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POKER FACTS: HOW TO PLAY / WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT YOU # 1 (#2 / #3)

To be a good poker player, a man must possess certain natural gifts – he must be a good judge of character and of other peoples’ dispositions, and, above all, he must have patience: without patience he will never excel. He must know when to be cautious and when daring, for whereas, in most other games of skill, it is a question of one man’s science against another’s, in poker it is one man’s nature against another’s.

The really good poker-player can usually be told at a glance. The only way to tell whether he is winning or losing is to count his chips: his manner will not show it. His face is almost devoid of expression, so as not to suggest whether he has a good or a poor hand. His mind is concentrated on the game – he watches and takes stock of all the other players, notes their play, and before very long will arrive at a pretty correct estimate of what each of his opponents is likely to do under certain given circumstances. He never gets really excited, though he may feign to be, for the purpose of deceiving one of the other players, usually a somewhat inexperienced one.

Richard Guerndale The Poker Book (1889)

No great lover of mankind ever made a good Poker-player yet.

Richard Guerndale The Poker Book (1889)

‘Businessmen play a mixed game of skill and chance, the average results of which to the players are not known by those who take a hand’

John Maynard Keynes, British economist

‘What scientists since Aristotle have tried and failed to do has all the time been done by the gamecocks of mankind, and that is to design a “controlled experiment” of human action, a kind of laboratory of man’s experience. Like the law of gravity and all great thoughts, it is quite simple and has always been in plain view. The laboratory is the game, and the laboratory of capitalism is poker.’

John Macdonald, Strategy in Poker, Business & War (1950)

The mark of good poker playing is deception. The poker hand must at all times be concealed behind the mask of inconsistency.

John Macdonald, Strategy in Poker, Business & War (1950)

Every American, poker player or not, knows what it is to have an ace in the hole (or up his sleeve) or to be in the chips, to bluff or to call a bluff, stand pat, four flush, put his cards on the table, have a showdown, or otherwise get into a situation where the chips are down; and finally to meet the end of life itself by cashing in his chips.

John Macdonald, Strategy in Poker, Business & War (1950)

Joe Crow’s rules for Poker and for Life:

Never act in anger

Play your strong hands

Always be polite

When you go fishing, beware of the fish.

Let other people have their problems.

Don’t chase your opponents, let them chase you.

Vary your play.

When your mind is elsewhere, go there.

Play to win, or don’t play.

If you don’t know the rules, don’t play.

Stay sober.

Quit when you’ve got the worst of it.

Never bet against yourself.

If you are bored, go home.

Don’t try to make people like you.

Don’t try to bluff a maniac.

When you’re on a roll, keep rolling.

If you make one mistake, focus. If you make two mistakes, go home.

If someone else makes a mistake, tell them it wasn’t their fault.

Play to behaviour, not personalities.

Remember that personalities are determined, not defined, by behaviour.

Never play uninvited.

The guy sitting in your seat is the one to watch out for.

If you are not in control of the game, the game controls you.

Fools win too.

From Bad Beat, by Pete Hautman (1998)

The mark of poker’s greatness is not that some people play it very well, but that so many play it very badly.

Oxford dictionary of card games (1992)

Poker began in New Orleans in the 1820s. By 1870 the basis of modern poker had evolved.

Oxford dictionary of card games (1992)

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