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Is there any casino game better suited to the big screen than Poker? Whether you play around your friend’s kitchen table or online at sites like’s https://poker.paddypower.com/, there’s an innate appeal to watching a hand of poker unfold where high stakes are in the offing. With a great repertoire of films to draw from, trying to choose the best poker scenes in movies might be a challenger but we’ve managed to narrow it down to a handful – what do you think? Are these the best poker scenes in film? Let us know in the comments below!
A Big Hand for the Little Lady
A technicolour classic from 1966, this classic Western is focused around a high stakes poker game hosted by the five richest men in town in a massive event that garners local attention. The game doesn’t really get going until the five men are joined by a family on their way to buy a new house with the husband joining the game and betting progressively higher until the final hand where the husband must both go all in and acquire more funds. He passes out and is replaced by his wife who tells the men she doesn’t know how to play. After showing her hand to a notoriously stingy owner of a local bank, she gets a loan and the men must all fold. As great as this scene is, the twist at the end that the family are card sharps and the bank owner their accomplice only makes the scene that much sweeter of a perfectly deployed bluff!
Ocean’s Eleven
Brad Pitt and George Clooney’s first appearance together around the table is instructional as it is dramatic – with Clooney’s character betting heavy on an opening hand with Brad Pitt’s eloquently expressing to everyone that Clooney has to be bluffing, talking through everyone’s choices as they play. Concluding with Clooney winning the pot with 4 nines and an exceptional poker face that kept the group strung along while Pitt did all the work for him. Brad Pitt’s face at the end is priceless, especially once you know that he and Clooney are in cahoots. The perfectly executed con is as good as the one from A Big Hand for the Little Lady!
Casino Royale
This remake of a classic changed the central game to Poker and gave us one of the most intense games ever shown on screen. With Le Chiffre, the CIA and Bond all competing with a much bigger eye on the prize – while the enormous pot of cash was an incentive, the real game was to force Le Chiffre into a position where an outside agency could control him. During the course of the game, Bond goes bankrupt, gets poisoned, and bailed out in a deal with the CIA to buy him back into the game. The end result is a victory for the record books with an ice cold Bond staring down Le Chiffre for a surprise win that sets the rest of the plot of the movie in motion.
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But what do you think? Do you think we’re missing a better movie scene? Let us know in the comments below!
