Posted Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2005, at 9:59 AM PT
When Rounders came out in 1998, professional poker players loved it. For one thing, it stirred up new interest in the game … which meant a fresh batch of suckers. But even more gratifying for the pros was this: Hollywood had finally done its research.
The poker hands in Rounders are supremely realistic. We never see four aces losing out to a straight flush (I'm looking at you, every other poker movie). And it isn't just the cards that the film gets right—the betting amounts and the table talk are also dead-on. When I covered the World Series of Poker in 1999 (yes, before it was cool, waaaaaay before; James McManus didn't go until 2000!) all the pro players there agreed that Rounders was the first time a movie got poker right.
Tilt—a new dramatic series on ESPN (debuting Thursday, 9 p.m. ET)—gets poker right, too. Tilt was created by the guys who wrote Rounders, and just like Rounders it features lots of realistic poker play. Sadly, it does not feature Matt Damon, Edward Norton, sharp dialogue, or compelling plots.
No comments:
Post a Comment