105 Poker Quotes: A List of the Best Quotes About Poker

These poker quotes come from world champions, cash game legends, iconic film characters, and writers who uncovered life’s profound truths hiding behind a pair of cards.

Whether you’re after sage advice from poker’s philosopher kings, strategic advice from the GOATs, or hilarious one-liners, it’s all here–organized so you can skip to the sections that suit you best.

15 Funny Poker Quotes

Poker’s wild swings and eclectic cast of characters can sometimes produce comedy gold. 

1. “It’s not whether you won or lost, but how many bad beat stories you were able to tell.” 
   — Grantland Rice
   
2. “Poker has the feeling of a sport, but you don’t have to do push-ups.” 
   — Penn Jillette
   
3. “What are you going to do with the money if you win?”
   “I’ll probably just pay off some debts.”
   “It’s a million dollars. What about the rest?”
   “Oh, they’ll just have to wait.” 
   — anecdote attributed to Thor Hansen
   
4. “Is poker a sport? – I don’t know, but I like any sport where you can eat a hot dog and drink a beer while you’re playing.” 
   — Gabe Kaplan
   
5. “The object of poker is to keep your money away from Phil Ivey for as long as possible.” 
   — Gus Hansen
   
6. “Omaha is a game that was invented by a sadist and is played by masochists.” 
   — Shane Smith
   
7. “Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.” 
   — Steven Wright
   
8. “If there ever was a player who was as good as Phil [Hellmuth] thinks he is, we’d never win a single hand.” 
   — Doyle Brunson
   
9. “I put three kids through college playing poker. Unfortunately, they weren’t my kids.” 
   — Max Shapiro
   
10. “Just play every hand, you can’t miss them all.” 
    — Sammy Farha
    
11. “Poker is a lot like sex. Everyone thinks they are the best, but most don’t have a clue what they are doing.” 
    — Dutch Boyd
    
12. “A person should gamble every day, because think of how bad it would be to be walking around lucky and not know it.”
    — Robert Turner
    
13. “It’s weird being considered an expert at something that confuses me every single day.” 
    — Erik Seidel
    
14. “How many times do you want to run it?” “However many times it takes to find a seven, I guess.” 
    — Alan Keating (after getting it in with 77 vs JJ)
    
15. “Honey, they forgot one thing—I can dodge bullets, baby!” 
    — Phil Hellmuth

15 Inspirational Poker Quotes

These inspirational poker quotes capture poker’s deeper lessons and remind us why we keep coming back to the felt again and again.

16. “Poker is a skill game pretending to be a chance game.” 
    — James Altucher
    
17. “You will show your poker greatness by the hands you fold, not the hands you play.” 
    — Dan Reed
    
18. “Fold and live to fold again.” 
    — Stu Ungar
    
19. “Serious poker is no more about gambling than rock climbing is about taking risks.” 
    — Al Alvarez
    
20. “In the long run there’s no luck in poker, but the short run is longer than most people know.” 
    — Rick Bennett
    
21. “Forget about a chip and a chair; give me a hand and I’ll stand.” 
    — Warren Karp
    
22. “Don’t get mad that you lost, get mad because you didn’t win.” 
    — Michael Gersitz
    
23. “The strong point in poker is never to lose your temper, either with those you are playing or, more particularly with the cards. There is no sympathy in poker.” 
    — William J. Florence
    
24. “Everyone gets lucky once in a while, but no one is consistently lucky.” 
    — Doyle Brunson
    
25. “Poker is not simply a game of odds, moves and calculations. It is a game of controlled and exploited emotions.” 
    — Steven Lubet
    
26. “Most of the money you’ll win at poker comes not from the brilliance of your own play, but from the ineptitude of your opponents.” 
    — Lou Krieger
    
27. “Limit poker is a science, but no-limit is an art. In limit, you are shooting at a target. In no-limit, you are painting a picture.” 
    — Crandell Addington
    
28. “Poker may be a branch of psychological warfare, an art form or indeed a way of life, but it is also merely a game in which money is simply the means of keeping score.” 
    — Anthony Holden
    
29. “I believe in poker the way I believe in the American Dream. Poker is good for you. It enriches the soul, sharpens the intellect.” 
    — Herbert O. Yardley
    
30. “Life is like a poker game. You don’t get to choose the cards you are dealt, but it’s entirely up to you how to play the hand.’” 
    — Regina Brett

15 Poker Advice Quotes from Players

Hard-earned strategic wisdom from pros who paid for it the hard way, now passing you the playbook built off their own beats.

