He Beat Me—Straight Up …

As I promised, I’ll now reveal my favorite gambling movie. There are a few “classics” that I haven’t seen, but I doubt that they can supplant my favorite.

In the opening scene of Rounders, when Matt Damon grabs his stashed wads of cash and then sneaks out without disturbing his sleeping girlfriend, my BP and I were literally high-fiving each other in the theater.  And that was before the many times in my career when I did precisely that—slip out to hit a graveyard target while my girlfriend slept. It wasn’t the only time in the movie that my teammate and I were smiling ear-to-ear as the movie lived up to the high expectations created when we heard that Damon and Norton (and Malkovich, Turturro, and Janssen) were doing a poker movie.

Obviously no movie can faithfully depict the industry to a civilian audience, but Rounders does a great job. The voiceovers and game action explain the game sufficiently to an uninformed audience, without getting into too much detailed drudgery, and without butchering the game, as they do in the poker scene in Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale (anyone who plays poker finds it extremely irritating when the dealer replaces the cards on the board with James Bond’s cards in order to display the hand). Is the Oreo tell over the top? Maybe, but what do you want the screenwriter to do, expect the audience to notice that John Malkovich blinked three more times than usual while pondering his bet? Keep in mind that this movie came before the big poker boom. In 1998, the public was not as knowledgeable about poker and casinos, so depicting gambling in an entertaining but accurate way was a challenge.

More than the details of the game, I found the portrayal of the lifestyle to be vastly more accurate than any gambling movie, and several relevant themes were addressed: the stress on the relationship with the not-so-understanding girlfriend, the disruption in Matt Damon’s academic work, the shady characters and underground casinos, the methodical exploitation of targets on their route, the encounter with violent cops, the strip club, the different playing styles of grinders vs. blasters, the side job (driving the truck), the borrowing (“the juice is still running”!).

You can always tell a great movie by how many of its quotes seep into mainstream pop culture, or in this case AP gambling subculture. There are so many lines from Rounders that we quote or paraphrase: “Does he look like a man beaten by Jacks?!”, “The move was folding,” “We needed that pot!”, “… where the sand turns to gold …”, “Don’t splash the pot”, “Well, we all know each other here, so …” (which is one of the best scenes in the film), “He beat me—straight up—pay dat mee-an his money” (and every other line spoken by John Malkovich).

What’s interesting is that I have found that Rounders is an excellent barometer. In my soliciting opinions on gambling movies (both online and in person, with both pros and civilians), I have found that most professional gamblers liked or loved Rounders, but that the response among non-professionals and low-level counters is not as great. So if you didn’t like Rounders, it probably says more about you than it does about the movie. Also, the parts of Rounders (and “21”) that non-professionals find unrealistic are the same parts that pros often consider the MOST realistic. For example, the idea of having a stripper cash chips for the team is something that is not at all unrealistic. Sometimes a team has to move a lot of chips, and needs someone with a clean, local ID to do it. But I digress.

The scene where the annoying dealer wants to robotically enforce rules instead of look at the bigger picture resonates with every pro. One night in the Palms poker room, the only game broke when the floorman would not allow the fish to re-buy below the minimum buy-in, even though every single player at the table enthusiastically wanted to allow it.

Part of the reason pros seem to like Rounders more than non-pros do might be because Rounders revolves around poker, and most high-level pros have some experience (often massive experience) with poker, whereas most card-counters are extremely narrow in their experience. I have witnessed numerous counters who do not even know how to play carnival games, baccarat, poker, and craps. To me that lack of education is as inexcusable as a gambler not knowing basic strategy. Knowing how to play most or all of the games should be considered “casino basic strategy” for any working pro.

In the interest of disclosure, let me state that I have an affinity for Ivy League movie stars, and the sultry Famke Janssen bears a resemblance to a well-known pro, but you don’t see me endorsing “The Saint” here. If anyone wants to attend a showing of Rounders before next year’s Blackjack Ball, so that I can have an opportunity to elaborate on my endorsement of the movie, let me know.