Commentary
To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.
You must see yourself winning a tournament before it is clearly obvious to everyone else that you will win the tournament. To only see yourself winning when you are deepstacked is a mistake. Better is to have a strategy planned out beforehand on how you will navigate through the field and conquer each opponent one by one. See the victory before it can be discerned by everyone else: know you will win because your plans of attack and defense are impenetrable! This said, such plans can not be static and methodical (i.e. the same plan used for different tourneys or the same plan unchanging in a single tournament. Your strategy must be malleable and dynamic: it must change as the field changes, as your chipstack changes, as tournament conditions change.
Neither is it the acme of excellence if you fight and conquer and the whole Empire says, "Well done!"
Better it is to win the war without shedding a single drop of blood. Aim to defeat your opponents before the battle has even begun rather than fight tooth and nail and take a tournament by brute force. To win before the battle begins is to gain the respect of your opponents: when they fear your bets, are alwasy confused about what they believe you are up to, and thus aim to steer clear of you, you have paved a path to victory!
To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength;
Taking money that opponents give to you freely is not a sign of great strength. Yet it is the sign of a great poker player (and of a skillful fighter). If opponents continuously give their money to you freely, you will win the tournament with ease and little effort. It takes skill to accomplish this. When you are at a point where opponents expect to lose to you, you have essentially achieved this.
to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear.
When you are running well (cardwise) and take down a tournament because of this, there is no justification for haughtiness; you simply accepted what the universe gave you freely.
What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.
To the masses a clever poker player seems to win with ease. At the poker table, he who sees only what is obvious can only win his battles with difficulty; he who looks below the surface of things, will win with ease.
His victories bring him neither reputation for wisdom nor credit for courage.
When you play in a certain way against a certain player you may not get credit for playing well because you are operating on information only you yourself has about that player. So when you prevail over such opponents you win no reputation for wisdom because only you know what flaw in your opponent you were exploiting; since no one else sees this, you get the victory but no pats on the back from fellow players. Your move could have been ingenious and only you will ever know it!
He wins his battles by making no mistakes.
When you aim to win a tournament by brute force (i.e. attack attack attack) you put yourself at risk of being busted out. No matter how strong or clever of a player you are, you are on occasion liable to be vanquished. Patience is a virtue in poker: the way to not make mistakes is to always proceed cautiously in every decision you make. No unecessary betting calling or folding; make sure every decision has a willful purpose with an aim toward your complete domination of the tournament (i.e. 1st place).
Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.
If you can know all of your opponents' flaws, peculiarities, and proclivities before a tournament has begun, you can map your way to successful domination of it! You will have essentially already won the tournament in your mind because you have a plan for how to skillfully exploit the field of players, one by one. On top of this, if your opponents respect you and acknowledge that you are more skillful than they are then you will have already won the tournament in the minds of your opponetns as well!
the skillful fighter puts himself into a position which makes defeat impossible, and does not miss the moment for defeating the enemy.
You must be always aware of opportunities to take down your opponents. You must be able to sense weakness and exploit it at every turn. You want to be in a situation where you simply can not lose: such situations avail themselves when you can judge, within 99% accuracy, that your particular hand dominates your opponents' hands. In these cases, pounce on your opponent: do not miss the opportunity to take him out!
Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.
The truly great poker player will already have in his mind a plan of attack and defence before starting a tournament. In his mind, he knows exactly what he will do when he is up against each particular opponent and so he is now going to battle after already having won in his mind (i.e. after having already worked out how he will play against each particular opponent). A losing poker player looks to fight first and then hopes for victory. YOU MUST go into every tournament with a plan of attack and defence. To do otherwise is to play like a losing player
