Quotes from the book "Zen and the Art of Poker" Part 1
"POKER RULE #1: Learn to use inaction as a weapon."
"POKER RULE #2: Don't get irritated or angered by long session of folding."
"POKER RULE #3: If you've been folding a lot, for a long time in the game, and you're starting to think that maybe it's time you got in and played a few hands again -- that's not a good enough reason. Keep folding."
"POKER RULE #4: Don't feel like a martyr when folding.
Don't start feeling self-righteous about all this folding you are doing... as if now it owes you (because you've b een so good, so disciplined, so patient...). This is a trap... As you keep folding, you must feel neutral about it."
"POKER RULE#5: Sometimes others get to play and you don't... But the most important thing is this: you must be comfortable with this - welcome it. Make peace with this idea. Cross your arms and sit back."
"POKER RULE#6: To win at poker you must embrace the idea of breaking even... A distaste for breaking even can lead us into the valley of pressing and overplaying and other wrongful activity."
"POKER RULE#7: Regard patience as a central pillar of your game and strategy... Don't assign it a secondary or lesser role..."
"POKER RULE #8 Keep plugging away. Expect nothing...
There will be times when you play tight, keep playing tight, and keep on playing tight, and it still does no good... the bad cards just keep coming... You may have to just keep doing it until the end, with no reward at all."
"POKER RULE #9: Don't fall into the "Now Trap."... Players want to win now, today. Results must happen now, in this hand, the one right in front of us... We assign a little more importance to where we are. We make it bigger, more important... But we do this timewise , too - we assign things more importance because they are happening in the present moment... Yet giving greater importance to the present in the game of poker allows us to imagine marginal hands into good hands and good hands into great hands."
"POKER RULE #10: The long run is longer than you think... Playing only the best hands can be frustrating... Anger and irritability can arise. The emotions can be severely tested. This is where Zen comes in"
"POKER RULE #11: Don't defend patience too strongly... You can't make yourself go to sleep through sheer strength of will. It is not about the strength of commitment - it is more of a gentler thing - a letting go."
"POKER RULE#12: Don't be impatient about patient... His brain is telling him to play patiently while his emotions are saying, "What's taking so long?" This two must be in alignment.
"POKER RULE#13 Occupy yourself while you are not playing... It is critical that you learn to enjoy yourself in the cardroom in ways other than in the game itself - by constantly staying, and playing... The fact is, if you are playing correctly, you are going to be doing a lot of folding. So you need to think of ways to fill this time. If you hate this period of time - when you're not playing , and some do - it will have the effect of throwing your game out of kilter."
"POKER RULE#14: Learn to play against other patient players... Put in with this group he finds that there are other patient players like himself. He learns that there is a whole other level that exists. He learns that there is a patience so slow that it is almost Zen-like."
"POKER RULE#15: Begin by playing tight, but don't forget to stay tight... The important thing is not who possesses the control and discipline at the start of the game, but who possesses it at the middle, the end, and all points throughout."
"POKER RULE#16: Stick to the best starter cards... Failing to play only good starter cards is like running a foot-race against the other players with a self-imposed handicap - like having a metal weight tie to your foot as the race begins. Play the best cards at the beginning of the hand, and the future will be a little less random, unpredicatable and murky."
"POKER RULE#17: Learn to control chaos... Chaos theory is the branch of physics that deals with situations that expand into disorder as they unfold... One characteristic of such event is that they are sensitive to initial conditions... Accordingly, the rule is: Control things at the beginning..."
"POKER RULE#18: Don't be drawn in by sudden frequent play on the part of another player... As always, play your cards, ignore the actions of others."
"POKER RULE#19: Discipline your game... it is more like patience - pacing yourself (especially emotionally) for the length of the game. This is the Zen concept of retaining composure being unaffected by outside forces.
It is different than mere patience, however. It comes from a larger and longer-term view of things - one that steps back and sees things as a whole."
P"OKER RULE#20: The true journey of mastery is in each moment... Writer George Leonard, in his book Mastery, refers to this as the "goalless journey." In other words: there is no finish line; the journey itself is the destination... According to Leonard, mastery lives within itself and the practice of itself - doing a thing for its own sake; not just reaching the goal, but each hour, each moment, every day is the goal."
