Winning vs. Losing

You can't win as much money if you sit at a table with small blinds. You'll get cleaned out if you sit at a table with players much better than you. To have the best result, you need to find a table where the stakes are high enough to be worth playing and where you have a chance of winning against the other players.

Infinite Play • Choose Your Table Wisely

Choose the game you are playing if you want to win

Talking about winning (even if we are identifying mistakes along the way to a win) is less painful than talking about losing, allowing new habits to be more easily trained. Identifying mistakes in hands I won reinforced the separation between outcomes and decision quality. These discussions also made me feel good about analyzing and questioning my

Annie Duke • Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

Learn from your losses and separate outcomes vs decisions

One of my favorite quotes from Bobby Knight is: "The key is not the will to win...everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important" Everybody has the will to win. People don't have the will to practice.

Bill Gurley • "Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love"

will to practice > the will to win

Now that I've won a slam, I know something very few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn't feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn't last long as the bad. Not even close.

Andre Agassi • Open: An Autobiography

The pain of losing > the joy of winning

It is never about winning. It is never about losing. It is only about contributing. It is only about learning.

Brian Collins • 101 Design Rules

"Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.

Wilma Rudolph - Quotes, Death & Facts

Losing is needed to appreciate winning

Becase this freedom comes at a cost - in fact you'll probably need to die a little death.

It does get easier

The cost of freedom

Finite games are won with intensity. Infinite games are won with consistency.

-Shane Parrish

long vs short term winning

To me, the real winners are the ones who step out of the game entirely, who don't even play the game, who rise above it. Those are the people who have such internal mental and self-control and self-awareness, they need nothing from anybody else.

Eric Jorgenson • Almanack of Naval Ravikant

The only winning move is not to play