A Quote by Al Alvarez

I think one of the interesting things about poker is that once you let your ego in, you're done for. — © Al Alvarez
I think one of the interesting things about poker is that once you let your ego in, you're done for.
I like to peruse the Full Contact Poker online forums to read and comment on posts about interesting poker hands and whether they were played properly. I find that many of the contributors consistently suffer from the same problem: they are far too preoccupied with statistically insignificant aspects of a poker hand.
Remember, most of the things you think you need are ego trips designed to bolster your image and your perception of security.... You'll waste a lot of energy satisfying your ego only to find that, as soon as it's got what it wants, it ignores all your efforts and promptly nails another list of demands to your forehead. The ego will always try to force you to slave for its vision. I wouldn't stand for that BS if I were you.
"When you accept your life - when you take your breakfast, and when you sleep and when you walk and when you take your bath - how can you create an ego out of these things? Sleeping when feeling sleepy, eating when feeling hungry, how can you create your ego? No, if you fast, you can create ego. If you are on a vigilance for the whole night, and you say, "I am not going to sleep," you can create the ego. By the morning, the person who has slept well will have no ego, you will have a great ego."
I have no pride about anything I have done. It's just not the way I think about things. I do the work, always, as hard as I can, to the point of pain, injury, exhaustion, if that is what it takes. Once I am done, I move on.
1. It ain't as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning. 2. Get mad, then get over it. 3. Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it. 4. It can be done! 5. Be careful what you choose. You may get it. 6. Don't let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision. 7. You can't make someone else's choices. You shouldn't let someone else make yours. 8. Check small things. 9. Share credit. 10. Remain calm. Be kind.
We are identified with the ego, and with the ego there are many things: anger and hatred and jealousy and possessiveness and greed - the whole train. The ego functions like an engine and there are many many compartments following it. Once the ego dies the whole train stops.
We want to do things that are interesting, great storytelling, some of it is gonna be more fun and funny, some of it is more serious and talking about interesting issues that we think are provocative and interesting to us. Kind of on a more political level. But, you know, just things that we find interesting that we think stories that need to be told.
To be a great poker player, you're going to have to learn this fact: Everything that's said at a poker table is worth listening to. It's all information that you can use to make better decisions, whether people are talking about baseball, politics, or, oh yeah, poker.
Once you become more and more watchful of your inner workings things become simple. Then a few things have to be dropped. One has not to be jealous if one wants to be loving. It becomes so clear that there is no question about it; one can simply see the point that if you are jealous, love is impossible. Jealousy is bound to create misery. Jealousy is part of ego, the shadow of the ego, the shadow of a shadow - and love needs egolessness. They can't go together, they can't co-exist.
I think real life reflects your movies. In your life, you pick stuff that influences what movie roles you wanna pick. I think if you've got an interesting life, you wanna do interesting movies about interesting things.
The last thing I'd say is that you can achieve a lot of things in politics. You can get a lot of things done. And that, in the end - the public service, the national interest: that is what it's all about. Nothing is really impossible if you put your mind to it. After all, as I once said: I was the future once.
What you see on a lot of televised poker is highlight-reel poker. That's why I used to like 'Poker After Dark' so much. It used to catch us playing almost every single hand... It is more of a grind than people think.
The ego is your enemy, not your friend. It is the ego that gives you wounds and hurts you. It is the ego that makes you violent, angry, jealous, competitive. It is the ego that is continuously comparing and feeling miserable.
Because of who I am, when I sit at a poker table, I meet people who engage me in conversation, not only about poker, but also about the movie business and about the world of celebrities.
The beauty of having your ego checked as many times as my ego was checked in Newark made me recognize how much I needed other people who were very different than me in order to get big things done.
I heard some interesting things about your performance up here." "I hear interesting things about your 'performance' all the time Doug, but you don't hear me making jokes about it.
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