There’s nothing like a casino scene to add some flamboyance and glitz to a movie. In terms of the games, they’re a great tool for moviemakers to introduce an element of tension to a scene.
While it’s possible to write or direct a casino scene without being a gambling expert, blunders perpetuate inaccurate stereotypes about the games predominantly played on a casino floor. Even some of the most prolific casino movies have managed to incorporate mistakes that really ought to have been caught.
The hands
Poker is a game of skill and luck that now predominantly lives online in the modern era, with sites such as https://games.paddypower.com/ offering virtual iterations of the classics such as poker, backgammon, and roulette, as well as slots games. However, in cinema, the casino action is typically face-to-face in a brick-and-mortar establishment as opposed to players head-to-head in the virtual space, on desktop screens.
For those that play regularly, you’ve probably had some memorable hands. Maybe you got a full house at The River, been dealt a pair of aces, or even a once-in-a-lifetime Royal Flush. The thing is, even the best poker players don’t often get good hands and certainly not the trillion-to-one stupendous hands we often see in the cinema.
Mel Gibson in Maverick is a perfect example of this, as the final scene of the movie sees something that never happens in real poker. In this scene, we have the late great James Coburn holding four 8s and Alfred Molina’s Angel with a straight flush. Then artistic license (dramatic license, poetic license: call it what you want) goes too far, as Maverick reveals the most improbable Royal Flush. Casino Royale committed the same sin, with the final players in Le Chiffre’s high stakes game getting a flush, two full houses, and a straight flush at odds of around 18 trillion to 1.
The people
Ever played craps? Did everyone cheer you on and celebrate your wins? Thought not. It’s perfectly understandable why movies like The Cooler have William H. Macy at the high-stakes craps table surrounded by stunning girls and people cheering, it adds to the drama.
The rules
The big one here is the no-limits tables: they don’t exist. All tables have limits and while you do get high-rollers placing huge amounts of loot on each hand or spin of the roulette wheel, the sums seen in movies are just dumb.
A little more pedantic, but in The Cincinnati Kid, Steve McQueen’s character ‘The Kid’ commits the cardinal sin of what is known as ‘string-betting’. A string-bet is when the player does not put all his desired amount of chips into the pot in one action, but instead, in multiple moves.
Away from rules, but in the field of etiquette, we have the over-generous James Bond. Again, we go back to Casino Royale and the conclusion of the poker match sees Bond the recipient of a cool $115 million. What’s the first thing he does? Tip the dealer half a million. There have been some great tippers in the world, as evidenced on https://www.ranker.com/list/biggest-tips, but nothing near Bond’s astronomical tip.
These are the common errors we often see with casino movies and hopefully, directors will insist on having experts present during future productions to ensure these aren’t repeated. If you want a movie without mistakes, watch Matt Damon in Rounders. You can read https://www.themovieblog/rounders/ for three reasons why it’s the best movie about poker, but it might just be the best casino movie.
