Calling Someone's Bluff Quotes

What are your choices when someone puts a gun to your head? What are you talking about? You do what they say or they shoot you. WRONG. You take the gun, or you pull out a bigger one. Or, you call their bluff. Or, you do any one of a hundred and forty six other things.

They both continue to stare at each other, expressionless, motionless, in the weirdest standoff I've ever seen almost as if they're calling the other's bluff. It is the way you'd look at a perfect stranger, although if they were actually strangers someone would break down and exchange a pleasantry after such prolonged eye contact. I start to wonder if maybe I shouldn't reintroduce my own parents.

It’s powerful advice. How often do we go off on someone for making a decision that we, personally, wouldn’t have made, calling them an idiot, fuming, getting angry? How much time and emotional energy we’d save if we simply learned to ask ourselves why they acted as they did, rather than judge, make presumptions, and react.

I wish I'd learned then that when you call someone's bluff you usually win: it's simply not what the other person is expecting. And swimming along in the slipstream of another's current is no way to live.

Violet,' Xaden groans against my mouth. The plea in his tone floods my veins with a whole different form of power. Knowing he's just as affected by our attraction as I am is a rush. 'This isn't what you want.' 'It's exactly what I want,' I counter. I want to replace the anger with lust, the death of the day with the pulse-pounding assurance of my own life, and I know he's capable of delivering all that and more. 'You said to do whatever I need.' I arch my back, pressing the tips of my breasts against his chest. His breathing changes, and there's a war in his eyes that I'm determined to win. It's time to stop dancing around this unbearable tension and break it. He leans down, his mouth only inches from mine. 'And I'm telling you that I'm the last thing you need.' The barely leashed growl of his voice rumbles up through his chest, and every nerve ending in my body flares to life. 'Are you suggesting someone else?' My heart races as I chance calling his bluff. 'Fuck no.' The unmistakable flare of jealousy narrows his eyes for a heartbeat before his hips pin mine to the door, and my instant relief at his answer is replaced by a jolt of pure lust. I can see that infamous control of his hovering on the edge, balancing precariously on the point of a knife. All he needs is one. Little. Push. And I'm about to shamelessly shove. 'Good.' I tilt my head up to his and draw his bottom lip between mine, sucking before gently nipping him with my teeth. 'Because I only want you, Xaden.' The words breach something within him, and he gives. Finally. One mouths collide, and the kiss is hot and hard and completely out of our control.

There followed a three-year spectacle during which [Senator Joseph] McCarthy captured enormous media attention by prophesying the imminent ruin of America and by making false charges that he then denied raising—only to invent new ones. He claimed to have identified subversives in the State Department, the army, think tanks, universities, labor unions, the press, and Hollywood. He cast doubt on the patriotism of all who criticized him, including fellow senators. McCarthy was profoundly careless about his sources of information and far too glib when connecting dots that had no logical link. In his view, you were guilty if you were or ever had been a Communist, had attended a gathering where a supposed Communist sympathizer was present, had read a book authored by someone soft on Communism, or subscribed to a magazine with liberal ideas. McCarthy, who was nicknamed Tailgunner Joe, though he had never been a tail gunner, was also fond of superlatives. By the middle of 1951, he was warning the Senate of “a conspiracy so immense and an infamy so black as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man.” McCarthy would neither have become a sensation, nor ruined the careers of so many innocent people, had he not received support from some of the nation’s leading newspapers and financing from right-wingers with deep pockets. He would have been exposed much sooner had his wild accusations not been met with silence by many mainstream political leaders from both parties who were uncomfortable with his bullying tactics but lacked the courage to call his bluff. By the time he self-destructed, a small number of people working in government had indeed been identified as security risks, but none because of the Wisconsin senator’s scattershot investigations. McCarthy fooled as many as he did because a lot of people shared his anxieties, liked his vituperative style, and enjoyed watching the powerful squirm. Whether his allegations were greeted with resignation or indignation didn’t matter so much as the fact that they were reported on and repeated. The more inflammatory the charge, the more coverage it received. Even skeptics subscribed to the idea that, though McCarthy might be exaggerating, there had to be some fire beneath the smoke he was spreading. This is the demagogue’s trick, the Fascist’s ploy, exemplified most outrageously by the spurious and anti-Jewish Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Repeat a lie often enough and it begins to sound as if it must—or at least might—be so. “Falsehood flies,” observed Jonathan Swift, “and the truth comes limping after it.” McCarthy’s career shows how much hysteria a skilled and shameless prevaricator can stir up, especially when he claims to be fighting in a just cause. After all, if Communism was the ultimate evil, a lot could be hazarded—including objectivity and conventional morality—in opposing it.

