Having been playing poker for more than two decades, if there’s one thing that continues to surprise me, it is how much insight there is to gain from sources completely unrelated to the game.
Philosophers, TV shows, psychotherapists – most of them have probably never played a single hand, but their wisdom has echoed in my mind time and time again at the poker table. Let me give you three of the ones that show up most frequently and have had the most positive impact on my bottom line.
“The trouble is you think you have time.” – Buddha
Every poker player I know, myself included, suffers from the same delusion: there’s always another opportunity to study, another opportunity to play your best, another opportunity to get it right. And while that’s true in theory (at least for 80 years, give or take), it doesn’t really mean anything if we continuously refuse to take it. Nothing is worse for the soul than opportunity wasted.
Buddha understood what we so often miss, that time is the scarcest and most valuable resource we have. Our poker careers all have an expiration date. Regardless if it’s because the games get too tough, our life circumstances change, or our time on this planet runs out, eventually things will change and the opportunities will run out.
I learned this lesson the hard way when Black Friday hit all those years ago. Suddenly all the soft games were gone. All the times I’d sat down to play instead of working on my game mattered far more. All the dollars I punted doing silly things instead of properly building up my bankroll put me in a hole that didn’t exist before.
The players who succeeded in the long-term were the ones who used their time wisely. They studied, they played with discipline, they protected their bankroll at all costs. They understood, as Buddha did, that though it sometimes feels long, life has to be lived as though it is short, because, ultimately, it is.
“Fight every battle everywhere, always, in your mind.” – Littlefinger
Game Of Thrones’ Littlefinger may have been a manipulative sociopath (and the person on this list most likely to know how to deal from the bottom of the deck), but he was also a master strategist. He didn’t just react to what was happening around him, he anticipated every possible scenario and formulated a plan for each possibility. This is exactly how the best poker players think. They look at thousands of possibilities of how different hands play out, and figure out how their own strategy has to change in the face of each of those potential paths.
Most players live in the present moment at the poker table. They wait for their cards, react to their opponents’ bets, and make decisions based on limited information. But if you want to be one of those who dictate their fate instead of being whipsawed by it, you must stop reacting and begin anticipating.
As Littlefinger said: Live that way and nothing will surprise you. Everything that happens will be something you’ve seen before.
“Not why the addiction, but why the pain.” – Gabor Maté
Dr. Gabor Maté, a world-renowned trauma expert, revolutionized addiction treatment by shifting the focus away from the addictive act itself to the underlying emotional need it serves. This reframe is a wonderful one for poker players to remember, especially as it relates to tilt. Most players think solving tilt is about controlling its symptoms, when the real work is in understanding what’s actually driving the behavior. That’s because tilt is rarely about the cooler or bad beat, but about what the loss represents to you. Maybe it’s “confirmation” that you’re unlucky. Or that success is out of your control. Or that you’re not as good as you thought. Maybe it’s triggering deeper insecurities about failure, inadequacy, or other people judging your life. The players who conquer tilt don’t do it by suppressing their emotions, they do it by understanding what those emotions are trying to tell them. Once you can identify the real message behind the rage, when you ask not why the tilt, but why the pain, you can begin addressing it directly instead of letting it leak into your decision-making at the table.
These quotes hit because they address what poker is really about: a psychological resilience test taken with incomplete information under intense pressure. Which is why literature and philosophy will always have answers for us, because the tasks of assessing our environment and overcoming adversity are just about as human of tasks as they come. You know?
