Poker Face

Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter might focus more on one man’s vices than the ins and outs of the infamous game, but the film still offers a perfect chance to look back on just how much poker and cinema have intertwined over the years – Matt Belenky shuffles the deck to give us a much-needed education.

“Listen, here’s the thing. If you can’t spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker.” So says young hotshot Mike McDermott (Matt Damon) in Rounders. The quote is forever ingrained in the minds of thousands of youths for whom this film, and this moment in poker history, meant everything and anything. Truth to be told, poker has had a grasp on film culture and history for decades before McDermott and his gambling partner and friend, Worm (Edward Norton), took to the streets and alleyways searching for an underground poker game.

Even though poker’s origins trace back to 16th-century China, Texas hold ‘em, the specific type of poker that infiltrated a certain cohort of adolescent boys in the United States and abroad, wasn’t always the poker game shown in film. In the 1920s (when T. “Blondie” Forbes invented Texas hold ‘em), Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin were the stars of the big screen, and card games like blackjack and five-card poker permeated card clubs across the United States. 

To analyse poker scenes for hand accuracy feels wrong, given that cinema, unlike real-life poker, must (or at least should) provide entertainment to draw audiences in and hold their attention. But with Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter, the poker sub-genre has entered a new fold.

As Schrader has so often done with his eponymous pictures (Taxi Driver, Light Sleeper, and First Reformed), the film isn’t so much about card counting – a term delegated to blackjack and not Texas hold ‘em – or tournament poker, as it is about a man coming to terms with demons from his not too distant past, finding a financial backer doubling as his love interest, and mentoring a troubled youth. 

William “Tell” Tillich (Oscar Isaac) plays the titular card counter who travels light from motel to motel, playing poker at casinos until he comes across a conference held in the same building as a casino in Atlantic City. That conference features Major John Gordo (Willem Dafoe), Tell’s abusive boss during his eight-year stint in Iraq who Tell has lasting, ghastly memories of.

Those memories still haunt Tell, perhaps making him do odd things like putting white blankets on everything in his motel room. The hyper-violent, claustrophobic, music blasting Iraq War flashbacks counteract the quiet, methodical, and unhurried poker style and demeanour that Tell shows off at the table. He’s no verbal instigator like Mike McDermott  –he lets the chips and play do the talking. The Card Counter captures that darkly-lit, moody atmosphere weaving its way through slot machine noises and fumes of cigarette smoke – but the history of poker on screen can be much more technical and goes far further back.

The Cincinnati Kid

Five-card stud was the biggest game in town in the 1950s and inThe Cincinanati Kid, young upshot Eric “The Kid” Stoner has everything to play for in Depression era New Orleans. Director Norman Jewison and editor Hal Ashby craft the film’s poker scenes to perfection, as cigar smoke fills the air and older men scow as The Kid takes their money and runs. “This game is open stakes,” says the dealer at one of these games. Open stakes age the film nicely as this move, allowing a player to buy more chips during the hand, was and is not allowed at casinos to this day. However, it was fair game at home games.

And these home games also see little to no playing chips: it’s all stacks of cold, hard, sometimes ruffled cash all out on the table. One of the key hands in the movie plays out as a queen-high straight flush, beating a full house. The Cincinnati Kid sought to introduce the tactic of showing two very powerful hands (i.e. a full house and a straight flush) bumping heads with each other in the same hand. It’s drama by way of poker. Though the probability of making a full house with all five community cards on the board is 2.6%, and the odds of getting a straight flush are 0.02%, that never stopped Hollywood from trying.

The Sting

Four years after not winning a Best Director Oscar for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, George Roy Hill got his win with a crime caper which again featured Paul Newman and Robert Redford as its leading men. The game again is five card poker and Henry Shaw (Newman) plays a stumbling drunk of a player in the film’s only card playing scene, showcasing Shaw opposite Doyle Lonnegan (Redford).

Perhaps proving the adage that behind every good poker scene, there’s a great villain, Lonnegan’s staredowns, winks, and stencil ink mustache lead the viewer to know a mano to mano stand-off will end the scene one way or another. And it’ll be Paul Newman vs. Robert Shaw trying to outsmart each other to the bitter end. Newman wins the $15,000 as he perfectly tricks the other old timers into thinking he’s an amateur, a fish. But the exact opposite is in fact true: he’s a schemer and a trickster, in what is undoubtedly one of the great one-on-one poker showdown scenes in cinema history. 

California Split

“Lyndon Johnson’s definitely his hero, I figure he owns a piece of the town. Haberdashery. Figure he sells cowboy hats,” Charlie (Elliott Gould) tells Bill (George Segal) as they try to get a “read” on the players seated at the casino table, playing five card poker – soon to be a table that Bill will join and take a lot of money from. Though Robert Altman’s masterpiece isn’t so much a poker movie as it is a gambling one, poker still dominates much of the conversation.

This scene in particular, in which Charlie goes around one by one, breaking down each player’s occupation or background just by how they look or are dressed, is both hilarious and not inaccurate. Often a player’s attire, age, or loquaciousness is a sign of the type of poker player that they are on the felt. “You’re not in the hand unless you got the nuts,” Charlie warns Bill again, the nuts meaning the best hand possible in that particular moment. Most notably this film established the gambling template of a two-hander, one that Rounders, Mississippi Grind, and other gambling films and buddy films would emulate after. 

House of Games

No writer feels as suited for the poker vernacular as David Mamet. “I’m from the United States of kiss my ass” suggests a sign of things to come, for the now staunchly right-leaning Mamet. To think this film was his directing debut is also a feat, because the poker room set-ups are so impressive. Dr. Margaret Ford is a psychiatrist who gets in too deep when deciding to help one of her patients settle his debts and prevent his impending death.

