the deal will break up.

Mathematically, interruptions didn't matter, because my lifetime of playing was just one long series of hands, and chopping it into sessions and playing them at various times and in various casinos should not affect my edge, nor the long-run amount I could expect to win. This principle applies in both gambling and investing.

This plan, of betting only at a level at which I was emotionally comfortable and not advancing until I was ready, enabled me to play my system with a calm and disciplined accuracy. This lesson from the blackjack tables would prove invaluable throughout my investment lifetime as the stakes grew ever larger. Eddie

For the second time, the Ten-Count System had shown moderately heavy losses mixed with "lucky" streaks of the most dazzling brilliance. I learned later that this was a characteristic of a random series of favorable bets. And I would see it again and again in real life in both the gambling and the investment worlds.

Still, the fact that blackjack could be beaten led to an upsurge in play.

Countermeasures included reshuffling the pack of cards by the time half or fewer of them had been played. This not only limits the card counter's chances to make favorable bets, but is also costly for the casino because it slows the game down, fleecing the ordinary players more slowly and reducing casino profits. If one likens a casino to a slaughterhouse for processing players, then more time spent shuffling means less efficient use of plant capacity.

dealing hands at high speed, blowing cigarette smoke at me, and engaging me in complicated conversations. Meanwhile, I was keeping track of the cards, calculating the percent advantage and my bet size, then playing out my hand using strategies that varied depending on the count. The key was to take it one step at a time, adding a new difficulty only after I became comfortable and relaxed with what I was already doing. What had seemed daunting finally became easy.

This plan, of betting only at a level at which I was emotionally comfortable and not advancing until I was ready, enabled me to play my system with a calm and disciplined accuracy. This lesson from the blackjack tables would prove invaluable throughout my investment lifetime as the stakes grew ever larger.

Facing four hundred million man-years of calculations, with a resulting railroad car full of strategy tables, enough to fill a Rolodex five miles long, I tried to simplify the problem. I

Portfolio insurance was designed to protect investors from large market declines. Ironically, the cure became the cause.

The lesson of leverage is this: Assume that the worst imaginable outcome will occur and ask whether you can tolerate it. If the answer is no, then reduce your borrowing.

I decided to begin by finding the best strategy to use when I knew which cards had already been played.

The next decision is whether or not to double down, which is to double your bet and draw exactly one card to the first two cards of a hand.

In counting cards, it's mainly the fraction remaining that matters, not the number.

People around the world today, growing cautious of war and fearful of its consequences, have turned increasingly to its moral equivalent in team sports.

The politician is ... trained in the art of inexactitude. His words tend to be blunt or rounded, because if they have a cutting edge they may later return to wound him.

are spontaneously generous if forced to make instant decisions but begin to gravitate toward more selfish strategies if given time to think.