POKER QUOTES

You gotta know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em, know when to walk away,know when to run. You never count your money when you’re sittin at the table, there’ll be time enuff for countin’ when the dealin’s done.”
-Kenny Rodgers, The Gambler

When we play, we must realize, before anything else, that we are out to make money.
–David Sklanzky

If, after the first twenty minutes, you don’t know who the sucker at the table is, it’s you.
-David Levien and Brian Koppelman, Rounders

You cannot survive without that intangible quality we call heart. The mark of a top player is not how much he wins when he is winning but how he handles his losses. If you win for thirty days in a row, that makes no difference if on the thirty-first you have a bad night, go crazy, and throw it all away
-Bobby Baldwin on Poker



In the absence of any mathematical explanation, one thing is for certain; if you engage in games of chance long enough, the experience is bound to affect the way you see God. Successfully draw to an inside straight three hands in a row, and you’ve got to be blessed. But if you’re the person drawn out on, the one whose trip aces just got snapped for the third time, you will go home feeling cursed.
-From Poker Nation by Andy Bellin

The strong point in poker is never to lose your temper, either with those you are playing with or, more particularly, with the cards. There is no sympathy in poker. Always keep cool. If you lose your head you will lose all your chips.
-From The Gentleman’s Handbook on Poker by William J. Florence
The real things to know is that folks will stand to lose more than they will to win. That’s the most important percentage there is. I mean, if they lose, they’re willin’ to lose everything. If they win, they’re usually satisfied to win enough to pay for dinner and a show. The best gamblers know that
-Pug Pearson on Poker
In a game of poker, I can put the players’ souls in my pocket.
-Beausourire
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

You can shear a sheep many times, but you can skin him only once.
–Amarillo Slim
Poker is… a fascinating, wonderful, intricate adventure on the high seas of human nature.
-David A. Daniel

It’s immoral to let a sucker keep his money.
-Bill Jones

See, in my world – the world of high-stakes gin and poker – we play for cold, hard cash. It’s all business, pure and simple. Anyone who thinks cardplaying is a ‘game’ – I’ll show you a loser. Money… M-O-N-E-Y. That’s how you measure success. One dollar at a time. One chip at a time. That’s how you keep score.
-Stu Unger



If the luck was not influencing the poker I always would win.
-Phil Hellmuth

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
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

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

“How long does it take to learn poker, Dad?”
“All your life, son.”
-Michael Pertwee
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

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

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

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
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

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

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
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
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

"There is a very easy way to return from a casino with a small fortune: go there with a large one."
-Jack Yelton
"Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing from something."
-Wilson Mizner