Radatz described MK12’s first week on the job, ‘We felt like kid astronauts with keys to an actual shuttle, like someone was going to call our bluff at any minute.’139 MK12’s initial creative brief was to explore the element at the heart of the film – water: We learned that we’d been thinking about the film from an opposite perspective than that of Marc and the producers: where we saw water as the central theme, they saw the lack of water as Bond and Greene’s motivation. Our initial concept set Bond in a landscape made of backlit female forms submerged in water. After mulling over random ideas for a few days, it occurred to us that the same technique could be transplanted to a desert scenario, with the female forms instead becoming sand dunes.

1. Stop leading with weak pairs. Don’t try the old check-call flop, bet turn small line. Don’t try the variation where you just bet small on the flop either. Just don’t do it. 2. Instead, go ahead and check your weak pairs. Call small early bets with them (like the $20 on the flop in the above example), but fold if your opponent starts betting big money. You might feel like you’ll be pushed around if you play this way, but you won’t. First, most of your opponents at the small stakes will be too timid to try to push you around, and while they’ll take a stab for $20, they won’t try to blow you off your hand for $60 or $100. Second, when your opponents are aggressive, you just help them out with your weak leads. You tell them when it’s safe to bluff. 3. If you see someone else make this play, raise! You know how some players will tell you, “I’ll fold if you raise?” Well, this weak lead play tells you the same thing non-verbally. When someone bets out like this, they’re saying they plan to fold if you raise. So do it.

thepsychchic chips clips ii If you think of yourself instead as an almost-victor who thought correctly and did everything possible but was foiled by crap variance? No matter: you will have other opportunities, and if you keep thinking correctly, eventually it will even out. These are the seeds of resilience, of being able to overcome the bad beats that you can’t avoid and mentally position yourself to be prepared for the next time. People share things with you: if you’ve lost your job, your social network thinks of you when new jobs come up; if you’re recently divorced or separated or bereaved, and someone single who may be a good match pops up, you’re top of mind. This attitude is what I think of as a luck amplifier. … you will feel a whole lot happier … and your ready mindset will prepare you for the change in variance that will come … 134-135 W. H. Auden: “Choice of attention—to pay attention to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences.” Pay attention, or accept the consequences of your failure. 142 Attention is a powerful mitigator to overconfidence: it forces you to constantly reevaluate your knowledge and your game plan, lest you become too tied to a certain course of action. And if you lose? Well, it allows you to admit when it’s actually your fault and not a bad beat. 147 Following up on Phil Galfond’s suggestion to be both a detective and a storyteller and figure out “what your opponent’s actions mean, and sometimes what they don’t mean.” [Like the dog that didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes “Silver Blaze” story.] 159 You don’t have to have studied the description-experience gap to understand, if you’re truly expert at something, that you need experience to balance out the descriptions. Otherwise, you’re left with the illusion of knowledge—knowledge without substance. You’re an armchair philosopher who thinks that just because she read an article about something she is a sudden expert. (David Dunning, a psychologist at the University of Michigan most famous for being one half of the Dunning-Kruger effect—the more incompetent you are, the less you’re aware of your incompetence—has found that people go quickly from being circumspect beginners, who are perfectly aware of their limitations, to “unconscious incompetents,” people who no longer realize how much they don’t know and instead fancy themselves quite proficient.) 161-162 Erik: Generally, the people who cash the most are actually losing players (Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan strategy, jp). You can’t be a winning player by min cashing. 190 The more you learn, the harder it gets; the better you get, the worse you are—because the flaws that you wouldn’t even think of looking at before are now visible and need to be addressed. 191 An edge, even a tiny one, is an edge worth pursuing if you have the time and energy. 208 Blake Eastman: “Before each action, stop, think about what you want to do, and execute.” … Streamlined decisions, no immediate actions, or reactions. A standard process. 217 John Boyd’s OODA: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. The way to outmaneuver your opponent is to get inside their OODA loop. 224 Here’s a free life lesson: seek out situations where you’re a favorite; avoid those where you’re an underdog. 237 [on folding] No matter how good your starting hand, you have to be willing to read the signs and let it go. One thing Erik has stressed, over and over, is to never feel committed to playing an event, ever. “See how you feel in the morning.” Tilt makes you revert to your worst self. 257 Jared Tindler, psychologist, “It all comes down to confidence, self-esteem, identity, what some people call ego.” 251 JT: “As far as hope in poker, f#¢k it. … You need to think in terms of preparation. Don’t worry about hoping. Just Do.” 252

