Jack Ma Quotes

Poker is about understanding human behavior and managing emotions - yours and the other guy's. That's huge in poker, and it's huge in business.

Chess is a great training ground for poker players because it's a math-based game, much like backgammon is.

Poker is all about comfort with uncertainty, after all.

Yes, I think poker really isn't gambling.

But in a tournament, you can be said in for all your money at any point so you can't make any mistakes so you have to, it's all about where you're sitting at the table.

Poker is a skill game pretending to be a chance game.

Poker is a game where you don't have to have the best hand to win. Poker is really reading other people and reading human emotion, which certainly comes into play in business.

In this business, I don't know how you can have a plan or how you can orchestrate anything. But I've been lucky with my choices. I'm very strong-willed, so I've been able to stick with it. I'm lucky there.

I thought poker might be a perfect environment to start to learn probabilistic decision-making, and to live what it means to have skill versus chance and to see how that played out. I would dive in head first into the poker world.

If you're going to just play with patience, you're going to be at the mercy of the cards.

Poker isn't the roulette wheel of pure chance, nor is it the chess of mathematical elegance and perfect information. Apart from the underlying mathematics, poker depends on the nuanced reading of human intention, interactions, and deceptions.

That's right, kid. Never play an ace if a two will do.

Heads I win, tails I don’t lose much.

As a goalkeeper you need to be good at organising the people in front of you and motivating them. You need to see what's going on and react to the threats. Just like a good manager in business.

Business wise, I have always learned valuable lessons so I don't regret any decisions I have made.

I learned playing poker that you never count your winnings because that's when you start to lose.

In any match, there are few critical moments where there's no second best decision. The rest of the moves are intuitive.

A lot of boys in my poker circle are mathematicians who play on probability. I don't have that kind of brain, so I rely on instinct. But I recently found out that poker and cards in general go way back in my family gene pool.

Both poker and investing are games of incomplete information. You have a certain set of facts and you are looking for situations where you have an edge, whether the edge is psychological or statistical.

You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run.

I basically have paid for a piano and a flat-screen television completely with my poker earnings. I'm pretty good at it.

Players talk about pot odds all the time, especially when they try to justify a call that they made. Whenever I hear this line of reasoning, though, I can't help but wonder if they properly thought through the consequences of their call.

I try to read the game as well as I can.

All-star lay downs are all about reading your opponents, trusting your instincts, and then making the right move.

In poker, you want to play the weaker guys. In chess, it's the opposite.