Poker gems, #264

Johnny Moss to Jon Bradshaw in 1973, as quoted in The Championship Table at the World Series of Poker, by Dana Smith, Tom McEvoy, and Ralph Wheeler, p. 19.


Anybody can lift their chips up and down, but they can't always push 'em in the pot. That's goin' down a different street. You gotta be cold about that, real cold.

Poker gems, #150

Kevin Conley, in "The Players," article in The New Yorker magazine, July 11/18, 2005, p. 55.


In 1970, Binion's Horseshoe Casino hosted the first World Series of Poker, and the original trophy went, by peer vote, to Johnny Moss, a Texas veteran who had seen the need, on one occasion, to point his gun at a peephole in a poker-room ceiling and inquire, "Now, fellas, do I have to go and shoot a bullet in the ceiling? Or you going to send your boy down without any harm?"

Poker gems, #119

Johnny Moss, as quoted in Poker for Dummies, by Richard Harroch and Lou Krieger, p. 28.


In an otherwise even contest, the man with the best concentration will almost always win.