Gambling Quotes

"Hold em is to stud what chess is to checkers."
Johnny Moss

"The guy who invented poker was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius."
Big Julie

"Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died."
Steven Wright

"Whether he likes it or not, a man's character is stripped bare 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

”Cards are war, in disguise of a sport."
Charles Lamb, "Essays of Elia" (1832)

"You call...gonna be all over, baby." during the 1998 World Series of Poker. Down to the final 2 players, he said this to his opponent while he held the best possible hand.
Scotty Nguyen

"Remember this: The house doesn't beat the player. It just gives him the opportunity to beat himself."
Nicholas (Nick the Greek) Dandalos

"A racehorse is an animal that can take several thousand people for a ride at the same time."
Author Unknown

"Luck never gives; it only lends."
wedish Proverb

"When I played pool I was like a good psychiatrist. I cured 'em of all their daydreams and delusions."
Minnesota Fats

"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

"The best throw of the dice is to throw them away
English Proverb

"Gambling is the son of avarice and the father of despair."
French Proverb

"Never bet on baseball."
Pete Rose

"Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math."
Author Unknown

"Whether he likes it or not, a man's character is stripped bare 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 (from Big Deal)

"Mr. Moss, I have to let you go."
Nick "the Greek" Dandalos (after playing heads-up No Limit poker for 5 months at Binion's Horseshoe with the famous Johnny Moss

"If, after the first twenty minutes, you don't know who the sucker at the table is, it's you."
Unknown

"The game exemplifies the worst aspects of capitalism that have made our country so great."
Walter Matthau

"The guy who invented poker was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius."
Big Julie

"Your first duty is to the Game; then come Mother, God, and Country."
Motto at the National Press Club, Washington D.C.

"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."
Somerset Maugham from Cosmopolitans

"Dear Lord, help me to break even. I need the money."
Unknown Loser's Prayer

"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

"Aces are larger than life and greater than mountains."
Mike Caro

"There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker. The upper class knows very little about it. Now and then you find ambassadors who have sort of a general knowledge of the game, but the ignorance of the people is fearful. Why, I have known clergymen, good men, kind-hearted, liberal, sincere, and all that, who did not know the meaning of a "flush". It is enough to make one ashamed of the species."
Mark Twain

"In a game of poker, I can put the players' souls in my pocket."
Beausourire, Haitian Poker Player

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

"These two have no idea what they're about to walk into. Down here to have a good time, they figure, Why not give poker a try? After all, how different can it be from the home games they've played their whole lives? Luck. All the luck in the world isn't gonna change things for these guys. They're simply overmatched. We're (the pros at the table) not playing together, but we're not playing against each other, either. It's like the Nature Channel. You don't see piranhas eating each other, do you?"
Mike from Rounders

"Patience. And shuffle the cards."
Cervantes, Don Quioxte

"This was the first time he had seriously confronted what he was doing, and the force of that awareness came very abruptly - with a surging of his pulse and a frantic pounding in his head. He was about to gamble his life on that table, and the insanity of that risk filled him with a kind of awe."
Paul Auster, "The Music of Chance" (1990)

"Well, tomorrow's another day."
John Hennigan, high-stakes ring game player and 4th Place finisher in the opening World Poker Tour tournament

"I must complain the cards are ill shuffled till I have a good hand."
Jonathan Swift, "Thoughts on Various Subjects" (1728)