High-Level Strategies

"Enjoy the experience. Play thoughtfully, make good decisions.  Don't evaluate past decisions while you're still playing. Be realistic. Focus on what you can control."

-A. Brokos

"In reality, winning a bracelet is really, really hard. All you can hope for is to play your best, stay focused, and not look back with regret that you didn't play as well as you could have."

-X. Liu

"To win in poker you need heart, when the chips are down, you don't quit. The cards will come and things will work out, and as long as I have faith in that, and make sure that every decision I make in every hand is the right one or the best informed one, then I'm not worried about what happens." 

-D. Negreanu

"Put the blinders on. Never before have patience and discipline been so important, not to mention physical fitness. Keep telling yourself, 'Do the right thing each time.' You don't want to wake up after it's all over – and it will come to an end – and find yourself wishing you'd done something different." 

-J. Beevers.

"Every professional gambler I know is addicted to solving puzzles. The big attraction to [these poker players] is never the money. It's always the game... It's the puzzle.... solve the puzzle on each hand. If you lose, you lose. Learn from it and don't look back with regret. Look back instead and figure out what you did wrong, so that you don't do it again."

A. Snyder

"The most overrated achievement is making it out of the first day. Such an achievement is a measure of … well, nothing. So don't worry about making day two or going broke. Just play your best game and try to get chips." 

-R. Rosenblum

"Just play your normal game. There are no adjustments you need to make for a large field. You can only win chips from, or lose chips to, the players at your table. So focus on them, and how to do your best against them. Whether the tournament is 100 players or 10,000, you will need to outlast about 90% to make the money. And that requires the same amount of skill and run-good for either event. Don't expect to win, or even to make it past Day One. Just play your best game, and enjoy yourself while you're doing it. As long as you're playing your best, then it's like any other tournament – anything, good and bad, can happen to anybody." 

-Greg Raymer

"Holy Shit. I'm going to the WSOP!" 

-Bug

On to the next installment in the WSOP journey....