Killing Phils

A Blog by Blair Rodman

Killing Phils

Good Luck, Bad Poker

February 23, 2012 · 839 Comments

HBO heavily promoted their new series, Luck, for months preceding the premier. Being a gambler, I was intrigued and hoped for a memorable series. Luck features great stars in Dustin Hoffman, Nick Nolte, Dennis Farina and Richard Kind, among others. The series is produced by Michael Mann and created by David Milch, who is purportedly an avid horse-player, although probably not a successful one, as the show focuses on the dark side of the horse-racing industry.

Not being a horse bettor, I can’t really comment on the veracity of the show’s treatment of the horse-racing world. Comments I’ve read or people I’ve talked to seem to think it’s realistic. The problem for me  stems from the poker scenes that are a prominent part of the story, featuring the characters Jerry, one of the four lucky horse players and a massive poker degenerate, and Leo, a high-stakes player who torments him.

The first poker scene takes place in the second episode. (The game is no-limit hold’em in all the poker scenes.) Jerry gets broke with the nut straight when a flush card hits the river. He makes a big bet, acting first, gets raised all-in and calls. A good player would likely have check-called in that spot, but ok, he’s a fish so it’s acceptable.

The problems start with the second hand. Jerry calls a big all-in bet on the river, with not much in the middle, in a heads-up pot with Leo on a Th-Kc-Qc-9c-4s board. First issue--the dealer tosses an all-in button in front of Jerry. The button is used to let other players know when a player is all-in so they don’t make a mistake in subsequent action. But in this case, he’s merely calling a bet, ending the action, so there’s no need. A minor point that most viewers wouldn’t catch, for sure, and I hoped it was just a slip. No such luck. It turns out Jerry called the bet with Qh 8h. Ok he’s bad, but that’s unreal. He also turns up his hand first so Leo can slowroll him with a set of tens. Pretty questionable bet on Leo’s part, too.

It’s in the next hand that the writers came up with a real doozy. The scene shows the floorman coming over to announce that normal rules have been suspended and our hero would be allowed to go in his pocket, or in this case, out to his car, to call an all-in bet for more than he has on the table, something I’ve never seen other than in old movies. Jerry retrieves 25k to call this bet holding two kings on an A-Q-8 board! His opponent, who naturally had a big hand or he wouldn’t have allowed Jerry to go for more money, holds A-Q. Of course, our hero snags a king on the river and wins a huge pot. Who dreamed up that scenario?

It doesn’t get any better in subsequent episodes. In the latest, there are three mistakes in the first three actions we see. The first two are when players announce that they are folding. If you watch a real poker game, players just toss the cards toward the dealer without announcing their fold. OK, maybe this lets the viewer follow the action better, but then the very next player makes an obvious string-bet. Come on, guys.

Realistic gambling scenes are a rarity in movies and TV shows. Some are ludicrous. Watch any old movie with scenes at a craps table and you’ll see chips strewn all over the layout in ways that make no sense to anyone who understands the game. Or poker hands where the confrontation is always between two improbable hands, as in The Cincinnati Kid or the 2006 version of Casino Royale. When I see those hands I think cold deck (cheating), which isn’t the intention.

Here’s the thing; they’re telling us a story that we’re supposed to buy into, yet they put in things that cast doubt on the veracity of whole story. If we can’t believe the gambling scenes, how can we believe the rest of it?

A perfect example was 2003’s The Cooler, starring Alex Baldwin and William H. Lacy.  Every gambler I know who saw it thought it was one the worst movies ever. My wife and I went and came out of the theatre laughing at how bad it was. But, as I listened to other people, they were saying how much they liked it! The absurdity of the gambling scenes and concepts meant nothing to them, because they knew so little about the subject that it didn’t matter, and they weren’t distracted from the story.

 Another example was the ‘80s series Crime Story, also produced by Michael Mann and shot in Las Vegas. Anthony (Curtis) and I had connections to some of the TV people and offered to help them edit  the gambling stuff, which was really poorly done. (What really capped it for me was when one of the characters was into a loan shark and was saying that he couldn’t pay the vig (rhymes with big). Only he pronounced it with a soft g, as in midge!) Cleaning up the scenes would have been an easy fix, but they weren’t interested. Is this just a Michael Mann thing? Unfortunately, no. The reality is that most Hollywood people don’t think it matters. They think it’s all about the art, and no one cares about the accuracy. But they’re wrong.  

I undrstand dramatic license, but when inaccuracies distract the viewer from the story-telling, the product suffers. Even if only a small part of the audience catches the errors, when they’re easily remedied it doesn’t make sense to not do so. Maybe this mindset is part of the reason there’s so much crap coming out of Hollywood.

My Dad always said if you want something done right, hire a professional. If you’re listening Hollywood, when it comes to gambling stuff, I’m available!

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