"POKER RULE#21: See poker as a continuum that goes on forever... Forget any desire or eagerness to participate in the action... He chooses his best spots, wait until the odds are most in his favor, then takes hit-and-run chunks of money, after which he takes disciplined steps to withdraw once again and avoid losing it all back..."
"POKER RULE#22: You cannot apply the principles of Zen until you know the game perfectly -- inside and out."
"POKER RULE#23: Practice."
"POKER RULE#24: Arrive with a system... It is not enough to rely on luck or hope to carry us past the weak parts of our game. These parts must be attended to. The system must be whole and complete... The weak parts must be corrected, or disaster will appear."
"POKER RULE#25: Operate out of wholeness. If you had to describe your toughest poker opponent, who would that person be? What qualities would he have?... Visualize this player. Then try to be this player. Work on making your game whole in this way, and as an opponent you will be difficult to lay a glove on."
"POKER RULE#26: Learn from your mistakes... The Zen Buddhist would say that when we factor past lessons in for future play, losses are not losses, but rather stepping-stones toward future correct play. Failure, by its nature, moves us in another direction, away from failure. We need to treat these lessons neutrally. Simply learn from them. Don't take them too much to heart or put too much emotion into them."
"POKER RULE#27: Know all the ways you can lose big... Some of the ways you can lose include: a total drought of good cards all night long and being nicked-and-dimed and anted to death; second-best hands all night; second-best hands alternating with bad hands in between; hands that start out good but that don't "finish"... This is critical because how you deal with such occurrences can be the difference between having a bad night and having a full-scale, off-the-chart disaster."
"POKER RULE#28: Know the range of what is likely to happen to you in a game... For example, let's say the general monetary range of the game you play in is +$300 to -$300. These are the outside parameters of what you can expect to win or lose on any given night. If you know this going in, you won't be shocked and surprised by fluctuations that occur within the range... Be comfortable with these intermediate outcomes, too. Do not be frustrated by them or think that they are somehow unacceptable... You will note by observing the best players that they don't have a problem with any of these outcomes. They calmly accept them as they cash out and leave the table..."
"POKER RULE#29: Expect the worst - why gamblers are pessimists. By expecting the worst, you have already mentally dealt with it... The ability to see the dark side - what can go drastically wrong - and to have this view of things always within easy reach become an advantage in poker."
"POKER RULE#30: Don't expect a certain card to appear. Bad players do this all the time - expect the best possible outcome to occur - and then are crushed when it doesn't."
"POKER RULE#31: Don't get overconfident... Don't get overconfident, egotistical, arrogant. The reason: The Big Comeuppance (the Big Meltdown, the Sky Falling In, Your Worst Nightmare) can always be lurking around the next corner..."
"POKER RULE#32: Learn how to avoid a losing streak... First, watch for any clues that you might be getting cold... One answer is: You weren't there until you were there. And then it was too late... But there is a second problem here as well: you can't structure your game around this sort of thing happening. To design your game too much for this would be poor play and would stunt your game... Look for early clues; they are sometimes the harbingers worse things to come."
"POKER RULE#33: When things start going right for other players and wrong for you, back off... Looking back at the end of the night, however, at how a losing streak was put together, certain things stand out, and this is one of them: we should have caught on a little sooner. It is important that we notice these situations earlier and react accordingly."
"POKER RULE#34: Detach yourself emotionally from the game."
"POKER RULE#35: Develop a true indifference to the game. George Leonard writes in Mastery that mastery's true face is often "relaxed and serene, sometimes faintly smiling." You sometimes see this with good poker players - a kind of smiling, ironic indifference to the vicissitudes of fate and the outcome of hands."
"POKER RULE #36: Don't take the game personally. The poker gods are not out to destroy you personally (although it may somtimes seem that way). The game itself is as neutral and mechanical as a roulette wheel, a church raffle, or a lottery ball drawing... To repeat: players often think that elaborate steps are needed - great straining, striving steps, complex steps. The ordinary way of Zen dispels this. In modern life, as in poker, we often find ourselves tangled in frantic activity, trying to force events to our will, to make them happen. The actual answer is much simpler and involves a more natural approach. This sort of simplicity has been described in Zen literature in the following way: "When hungry, eat, when tired, sleep... The ordinary way is the way."
