Poker Quotes - Top Ten Funny Poker Quotations

TEN FUNNIEST POKER QUOTES OF ALL TIME?

as chosen by Colin M Jarman aka The Quotable Poker Player

What makes for a really funny poker quotation? Since this is my list, the answer is simple: any saying or thought about poker that makes me laugh.

Having spent the past two years compiling The Quotable Poker Player - a book of 1500 humorous poker quotations - I figure I have as much right as anybody to pick my Top Ten Funniest Poker Quotes of All Time.

So, apart from making me laugh in some way, how do I judge a funny or humorous or amusing poker quotation? My particular brand of poker humour is predicated on three main factors:

A. Hilarity ... it has to make me laugh out loud or smile deeply within.

B. Cleverness ... I'm a stone cold sucker for intelligent humour and if a non-poker pop culture reference is also thrown in, then that's the quotable equivalent of the nuts.

C. Originality ... just as there are only three basic jokes, there are only three basic poker quotations (those about playing poker, those about poker & sex, and those by Victoria Coren). So, the more original the quote the more I love it.

Having published the first-ever book of 1500 funny poker quotations and having rejected a whole lot more that failed to make the final cut of 1500, these ten are the funniest poker quotes that I keep coming back to time after time. Every time I read them I still laugh, smile or genuflect in their general direction.

As with all my Top Ten quotations list they are not ranked 1 to 10 or in any cogent order ... as with a deck of cards I like my poker quotations well shuffled.

“When the next hand starts, stop talking about the last hand, whether you won or lost. Living in the past is a Jethro Tull album, not a smart poker strategy."

Richard Roeper in The Chicago Sun-Times (2005)

"No-Limit Texas Hold ‘em may be the Cadillac of poker games, but there are plenty of other fine cars out there in the showroom."

Conrad Brunner on CardPlayer.com (2006)

"The Americans tip the odds in their own favour, with World Series tournaments like Limit Razz and Ace To Five Draw; such un-British games that they might as well be competitions to see who can name the most Texan garden centres."

Victoria Coren in The Guardian (2001)

Phil Gordon: "Even Jesus wouldn’t bet all of his chips on a J-3."
Dave Foley: "Well, if he did, by the time the cards hit the table they’d be different."
on Celebrity Poker Showdown

"I played Texas Hold ’em that night, but the only thing I was holding when I went home was my MetroCard. I had been cleaned out by men who knew how to fold early, bet strong and run the table like Rudy Giuliani runs the city."

Brian Koppelman in The New York Observer (2001)

Campaigning for poker to be included in the Olympic Games - "After all, the ribbon-waving rhythmic gymnasts are in. The shuttlecock-chasing badminton players are in. Even the ice-sweeping curlers are in. And poker’s out? That’s like throwing a party for mankind’s greatest inventions and forgetting to invite indoor plumbing."
Poker in Athens (2004)

“Bridge has an image problem. While Hold 'em conjures up hard-bitten men, scantily clad women, and long nights in Las Vegas, bridge evokes cucumber sandwiches, dank afternoons in village halls, and sharp words between bitter octogenarians. In Hold 'em, you need balls. In bridge, you are more likely to have a dicky prostate.”

Ed Caesar in The Independent (2006)

"Everybody just sits. These people spend more time on their butts than FDR did. And now you, too, can get the entire 2003 World Series of Poker on DVD, featuring all that sitting! (Comes with an ice pick to insert into your brain.) The dullness is built into the game. The way to win at Texas Hold ‘em is to be as expressionless as drywall and fold a lot. Whoo-ee! You talk about exciting! What’s ESPN going to put on next, the World Hairline-Receding Championships?"

Rick Reilly in Sports Illustrated magazine (2004)

Brant: "What’s going on?"
Charlene: "We’re telling stories. You just missed a really good one about a man who won November 1937 in a poker game."
Neil Gaiman, Sandman: A Tale of Two Cities (1994)

"If you think what we have going on today is online Poker Mania you’re in for a gaming earthquake of mega-magnitude. To use a Beatles’ metaphor, today we’re somewhere around Love Me Do and Please, Please Me. We have the massive climb towards Rubber Soul and Sergeant Pepper to come!"
‘All The Aces’ in The Daily Star (2005)



The Top Ten Funniest Poker Quotes - a personal selection - was compiled by
Colin M Jarman aka The Quotable Poker Player