Poker

2006 WSOP Main Event Table

The game that defines dictators much better is poker because it’s about bluffs. It doesn’t matter whether you have a strong hand or weak hand. You can have a weak hand, but if you’re comfortable bluffing, raising stakes, and if you can read your opponent. ~ Garry Kasparov

Poker is a family of card games that combines gambling, strategy, and skill. All poker variants involve betting as an intrinsic part of play, and determine the winner of each hand according to the combinations of players' cards, at least some of which remain hidden until the end of the hand. Poker games vary in the number of cards dealt, the number of shared or "community" cards, the number of cards that remain hidden, and the betting procedures. In most modern poker games, the first round of betting begins with one or more of the players making some form of a forced bet (the blind or ante).

Quotes

• The game that defines dictators much better [than chess] is poker because it’s about bluffs. It doesn’t matter whether you have a strong hand or weak hand. You can have a weak hand, but if you’re comfortable bluffing, raising stakes, and if you can read your opponent.
  • Garry Kasparov, interview with Bill Kristol (April 2016)

• I don't gamble, if you will concede that poker is a game of skill.
  • Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road

• All serious poker players try to minimize their tells, obviously. There are a couple ways to go about this. One is the robotic approach: where your face becomes a mask and your voice a monotone, at least while the hand is being played. The other is the manic method, where you affect a whole bunch of tics, twitches, and expressions, and mix them up with a river of insane babble. The idea is to overwhelm your opponents with clues, so they can't sort out what's going on. This approach can be effective, but for normal people it's hard to pull off. (If you've spent part of your life in an institution, this method may come naturally.)
  • Dan Harrington, Harrington on Hold 'em: Expert Strategy for No-Limit Tournaments, Volume I: Strategic Play

• I think that you find out whether you've got the qualities to win at poker by playing poker. ... Obviously, it helps to know the basic math of Fermat and Pascal, but everybody with any sense knows that stuff. But having the temperament where Fermat and Pascal are as much a part of you as your ear and nose — that's a different kind of a person. And I think it's hard to teach that.
  • Charles T. Munger, (December 17, 2020)"A Conversation with Distinguished Alumnus Charles T. Munger (CERT '44, CAVU)". Caltech, YouTube. (quote at 45:06 of 58:41)

• If after ten minutes at the poker table you do not know who the patsy is—you are the patsy.
  • Quoted by Martin J. Whitman and Martin Shubik in The Aggressive Conservative Investor (1979)

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Poker on Wikipedia