Wealthall: Rounders
Thursday, 16 May 2013
I watched Rounders this week. I mean, I’ve watched it before but only about 23 times so it was due a revisit. I heartily recommend it.
It’s become a source of fun among poker geeks these days to criticise the film’s poker scenes, which is a little like having a supermodel arrive at your door and then criticising her choice of underwear. The film is awesome. Heck, the first two minutes are porn for anyone who’s remotely interested in the game. “Yes, yes I want to take my $30k from its secret hiding places and sneak out on Gretchen Mol, probably after doing her – actually, definitely after that – and have some real fun putting it on the line playing high stakes. Me, I want that.”
I’m not sure you could make a better poker movie because the drama of poker is all internal. The big decisions, the sweats, the inner torment and control of your emotions – all of it is extremely hard to dramatise or show convincingly on screen. That’s the main reason poker has struggled to produce a mainstream TV show – you have to be “into” poker to understand what the players are feeling emotionally on the inside. It’s all very fascinating but it’s tough to make it into a compelling film that competes with a big fuck-off car chase. So, enjoy Rounders because you won’t be getting a better poker film anytime soon. Rounders 2 will be slightly worse but I’m still there on opening day.
Rounders is a film with an influence beyond its box office gross (it actually did horribly on its release, although it’s subsequently done well in non cinema forms). A ridiculous number of current professional poker players under 35 cite Rounders as the thing that convinced them that a) poker was the coolest thing on the planet, and b) they should give up their dreams of being a middle manager / solicitor / actuary and become a professional poker player.
The film explores the duality of many people who play poker for a living. Mike and Worm are “the acceptable poker player” and “the unacceptable poker player”, respectively. One is playing a game of skill; the other is involved in the endless pursuit of “the edge”, even if that means cheating, lying and stealing. If we’re honest, while most of us wouldn’t cheat, within all of us there’s a competing desire. One side of us wants to be the best and slowly build up as our skill level lifts us up above the competition. The other part of us wants to win the lottery, get lucky, have the big score and never work again, because – damn it – we deserve it and should get it just for showing up.
Given the influence of Rounders, it’s amazing how one of its main themes is often ignored and abused by the very players it introduced to the game.
You can sheer a sheep many times but skin him only once.
Mike knows this. He gets how the poker economy works; how a weak player will happily lose his money to you if he feels he had a shot and how he’ll even come back and do it again and again if he likes you. Worm doesn’t – he just wants the chips and the money. The guys he takes them from feels like they got whacked, maybe even cheated. Who cares? Worm has the money. The fish doesn’t like you, even hates you. Who cares? Worm has got the chips.
The problem is that many poker players who call themselves “pros” behave more like Worm than Mike. They may not cheat but they do everything possible to cheat their own financial future. It would be bad enough if they simply acknowledged weaker poker players, but it’s worse when they abuse them, criticise them, educate them (to make them play better?!?), rub it in when they lose, point out their mistakes and break games the instant they leave. It’s not smart but most players don’t care as long as they’ve got the money – except, in the long run, there’s less and less money to get because the weak players don’t come back.
As recently as 15 years ago there were very few NLH games. Outside of the WSOP and the small tournament scene, the game barely existed, certainly not in cash form. And NLH has a big problem – good players don’t just beat bad players, they murder them. The weak go broke far too quickly. That’s what’s been happening in poker for the last few years since the poker boom hit. It’s been happening on a much bigger scale than it did before so it’s taken longer to happen, but it’s happening.
“If you can’t spot the sucker in the first 15 minutes, it’s you” is a nice saying but not that many people are actually aware of it or realise that they are the sucker. Even Worm wasn’t stupid enough to point out the sucker, yet it happens over and over again in the modern game. Chip Reese was famous for taking players he’d beaten out to lunch or dinner after the game because he knew who was paying for the meal.
Maybe it’s simply the way things are. After all, poker’s a skill game and eventually, no matter how polite everyone is, the strong will beat the weak. The duality of professional players isn’t the main lesson of Rounders, after all. The main lesson is the most important one you can learn in life, as the title of the John Fox’s 1977 strategy book goes: Quit Your Job, Play Poker and Sleep till Noon. Thirty-five years later, it’s still the greatest dream of all.