Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Whenever you're at a poker table - and you're betting all of your chips - you're worried, you're scared. Is it the right play? Have I thought through all the angles? That's what stinks about life and business in general. If I had to calculate 100% certainty on every deal I did, I literally would do zero deals.
I've figured out how to turn what's different about me and limitations - I'm new to this world, I'm a woman, I don't have a math background - and how I use that to my advantage. They're what make me unique. In poker you learn very quickly, if you play like everyone else, you'll be fine, but you'll never be great.
I'm familiar with that magical mindset during sporting competition where one feels completely zoned in on what's happening. There are occasional nights in poker when the mists have cleared, and I just know what my opponents' cards are. Everything at the table is slow, loud, and easy. The rest of the world is silent.
I like to peruse the Full Contact Poker online forums to read and comment on posts about interesting poker hands and whether they were played properly. I find that many of the contributors consistently suffer from the same problem: they are far too preoccupied with statistically insignificant aspects of a poker hand.
I do have a tendency to talk a lot at the poker table, which throws people off because they spend a lot of time trying to read me. But I talk a lot when I have a good hand and when I have a bad hand, too. Sometimes it annoys people so much they can't wait to get out of the tournament. And that can only be good for me.
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.
We've all heard stories about poker players grinding it out for two days straight. Believe me; I've got stories like that of my own. But the bottom line is that these stories usually don't have great endings. That's because the mind starts playing tricks after a marathon poker session, especially after a losing session.
Things that are so hard for people, like playing championship-level Go and poker, have turned out to be relatively easy for the machines. Yet at the same time, the things that are easiest for a person - like making sense of what they see in front of them, speaking in their mother tongue - the machines really struggle with.
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.
I've always had a love of cards, ever since I was a little kid. I think poker, as a system, describes the chaos of the world. Our sudden reversals, our freak streaks of fortune. The belief that the next hand can save you, and the inevitable failure of the next hand to save you. I think that describes my world view pretty well.
It's a great battle, and it really is a battle, and there are people from all walks of life, you know, never judge anybody at the table: A man can be the greatest poker player and he might know all the numbers, but he might get beaten by a really savvy kid who works in a grocery store; and that's what's so great about this game.
I enjoy going out by myself... always have, always will. I don't have security guards, and, for the most part, I enjoy meeting new people. I see myself as a regular guy who likes playing video games with his nieces and nephews and poker with his family. I don't have an art collection or take exotic vacations. I enjoy being at home.
I'm a teller of stories. I put bloody skins on my back and dance around the fire, and I say what the hunt was like. It's not erudite; it's not intellectual. I sail, run dogs, ride horses, play professional poker, and tell stories about the stuff I've been through. And I'm still a romantic; I still want Bambi to make it out of the fire.
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.
