I was reading another Casino Royale thread here and noticed there was some criticism of Bond playing card with the villain.
In the book, Bond plays Baccarat against Le Chiffre. This is a game of luck - your only decision is whether to take a card on 5 or not.
So I thoroughly approve of Texas Hold’em being used instead.
(Mind you, I recall a film with Steve McQueen where he butchered a 7 card stud game on the penultimate card. Holding two pair, facing a possible straight flush draw, McQueen doesn’t bet the pot!
Instead he improves to a Full House and loses. None of that in this thread, please.)
Here’s my challenge to you:
assume that Bond has to beat Le Chiffre in a big pot. For the sake of the movie audience, both hands must be revealed in the showdown (so no bluffs).
both men are supposed to be skilled players, so let’s have decent hands to enter the betting and not too much luck in the flops (no 6J off suit beating AA!).
many tournaments are televised and show hole cards, so let’s have at least two swings in the play.
feel free to have other players…
Here’s an example:
Bond AsKs
Chiffre QdQh (slight favourite - 54%)
Flop Qs Js 4s - Bond now leads (67%)
Turn 4h - Chiffre now leads (97%)
River 10s - you knew that was coming, didn’t you!
OK, that’s a bit lucky :eek: - please improve on it!
The only problem I would have is the way Le Chiffre played the hand. If I recall he had two pair after the flop or after the turn with a straight and a flush draw on the board. He checked it down to the river where he hit a full house, Aces up.So while he got a fantastic hand by checking down and got unlucky wen he won, he should have bet before the river to try and get rid of some of the other hands. The small stacks might have chased the hand but Bond with his large stack could have possibly been pushed from the hand. In fact I am not sure Bond would have been in the hand at all with those cards, I believe he was the small blind in the hand. So I think for me the problem was that if the betting had gone more realistically then the hand would not have played out so dramatically.
I realize you don’t particulary want to talk about The Cincinnati Kid but just to correct a factual error, the game was 5-card stud, not seven. I wrote up the action on the final hand for inclusion in the Wikipedia article on the film, so I’ll copy it here:
Lady Fingers is dealing and the Kid is on the button. She deals Howard the 8D and Stoner the 10C. The Kid bets $500 and The Man calls. Howard gets the QD and Stoner the 10S. Stoner bets $1,000 and Howard raises $1,000. Stoner calls. Lady Fingers deals Howard the 10D and The Kid gets the AC. The Kid bets $3,000 and The Man calls. The Man’s final card is the 9D; The Kid gets the AS. The Kid checks. The Man bets $1,000. The Kid raises $3,500 and is all in. Howard reaches into his wallet and raises another $5,000. The Man agrees to take his marker and the Kid calls the bet. The Man turns over the JD for a straight flush. Stoner turns over the AH, showing that he lost with a full house, Aces full of tens.
Here is ananalysis of Lancie Howard and the Kid’s play on that final hand, if you’re interested.
I thought it sucked that Bond won by getting good hands.
What you want to see is for him to call a guy’s bluff when they both have four-flush hands but his low card is one more. That takes nerves of steel to bet.
As for the hand itself (haven’t seen the film so I don’t know the details), if you want a horrifyingly swingy hand then look no further than the hand Mike Matusow all but busted out on in the 2005 WSOP. He held KK against AA and got all the money in pre-flop. He spiked a K on the flop to take a huge lead in the hand and then lost to running flush cards. Which is the hand I always think of when I read criticisms of poker action on TV or in films who say that these sorts of big hand versus big hand confrontations never happen in real life.
How bout this one that busted me out on the bubble a few weeks ago in an online MTT:
I have slightly more than an average stack, and the table leader has a few thousand more than me. He is seated in the 8 seat(9 handed table). Button on 9 seat. He had been running his mouth to everyone, but he was a typical newbie who overplayed mediocre hands pf and had just donked his way through a few hands to stay in it. He would call any raise pf with any A or any two face cards. I got KK in the BB, everyone folds to the villain, who smooth calls from the CO. I raise it to 5x the BB(I know he will call). Flop is K99. I check, he bets, i raise, he calls. Turn is a 9. I check raise him all in, he calls and turns over A7o. He then gets the case 9(and only card left in the deck that can help him). After the flop, he was drawing dead to running 9s or running As.
as far as the Bond hand, I haven’t seen it, but I love players who will raise in position with low suited connectors…lets say Bond has 6s7s, villain has AdKh. Flop is 5s 8s Kd. Villain now has made hand, but Bond is actually ahead. Bond check raises all in, to get all the money in while he still has two cards to draw to(and, if the flush card hits, you may not get the rest of the villaings money…the straight card would be harder to get out of, but also feasible for the villain to get away from top pair top kicker). If you want the villain to win, put the As on the turn, and then the Ac on the river. If you want Bond to win, let him river the straight, and as the villain loses his mind, Bond can calmly remind him that HE was actually ahead after the flop, and that if villain can’t lay down top pair perhaps he should be playing baccarat
On a somewhat related note, I remember a movie, The Big Town, where Matt Dillon was playing a guy who was supposed to be a great craps player. And I was wondering how anybody could be a great craps player - you’re just betting on the possibilities and rolling the dice - there’s no strategy or tricks involved. Once you’ve learned which bets are relatively good (and you can do that before you start) you’re as much of an expert as you’re ever going to be.
You’ve alomst got it. Bond is holding 5s7s, flop is Ax4s6s, it either checks around or he just calls (don’t remember), turn is the 8s, and the river is As. Four players in the hand all the way, everyone all-in, one with KsQs for the A-high flush, one has 6s full of As, Le Chiffre has AK for As full of 6s, and of course Bond has had the straight flush since the turn. Hitting a gapped straight flush like that (even with the double outside draw) is rare enough. I’m glad the director didn’t go overkill and put in a royal. As for the movie itself, they don’t show the hole cards until the showdown and they only show the board once as the cards come out. Not only was it obvious to me what everyone was holding all three hands, or at least the last two that they showed, but I was the only one in my group who has played enough poker to be able to read and remember the board quickly enough to know what was going on, much less know what the cards had to be. Everyone else was totally lost.
Yeah, i picked the JJ and the straight flush without a problem.
But the way they did the hands in that movie was bullshit, especially the one where Bond gets beaten. I’ve watched a lot of poker, and i can’t remember the last time i saw two big pocket hands like that bet out all the way to the river, at least not in a no-limit game.
Oh, and i guess i should do the courtesy of answering the OP.
I think a good choice might be one similar to the final hand. Have on player with two cards to the straight flush, and the other with Ax to the flush. Have the board make the flush on the final card.
At least that makes it plausible that both players bet all the way to the river in the hopes of making their hand.
Although, doing it this way, it is a bit hard for both players to have good starting hands. I guess you could have one of them with A8s and the other one with KQs. That way the board could fill up:
Js 9s Ko Ao 10s
That way, both are drawing for the flush from the flop, and there is the added incentive that each pairs his high card with off-suit cards before the river.
Still probably unlikely to play out all the way, but it’s a possibility.
Even better than straight flush vs A high flush is straight flush vs full house.
This is from day 1, at the featured ESPN table, of the main event WSOP 2005:
Jennifer Harmon has QQ, raises and gets one caller holding 8d9d
Flop is Qh Jd 10c, making a dummy straight vs top set
Turn is 10d, making Qs full of 10s vs straight flush draw
River is 7d.
