Gambling Quotes

“You never know beforehand what people are capable of, you have to wait, give it time, it's time that rules, time is our gambling partner on the other side of the table and it holds all the cards of the deck in its hand, we have to guess the winning cards of life, our lives.”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“You have no finesse,” a gambler at the Silver Garter once said to him. “No technique.”

“Sure I do,” Kaz had responded. “I practice the art of ‘pull his shirt over his head and punch till you see blood.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“Everything's a gamble, love most of all.”
― Tess Gerritsen, The Sinner

“Where were all the women gamblers? It wasn't as if being a woman wasn't a huge risk all by itself. Twenty-eight percent of female homocide victims were killed by husbands or lovers.

Which, come to think of it, was probably why there weren't any women gamblers. Living with men was enough of a gamble.”
― Jennifer Crusie, Bet Me

“Play interests me very much," said Hermann: "but I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous.”
― Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

“Maybe the difference between first marriage and second marriage is that the second time at least you know you are gambling.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“Another mistaken notion connected with the law of large numbers is the idea that an event is more or less likely to occur because it has or has not happened recently. The idea that the odds of an event with a fixed probability increase or decrease depending on recent occurrences of the event is called the gambler's fallacy. For example, if Kerrich landed, say, 44 heads in the first 100 tosses, the coin would not develop a bias towards the tails in order to catch up! That's what is at the root of such ideas as "her luck has run out" and "He is due." That does not happen. For what it's worth, a good streak doesn't jinx you, and a bad one, unfortunately , does not mean better luck is in store.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

“It's hard to walk away from a winning streak, even harder to leave the table when you're on a losing one.”
― Cara Bertoia, Cruise Quarters - a Novel About Casinos and Cruise Ships

“As it devises its own system, the Qur’an takes pains to explain its reasoning. For example, the admonition against indulging in alcohol and gambling is justified by the “immense social harm” both can cause, especially the ripple effect of damage to others via drunken violence and crippling debt (addicts in
Arabia often sold their own children into slavery to repay debts).”
― Mohamad Jebara, The Life of the Qur'an: From Eternal Roots to Enduring Legacy

“The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.”
― Ambrose Bierce

“Yes, I can understand that a man might go to gambling table - when he sees that all that lies between himself and death is his last crown”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“Think of horse races. People like to bet on the one with three legs and a wheeze.They don't bet on that one because they think it will win, but because they can see how very glorious it would be if it were to win”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“There is a lure in power. It can get into a man's blood just as gambling and lust for money have been known to do.”
― Harry S. Truman

“Quit while you’re ahead.
All the best gamblers do.”
― Baltasar Gracián y Morales

“If your brother can't 'old 'is own against a bunch of orphans, 'e'd best leave off playing 'azard altogether!”
― Sheri Cobb South, The Weaver Takes a Wife

“Gambling is an act of faith of gamblers.
Prophecy is an act of faith of the saints.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“Bond didn't defend the practice. He simply maintained that the more effort and ingenuity you put into gambling, the more you took out.”
― Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

“In nuclear war, except for the evil forces, no one is a winner. Science and humanity become the villains. Everyone knows that, but the gamblers want to play their cards. Beware of the nuclear gamblers.”
― Amit Ray, Nuclear Weapons Free World - Peace on the Earth

“Billy's native arrogance might well have been a gift of miffed genes, then come to splendid definition through the tests to which a street like Broadway puts a young man on the make: tests designed to refine a breed, enforce a code, exclude all simps and gumps, and deliver into the city's life a man worthy of functioning in this age of nocturnal supremacy. Men like Billy Phelan, forged in the brass of Broadway, send, in the time of their splendor, telegraphic statements of mission: I, you bums, am a winner. And that message, however devoid of Christ-like other-cheekery, dooms the faint-hearted Scottys of the night, who must sludge along, never knowing how it feels to spill over with the small change of sassiness, how it feels to leave the spillover on the floor, more where that came from, pal. Leave it for the sweeper.”
― William Kennedy, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game

“All serious poker players try to minimize their tells, obviously. There are a couple ways to go about this. One is the robotic approch: 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

“One way, he thought, the whole thing of ring fighting was hurting somebody else, deliberately, and particularly when it was not necessary. Two men who have nothing against each other get in a ring and try to hurt each other, to provide vicarious fear for people with less guts than themselves. And to cover it up they called it sports and gambled on it. He had never looked at that way before, and if there was any single thing he could not endure it was to be a dupe.”
― James Jones, From Here to Eternity

“Tell me, Theodore, were you playing against orphans, by any chance?”
― Sheri Cobb South, The Weaver Takes a Wife

“The first thing he noticed was that Las Vegas seemed to have invented a new school of functional architecture, 'The Gilded Mousetrap School' he thought it might be called, whose main purpose was to channel the customer-mouse into the central gambling trap whether he wanted the cheese or not.”
― Ian Fleming, Diamonds Are Forever

“Murphy's face went through several mutations as he spoke, as if small animals were scurrying about just beneath his skin.”
― Pete Hautman, Short Money

“The Strip was still lit by a million neon lights, though the crowds on the sidewalk had greatly decreased by this hour. Still, Bosch was awed by the spectacle of light. In every imaginable color and configuration, it was a megawatt funnel of enticement to greed that burned twenty-four hours a day. Bosch felt the same attraction that all the other grinders felt tug at them. Las Vegas was like one of the hookers on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Even happily married men at least glanced their way, if only for a second, just to get an idea what was out there, maybe give them something to think about. Las Vegas was like that. There was a visceral attraction here. The bold promise of money and sex. But the first was a broken promise, a mirage, and the second was fraught with danger, expense, physical and mental risk. It was where the real gambling took place in this town.”
― Michael Connelly, Trunk Music

“God does not play dice, bankers do.”
― Greg Curtis

“After all, as Franco would dictate, everyone was going to lose their money at some point. You may as well do so half drunk and at the mercy of a pretty smile.”
― Christopher Byford, Den of Shadows

“The player looked over at the Virginian, doubtfully. "Well," he said, "I don't know what you folks call a dangerous man."
"Not him!"
exclaimed the dealer with
admiration. "He's a brave man. That's different." The player seemed to follow this reasoning no better than I did.
"It's not a brave man that's dangerous," continued the dealer. "It's the cowards that scare me.”
― Owen Wister, The Virginian

“The best on horses you think will lose are a valuable "insurance policy." When rare disaster strikes, you'll be glad you had the insurance. 71

The exponential growth of wealth in the Kelly system is also a consequence of proportional betting. As the bankroll grows, make larger bets. 98

[2 questions are central to John Kelly's analysis] What level of risk will lead to the highest long-run return? What is the chance of losing everything? 286

As Fred Schwed, Jr. author of Where are the Customer's Yatchs? put it back in 1940, "Like all of life's rich emotional experiences, the full flavor of losing important money cannot be conveyed in literature." 304

Claude Shannon: A smart investor should understand where he has an edge and invest only in those opportunities. 308

The longer you hold a stock, the harder it is to beat the market by much. 316”
― William Poundstone, Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street

“Those painful childhood memories we bury, that some of us try and drown out with sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling, all the usual crutches and distractions. These childhood experiences are going to be really painful to engage with, no one wants anyone else to be exposed to their deepest, darkest, most shameful secrets, but unless these issues are talked about they can never be defeated, and you will never be at peace with yourself or anyone else. You have one day got to face that shit head-on and defeat it. Believe me.”
― Bobby Gillespie, Tenement Kid