31. “Play the player, not your cards.” 
    — Amarillo Slim
    
32. “The key to No Limit poker is to put a man to a decision for all his chips.” 
    — Doyle Brunson
    
33. “Don’t challenge strong players, challenge weak ones. That’s what they’re there for.” 
    — John Vorhaus
    
34. “Nobody is always a winner, and anybody who says he is, is either a liar or doesn’t play poker.” — Amarillo Slim
    
35. “I think one of the interesting things about poker is that once you let your ego in, you’re done for.” — Al Alvarez
    
36. “The two things you need to be successful in poker are, first, find the muck, and second, don’t play your own money.” — David “Devilfish” Ulliott
    
37. “When I experience a bad beat, I think of it as an overhead. If you own a business, you have to pay your bills, and I consider a bad beat one of my bills.” – Jennifer Harman
    
38. “The beautiful thing about poker is that everybody thinks they can play.” — Chris Moneymaker
    
39. “Reading your opponent is like reading a book – except the book is trying to lie to you.” — Mike Caro
    
40. “If you are an excellent player, people are going to draw out on you a lot more than you’re going to draw out on them, because they’re simply going to have the worst hand against you a lot more.” — Bobby Baldwin 
    
41. “Poker’s good if you like watching people. Not if you like people because then you won’t like people so much.” – Jesse May
    
42. “Poker is a combination of luck and skill. People think mastering the skill part is hard, but they’re wrong. The trick to poker is mastering the luck.” — Jesse May
    
43. “The one who bets the most wins. Cards just break ties.” — Sammy Farha
    
44. “Poker is 100% skill and 50% luck.” — Phil Hellmuth
    
45. “Online poker gives you the supreme opportunity to achieve a poker face with the minimum of effort.” — Judi James

15 Life Advice Quotes

Poker mirrors life in many ways. Here are 15 quotes that reveal universal truths:

46. “Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well.” 
    — Jack London
    
47. “The commonest mistake in history is underestimating your opponent; happens at the poker table all the time.” 
    — General David Shoup
    
48. “Trust everyone, but always cut the cards.” — Benny Binion
    
49. “I learned two things. . . The art of the bluff . . . and the luck of the draw.” — William Diehl
    
50. “Whoever coined the phrase ‘a man’s got to play the hand that was dealt him’ was most certainly one piss-poor bluffer.” 
    — Jeannette Walls
    
51. “Living in the past is a Jethro Tull album, not a smart poker strategy.” 
    — Richard Roeper
    
52. “There is more to poker than life.” 
    — Tom McEvoy
    
53. Depend on the rabbit’s foot if you will, but remember it didn’t work for the rabbit.” 
    — R.E. Shay
    
54. “The guy who invented poker was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius.” 
    — Julius Weintraub
    
55. “I learned playing poker that you never count your winnings because that’s when you start to lose.” 
    — Kenneth Langone
    
56. “What’s true of the poker game is true of life. Most people are suckers and don’t realize it.” 
    — Michael Faust
    
57. “A Smith & Wesson beats four aces.” 
    — American proverb
    
58. “People would be surprised to know how much I learned about prayer from playing poker.” 
    — Mary Austin
    
59. “Hope is not a strategy.” 
    — Rick Page
    
60. “Most players look for reasons to run. I look for reasons to play.” 
    — Daniel Negreanu

15 Quotes from Poker Movies

If you’re a poker fan you can probably quote at least a couple of these by heart!

61. “The rule is this: you spot a man’s tell, you don’t say a [expletive] word.” 
    — Mike McDermott, Rounders (1998)
    
62. “If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker.” 
    — Mike McDermott, Rounders (1998)
    
63. “You can’t lose what you don’t put in the middle. But you can’t win much either.” 
    — Mike McDermott, Rounders (1998)
    
64. “In poker you never play your hand. You play the man across from you.” 
    — James Bond, Casino Royale (2006)
    
65. “That last hand nearly killed me.” 
    — James Bond, Casino Royale (2006)
    
66. “Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.” 
    — ‘Fast’ Eddie Felson, The Color of Money (1986)
    