Ford meets Mancuso, a con man who offers to forgive her patient’s debt if Ford agrees to play in the back of a pool hall poker game and spot George’s tell. “When he’s bluffing, he plays with his little gold ring,” Mancuso tells Ford outside the poker room, warning her about George in the process. George plays an antagonistic villain who ends up taking the money, setting off a chain of events that finds Ford further down the rabbit hole with Mancuso and his fellow schemers.

Croupier

Watching Mike Hodges’ UK-set neo-noir picture gives you the feeling that Clive Owen will be the next big star for decades to come. In Croupier, Jack Manfred (Owen) changes lovers almost as quickly as he changes hair color. This film feels like the closest cousin to The Card Counter. Yes, Manfred is a croupier (a casino dealer) but he’s also an aspiring writer who despises his job, loses interest in his girlfriend, and is facing a philosophical crisis as he keeps making morally unjust, illegal decisions.

At the casino, Manfred is the croupier mainly for blackjack but there is also a home game poker scene that takes place on a weekend getaway trip. And  Manfred doesn’t even play poker at all, he agrees to play dealer for those staying in the house overnight. Manfred revels in dealing, in having control over the way the cards are dealt, and he even cheats to help his date win big that night. Owen’s performance is nothing short of spectacular and the poker scene, terse as it may be, errs on the side of patience and trickery in an effective way. 

Rounders

Director John Dahl, who made his name with terrific noirs including Red Rock West and The Last Seduction in the early ‘90s, hit it big when he joined forces with future Billions showrunners Brian Koppelman and Davie Levien. Dahl’s direction and Koppelman and Levien’s dialogue are a match made in heaven. “Generally, the nicer the guy the poorer the card player,” Mike McDermott says before he and Worm cheat at a sheriff’s game and get beat up. The most memorable scene in the film takes place at the end as Mike faces Teddy KGB. “This kid’s got alligator blood,” Teddy exclaims and as he cracks open an oreo – a key tell for Mike to use to his advantage.

The key winning hand involves a nut straight and something more extreme, and yet, a player as smart as Mike (a law school dropout) wouldn’t risk his whole livelihood and bankroll in one heads up match, as it’s terrible bankroll management and no professional would be this imprudent. Yet, there are reckless gamblers who may do such things and it’s Hollywood, after all. Let the hyperbole of a situation play out as it may. It hasn’t robbed the film of some of the best writing in any poker movie, nor some of the best chemistry between Damon and Norton. Rounders also marked the point at which most poker movies began to focus solely around Texas hold ‘em over blackjack. 

Casino Royale

Before Daniel Craig became a mainstay James Bond, he had to prove his worth in a high-stakes poker game in Montenegro against Mads Mikkelsen, playing Le Chiffre, a villainous banker with a deadly scar. Le Chiffre’s chip-twirling tricks are admirable, and what’s notable about the poker in this scene is how many of the players “slow roll” each other in a multi-million dollar pot. Slow roll sees players take their time to reveal their hand when they know (or believe) it’s the winning one.

Le Chiffre slow rolls a huge player’s full house by showing his higher one, after which Bond takes his time revealing what ends up being the winning hand, a straight flush. These situations are possible, but the scene goes out of its way to show one player having a flush, two other players having a full house, before Bond reveals the straight flush. It’s a highly improbable scenario for all these hands to be involved at the same time, yet it almost doesn’t matter because Casino Royale ends up being Craig’s best Bond movie. This scene takes place in by far the wealthiest casino of this list, with the highest amount of money at stake. In fact, where does Bond get $20 million to gamble with? Either the British intelligence budget must be flushed with cash or he is secretly the greatest poker player ever.

Mississippi Grind

Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s film feels like a cop-out, because so much rips off California Split, down to how Gerry dresses similarly to George Segal’s character from the Altman film. And yet, the film modernises those gambling-addict tropes which first made their way to the big screen in the ‘70s. The film features a series of gambling scenes including blackjack, craps, and poker. Gerry plays poker on a riverboat casino and the players are very much still old, rich, and white.

They don bow ties and suits and put chips on their cards to keep them in place. Gerry tells some jokes, as does Curtis, before making a big call on the river against a player and calling their bluff. But unlike most of the other players in this list, Gerry is an addict. He’s happy-go-lucky and his reads during a particular hand are based on feeling instead of logic. When Gerry draws a bad beat (an unlucky outcome), the move shows the brutal nature of poker, and it’s also telling how his reaction doesn’t change regardless of the outcome. Gerry is in it for the gamble and nothing more or nothing less. 

Molly’s Game

No writer enjoys elongated monologues like Aaron Sorkin. Molly’s Game marks Sorkin’s directorial debut and is one of the only poker movies with a female lead – even if she doesn’t play the game itself and runs it instead. Molly showcases an underground poker scene rarely captured on film, before focusing on the one organising the games and controlling the stakes and which players are involved. Sorkin’s writing, like Mamet’s, is well-suited to a game full of so many quirks.

No poker film showcases a “tilt” (when someone begins to play poorly with reckless abandon and no self-control) better than Molly’s Game, as Harlan’s night starts out calm, cool, and collected before ending up in millions of dollars of debt and throwing a tantrum while screaming expletives at fellow players. In just five minutes, Sorkin captures the highest of highs and lowest of lows in an affecting way. All Player X can do take money from Harlan, sipping his tea and smiling wide.

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