"POKER RULE#37: Nonattachment. The idea of attachment, in Buddhistic terms, means the linking of our emotions with something that we want - some desired object or outcome. The stronger this connection, the more discontent when we fail to achieve our ends (as well as desperate steps taken trying to achieve them)... Emotions have no place in poker... To play in an ego-less state means simply to not let the ego and emotions get involved."
"POKER RULE#38: Don't accept your opponents' idea of nervousness. Sometimes you are in possession of calm and composure but your opponents unwittingly suggest - or project - a kind of nervousness upon you. This odd condition, which might be called "sympathetic nervousness," falls under the peculiar category of getting nervous because your opponents tink you ought to be... Solution: Realize the detachment of your inner calm. Maintain your true indifference."
"POKER RULE#39: When you take your emotions out of the game, other players' emotions become visible. When we are focused exclusively on our own emotions (as we often are), the emotion of others tend to be obscured. When we make ourselves neutral, however, we find that the canvas suddenly becomes blank and the emotions of others begin to appear."
"POKER RULE#40: Play "within yourself." Like an Olympic runner who learns to run "within himself," you will eventually become comfortable inside your knowledge of the game. You will cease striving; the clouds will disperse, the sun comes out... But your goal as a player is to reach the point where a great many things will have to go wrong for you to lose badly..."
"POKER RULE#41: Master yourself, not the game... In many poker games you will play in, the skill level of all the players will be approximately equal... Therefore, the main edge that you have will be the mastery of yourself... Occasionally players who play well and who are generally in harmony with what is going on (and who, we might add, know bettter), fall off the Zen, and when they do, they sometimes fall hard. This is what is known in the poker world as tilt... What is needed is a return to Zen. All methods of forcing, striving, and straining must be rejected - naturalness embraced... Zen always reminds us of the need for patience, not forcing things."
"POKER RULE #42: Your biggest opponent, and worst enemy, is always yourself. Years of experience eventually teach you that your main battle, always, is with yourself - your propensity for errors, for rationalizing marginal hands into good hands, lack of concentration, misreading other players, emotional eruptions, impatience, and so on..."
"POKER RULE#43: Be wary of pushing forward aggressively when encountering resistance."
"POKER RULE#44: Join the rhythm"
"POKER RULE#45: Observe the rhythm of the wall. When your opponents are all bettnig away very strongly, smoothly, and confidently, the good cards are distributed away from you. Picture it as a wall, one that goes up on one side of the table and comes down on the other. Ask yourself where you are in relation to this. Don't take on the high wall with your low wall."
"POKER RULE#46: Wait for your turn."
"POKER RULE #47: Fit yourself into the flow of the game... Some players approach the game of poker simply as a game, the way you might play Chinese checkers, or Old Maid. They can be observed playing their own cards and nothing else, staring hard at their hand, brows furrowed, never glancing up, strugglnig along. It's as if they are playing in a vacuum. Still others do the opposite, trying to dominate all parts of the game, force victory, muscle over the game with various aggressive maneuvers...
Do either of the above two approach work? Yes, intermittently. A better approach - one that experience shows works more frequently - is to try to fit yourself into the flow of it..."
"POKER RULE#48: Become aggressive within the opening that appear... Note how much more efficiently is the energy expended by the better players - projecting it deftly into openings they see between their opponents, and if none exist, remaining stationary or fallback. Their energy either projects itself into the openings or conserves itself."
"POKER RULE #49: Pick your times of confrontation... There is a famous cautionary Zen quote that says: "When two tigers fight, one will be killed and the other will be seriously wounded." What this means is: Why use strength against strength... Why be wounded or killed? Withdraw; conserve your energy for a better opportunity. Pick your spots - times of confrontation - carefully."
"POKER RULE#50: Adjust your game for how much competition you have in the hand. Many players play their cards exactly the same way every time, independently of how many opponents they are up against or how strongly these opponents are bettnig... We need to factor these variables in. Why join in to times when it is an unfavorable circumstances?" |