67. “I don’t know about cards but I think these 45’s beat a full-house” 
    — Omar, The Wire, 2002
    
68. “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s whether you were right at the time.” 
    — Lancey Howard, The Cincinnati Kid (1965)
    
69. “To the true gambler, money is never an end in itself, it’s simply a tool, as a language is to thought.” 
    — Lancey Howard, The Cincinnati Kid (1965)
    
70. “What was I supposed to do—call him for cheating better than me, in front of the others?” 
    — Doyle Lonnegan, The Sting (1973)
    
71. “You can’t bluff someone who’s not paying attention.”
    — Mike, House of Games (1987)
    
72. “You gotta play the cards you’re dealt. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But at the end of the day, it’s about how you played the hand.” 
    — L.C. Cheever, Lucky You (2007)
    
73. “When your opponent’s sittin’ there holding all aces, there’s only one thing left to do: Kick over the table.” 
    — Little John, Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)
    
74. “’Cause the house always wins. Play long enough, you never change the stakes. The house takes you. Unless, when that perfect hand comes along, you bet, and you bet big, then you take the house.” 
    — Danny Ocean, Ocean’s 11 (2001)
    
75. “I’m not going to lose it. I’m going to gamble it.” 
    — Axel Freed, The Gambler (1974)

15 Poker Quotes from Old-School Players

The old-school legends who built poker into what it is today left wisdom that still rings true decades later:

76. “I’d bust my own grandmother if she played poker with me.”
    — Jack Strauss
    
77. “All you need is a chip and a chair.”
    — Jack Strauss
    
78. “Poker is a hard way to make an easy living.” 
    — Doyle Brunson
    
79. “In poker, you make your own luck.” 
    — Doyle Brunson
    
80. “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.” 
    — Stu Ungar
    
81. “There’s no one that ever beat me playing cards, the only one that ever beat me was myself.” 
    — Stu Ungar
    
82. “I guess if there weren’t luck involved, I’d win ’em all.” 
    — Phil Hellmuth
    
83. “I like it when I lose so much money I can barely breathe. That’s the feeling I go for.” 
    — anecdote attributed to Phil Ivey
    
84. “My favorite chip trick is to make everyone’s chip stack disappear.” 
    — Amarillo Slim
    
85. “You can shear a sheep many times, but you can only skin it once.” 
    — Amarillo Slim
    
86. “The next best thing to gambling and winning is gambling and losing.” 
    — Nick “The Greek” Dandolos
    
87. “The smarter you play, the luckier you’ll be.” 
    — Mark Pilarski
    
88. “The only bad luck for a good gambler is bad health. Any other setbacks are temporary aggravation.” 
    — Benny Binion
    
89. “A sucker don’t ever catch on. A smart man don’t ever sleep. He’s got to keep ducking the traps.” 
    — Johnny Moss
    
90. ”I’ll play any man from any land any game he can name for any amount he can count…Provided I like it!” 
    — Puggy Pearson

15 Quotes from Players About Things Unrelated to Poker

Every poker game has its characters. You’ve probably met a couple of them at your local home game or nearest casino. Here are some of our favorite quotes overheard at the poker tables:

91. “You got a better chance of getting Jesus off the cross than me off this hand.”
    
92. Will you show if I fold?” “Hell, I may not show if you call.”
    
93. “I’m never folding 4 hands in a row. I’m at least calling or raising.”
    
94. “I was value bluffing”
    
95. “I smelled [expletive] on the board, knew a flush was coming.”
    
96. “You know the difference between a poker player and a puppy? Eventually the puppy will quit whining.”
    
97. “So many outs, so many outs… Every jack of diamonds, every single jack of diamonds and I win everything…”
    
98. “If you could’ve won, but you didn’t win, then you couldn’t have won.”
    
99. “People who chase straights and flushes go home on buses.”
    
100. “Poker is like sex. You can go all in but if your stack is small nobody will notice.”
     
101. “It’s always 50/50 really. You either win or you lose”
     
102. “No gamble? No future.”
     
103. “The percentages they show on TV for the whole cards is actually wrong, and only the top pros know how to correctly calculate those odds.”
     
104. “There’s no such thing as a range of hands; it’s either a bluff or it’s not.”
     
105. “Showing your cards when you don’t have to is like kissing your sister…even if it makes you feel good, it’s a really bad idea.”

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