Has anybody got an example of a movie where skillful poker play is deonstrated as a primary or major secondary point, as opposed to luck (My 4 Aces beat your 4 kings, so natuarally I’m the beter player) or skill at cheating (I know you cheated, because that’s not the hand I dealt you)?
Well, for a bad example, there’s the hypocrisy in Casino Royale where James Bond claimed was was going to play the man, not the cards, then ended up falling back on the ol’ astronomical-odds showdown.
Rounders looked like a serious treatment of the subject, but I’d have to see it again.
Well, it’s kinda main point of the Rounders. Great movie, BTW.
I agree. The poker in Rounders was really well done.
As an incidental note, while researching my reply I came across this altogther humourous summary of the 1954 live-TV adaptation of Casino Royale.
Well, if you disregard that the major important moment was decided by a way too obvious tell, for a player at that level.
Well, I haven’t seen the movie, but I’d tend to be a bit forgiving of something like that. A mass-market feature denoument has to be fairly obvious to people who aren’t experts in specialized subject matter. 
It was exaggerated quite a bit, though. Like when Matt Damon walks into a poker game at his teachers house and announces the hands of all five players? C’mon. It takes time to observe people and get a feel for them, and even then, you won’t be THAT accurate.
I liked Brad Pitt’s poker instruction to young Hollywood actors in Ocean’s Eleven.
If you listen to the commentary of House of Games, David Mamet & Ricky Jay bitch about how rarely movies ever get the details of poker right. The poker in HoG itself is rather incidental (we barely even see a complete hand), but probably exceedingly accurate (most of the players at the table are actual pros).
What’s great about that scene is that it’s really a con between Pitt and Clooney against Pitt’s students to swindle them out of money. It’s not explained or even more than subtly implied at any point in the scene, which makes it so funny to watch.
What’s even greater is that it’s a con they set up on the fly - Rusty didn’t even know Danny was out of prison until he saw him at the table. Danny does give Rusty a very quick wink though.
Doesn’t Topher proudly turn over his “winning” hand and say “All Red!” somewhere in that scene too?
Perhaps the best (in my mind, of course) is The Cincinnati Kid with Steve McQueen and Edward G. Robinson. Besides great, intelligently played poker, it has a wonderful blues score.
Big Hand for a Little Lady with Henry Fonda was also very good at illustrating at least one aspect of poker.
Jimmy Stewart had a minor role in Cheyenne Autumn as Wyatt Earp, but there is a good poker scene for him that is rather instructive.
“ou’re good, kid, but as long as I’m around, you’re only second best.”
This was going to be my call, but since you got that hand I fold.
Stranger
Believe it or not, the Eric Bana / Drew Barrymore Lucky You had the poker right.
The non-poker parts of the movie were pretty mediocre, though.
Really? There’s a scene in the previews where she’s kibbitzing, and he explains how hold’em works, and she says something like “oh, so you only need one more heart to make a flush” or something, out loud, and all the other players fold. Which is totally backwards. If she revealed that he had a flush DRAW, the other players (if they were good) would go all in, forcing him to either make a terrible call or fold (well, depending on the size of the pot and the chip stacks, etc.).
As for Rounders, I think it’s a good example of a movie that does a very good job of FEELING authentic, without actually being real at all. For instance, the hand where Matt Damon loses all his money at the beginning is a classic example of a dumb movie poker hand, with the second nuts losing to the nuts. Does it make you a bad player who got outplayed to lose with 999AA vs AAA99 on a flushed board?
And the hand at the end where he flops a straight makes no sense at all. An ace comes on the river and the russian guy (Teddy KGB) says “that couldn’t have helped you”. What hand was Teddy KGB putting him on? And what did Teddy have?
Okay, it’s not perfect. Concessions were made for easy jokes and dramatic concerns. But it was more realistic than most others I’ve seen.
I’ve never seen The Cincinnati Kid, though.
You can’t ever be a real man if you don’t spend time with your family and haven’t at least seen half of Steve McQueen’s oeuvre, including Papillon, Bullitt, and The Cincinnati Kid.
Stranger
As I remember it, that was the hand that drove poor Rusty into the main bar area, before Danny slipped in the back.
Incidentally, proudly announcing “Allllllllllllll… REDS” is the default way of announcing that you’ve fucked something- anything up in spectacular fashion among my group of friends.
I don’t recall the implication that it made him a bad player.
I have no idea how to play poker, so it may not be accurate. But one of my favorite scenes in The Sting is conman extraordinaire Henry Gondorf cheating the hell outta racketeer gangster Doyle Lonnegan in a train bound for NYC. Paul Newman plays fake drunk, fake loutish Henry with glee, and Robert Shaw’s Lonnegan is a vicious, scary rat. The best part is that Lonnegan plays with a loaded deck, so he’s cheating too – Henry’s just a better cheater.