The Quotable Poker Player

SAMPLE CONTENTS & CHAPTER HEADINGS

“The poker trail can lead you through hostile country, beautiful landscapes and miles of barren desert. The journey will last a lifetime so keep moving on until you find the next watering hole.”
Trevor Sippets, Poker: How to Play, How to Win (2005)

Bret Maverick [James Garner]: “If you're going to play poker, you'll have to develop a sense of humour. That's the whole trick, my friend.”
on Maverick: Relic of Fort Tejon (1957)

POKER IS ...
"Poker is the new pornography. The Internet is awash with it … it’s banned in China and it’s full of excitable Scandinavians."
Rick Dacey on InsidePokerMag.co.uk (2006)

POKER AS WARFARE
"Poker is like war; there is no tomorrow. You have to pick the hill you want to defend and die trying, or be king of the hill."
Johnny Hale on GamingToday.com (2009)

POKER 101
"Every bluff is now revealed as the product of untold computations, every bullying all-in raise seen for the science that it is, the arithmetic of incomplete knowledge. Unless, of course, it’s just a bad guess."
Richard Hoffer in Sports Illustrated magazine (2003)

POKER CARDS and HANDS
"The cards have no regard for sex; they’ll just as soon make a straight for a woman as a man - only it will sting worse if you have a scrotum."
Michael Konik (2001)

POKER GAMES
"No-Limit Texas Hold ‘em may be the Cadillac of poker games, but there are plenty of other fine cars out there in the showroom."
Conrad Brunner on CardPlayer.com (2006)

POKER PLACES
"The card clubs of California are vast sheds of frenetic activity filled with noise and excitement, proffering some 200 tables divided between American poker and Chinese games. They are good fun in their own way. But for true believers, Binion’s in May is better than April in Paris."
David Spanier in The Independent (1995)

W.S.O.P.
"The Americans tip the odds in their own favour, with World Series tournaments like Limit Razz and Ace To Five Draw; such un-British games that they might as well be competitions to see who can name the most Texan garden centres."
Victoria Coren in The Guardian (2001)

POKER PEOPLE
"Professional poker players make me more sick than a man taken sick on his day off. They come straight from central casting - smug, pasty faces, shades to hint at mystery, a prop (like a Stetson) to suggest menace, and supposedly sardonic dialogue plucked straight from a 50s B movie. No people look more permanently pleased with themselves than professional poker players … They are without exception so plug ugly you suspect they’ve pulled more royal flushes than women … They are the living dead, clinging desperately to an artificial image of devil-may-care recklessness forged by purely fictional characters like the Cincinnati Kid and Maverick."
Derek McGovern in The Daily Mirror (2006)

POKER BOOKS
"Anthony Holden, author of the bestselling book about poker, Big Deal, goes out of his way to emphasise that poker is not gambling because it is a game of skill, and yet he won’t go down to the tables without wearing his lucky watch."
Mike Atherton, Gambling (2006)

POKER MOVIES
"Hollywood often uses gambling, and less often card playing, to add a flavour to a movie. Unfortunately most of these movies have silly scenes (House of Games) or stink (Honeymoon in Vegas) or both (Maverick)."
Steve Badger on PlayWinningPoker.com

POKER ON T.V.
"Be advised that a Poker Craze is sweeping the nation. Almost every night there are poker tournaments on television. And if you think that watching people play cards on television would be boring, I have three words for you: correct-o-mundo. The problem is that there's not a lot of action in televised poker, where the most strenuous thing the players do is push small plastic chips a distance of about 15 inches. (Granted, this is more action than you see in televised golf.) To make matters worse, poker players do not betray any feelings. So, most of the time what you have, visually, is a bunch of grim-faced guys sitting around a table, looking like a haemorrhoid support group."
Dave Berry in The Washington Post (2004)

POKER EXTRAS [A to Z]

America's Game
"Of all the gambling games, poker, a distinctly American invention a century and a half old, is undoubtedly the most popular, And although poker may not yet be as American as apple pie, it has certainly become the standard Friday night after-dinner course in many homes."
David Hayano, Poker Faces (1983)

Zen
"Poker is the ultimate Zen experience. What is the sound of one hand folding? If a player has a royal flush and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Satori comes in a pile of chips."
Thomas Legendre


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