A test drive is dangerous in many ways. Drivers are encountering a particular car for the first time, so they are basically beginners. They usually can't located what they need quickly and panic. Since they aren't yet used to the feel of the brakes and have trouble reining in their excitement, the car jerks or swerves. And they floor it without an ounce of hesitation, something they don't do in their own cars. The rpm gauge dances beyond the red line and their bodies are plastered to the seats, as if someone is pulling them from behind. A few times, Ma-ri has actually wondered whether men were aroused by the smell of a new car. As soon as their feet touch the accelerator, their breathing grows irregular and excited. Their upper bodies lean forward, in attack mode, and their aftershave mixes with their sweat, emitting musk. The scent of virile males. Forgetting that Ma-ri is sitting next to them, they swear and revert to a state of boyhood. In this tight space, their shoulders brushing against each other, a peculiar tension grows between the test drivers and Ma-ri. The men become attracted to her, a chick who understands cars, and Ma-ri sometimes feels a burning heat, sitting next to these toylike men. But as soon as they return to the showroom and the men hand over the keys, they revert to being nice, polite middle-aged men. They leave quickly, looking a little embarrassed. They bluff a little, acting as if they might buy the car right away, quickly going over their financial situations in their heads, then get back into their own cars, feeling a little shrivelled.

I feel good. And victorious. And the feeling lasts. A few weeks after my first poker win, I’m approached by a magazine to write an article. I look back through my old emails. I’ve played with this opponent before: she’s asked me to write in the past, multiple times. It was always a little too small a sum for the effort required, so I’d never actually written anything. Every time I mentioned money, she walked away. Part of me just wants to accept this assignment: it’s interesting, I’ve done a lot of work on the background already, and the money isn’t all that bad. I’ve been offered worse. It would actually be a nice and needed boost at this precise moment. But on some level, part of me must remember: you can’t play scared. You can’t be afraid of how you look. You can’t be afraid someone will walk away because of what you do or don’t do. You have to play smart. And so I decide to check back: I’m not really doing much freelance work these days, I respond. I’m working on my next book. Not a refusal, but something that leaves the action open. Turn the decision momentum so that the power of position is on my side. Do nothing without first gauging my opponent’s reaction. Reveal nothing about the strength of my hand until I have to. A day later, I receive another email: What if we paid you more than we’ve offered in the past? This is an opening, and old me would have jumped at it. New me decides I don’t actually have to jump at anything; the smarter strategy might lie in another direction. I’m not sure that would be enough, I counter, since I really need to be paid more than I am at my home magazine to make it worth my while given the constraints on my time. In effect, I’m calling the bet, but I don’t raise. I simply stay in the hand to see what will happen. Three dollars a word, comes the next email. Done. I’ve won the hand and extracted more value than I ever thought I could from it.

He leans down, his mouth only inches from mine. “And I’m telling you that I’m the last thing you need.” The barely leashed growl of his voice rumbles up through his chest, and every nerve ending in my body flares to life. “Are you suggesting someone else?” My heart races as I chance calling his bluff.

Kind of looks like a potato who is pretending to be a man, and is worried someone will call his bluff.