Movies are fun – they tell stories that we want to hear. We often don’t care if the details are true, or even logical as long as it makes for a good movie. Now, ask an astrophysicist what they think about most Hollywood movies about space and they will fight down an urge to go on a long tirade about vacuum, sound, and the works.
Well, we may not understand much about laws of nature, but we do have a fairly sound grasp of poker, and we have been taken aback at how wrong all movies get poker nearly all the time. Today, we take a look at why this is – and we don’t insist that it’s necessarily a bad thing.
Does it make us angry? You bet. Is it all for the worse? We seriously doubt that. Let’s take a look at what we mean.
Movies About Poker Use Poker as a Prop
A truer word has never been spoken. From Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels to Casino Royale, poker is used as a sort of prop, even though a big portion of the flick is focused on the game itself. There is the suspense, the secretive lifting of the edges of the cards to make sure that you have a King and an Ace, or that your opponent does, and that you are flying blindly into a bad decision.
Well, this is all used for dramatic effect. Poker is sort of a prop in its own movie, as it needs to help create conflicts, put the main characters into a pickle, or have them on the run from angered New York mobsters who are determined to collect their debt or start collecting body parts – this kind of thing.
This is understandable. Movies are all about telling stories, and sometimes even the movies about poker cannot really focus on the game itself or get it down accurately. Just think of James Bond who enjoyed both blackjack and baccarat, and some poker, and always seemed to have some insight that others did not.
Well, that’s not actually true. You simply cannot have insight by approaching a table, looking at the back of the cards, and going “oh, yes.” Speaking of 007, Casino Royale, one of the best movies in the entire franchise, had Daniel Craig, a great actor by all means, play a game of poker. Craig had no idea how the game played and he had zero interest (initially) in it. In fact, Craig’s co-star Mads Mikkelsen said that the actor “sucked at poker” – ouch.
Of course, this does not mean that Casino Royale was not suspenseful or fun or that poker players didn’t enjoy it – they did, but they didn’t expect to find anything remotely accurate about how poker was represented.
Separating Fact from Fiction
Now, there is another aspect to movies that feature poker and make it one of their main themes. Just because the movie will create conflict over a game of poker, it does not mean that the movie is about poker per se.
That is why it’s important to separate fact from fiction. Of course, when you see a hand played in the most incredulous way based on no information whatsoever other than someone’s bravado (which actually works in real life but not as often as you would like it to), it’s hard to fight down that discontent which nags at you and tells you that yes – they could have done it so much better.
They could have called Daniel Negreanu and just asked if that hand would make sense and what would be better – to just land it some small degree of credibility, you know. You can find better and more accurate games on virtually any online card room than you would in most poker movies.
You don’t believe us? Well, you can click this link to play now and see for yourself. Poker sites in the United States will definitely not have you believe that you can win any hand and you won’t find opponents who are cowered by your sudden show of machismo, so make sure that you factor this in.
Still, if you can sort of overlook the glaring issues with the factuality of the game, flicks about poker aren’t too bad after all.
The Need for Romanticizing Poker in Movies
Not least, movies about poker are a huge selling point for the game. Poker has not always been so popular – in fact, it can definitely use even more advertisement. So, what of it if Daniel Craig doesn’t like poker, or he doesn’t care about being particularly good at it?
There are millions of people out there who have seen Casino Royale and entertained – briefly or not -the idea of playing poker themselves. And this is the exact point of having more of these movies about the game. They are ambassadors, they help build up an ecosystem and promote competitiveness.
Movies spark curiosity in viewers who may have thought of the game of poker as a sort of a snooze, just like Casino Royale’s director, Martin Campbell, thought. Poker is clearly so much more, and romanticizing the game in movies might anger people who are actually intimately familiar with the game.
But if you look at this as a way to promote the game, get more people interested, and enjoy an even better, bigger, and stronger community – then the inaccuracies have been worth it.
