Rounders is a 1998 film about the underground world
of high-stakes poker. Directed by John Dahl and starring
Matt Damon and Edward Norton, the movie follows two
friends who need to quickly earn enough cash playing poker to pay off a huge debt. The term “rounder” refers to a person whose sole means of earning a living is by playing cards.
The movie opened to mixed reviews and only made a modest amount of money. However, with the growing popularity of
Texas hold 'em and other poker games, Rounders has become a cult hit.
Plot
Rounders is about a former rounder Mike McDermott (Matt Damon) who is torn between
his commitment to his girlfriend Jo (Gretchen Mol) to stop gambling, and his loyalty to his
best friend Les “Worm” Murphy (Edward Norton). Worm has a large gambling debt and slowly
convinces Mike to use his card playing skills to help him make the money to pay off the debt.
The movie opens with a confident Mike gathering his entire bankroll ($30,000) with the intention of doubling it at a
high-stakes poker game with crime boss Teddy KGB (John Malkovich). However, Mike's nines
full of aces are beaten by KGB's aces full of nines and he loses everything. Devastated by the loss, Mike retreats from poker and
swears to his girlfriend Jo to never gamble again. Nine months later, Mike is dividing his time between law school and a night
job driving a truck for his former poker mentor Joey Knish (John Turturro). Mike has so
far kept his promise to stop gambling, however his poker skills are as sharp as ever. One scene shows Mike making a delivery to
his professor, Abe Petrovsky (Martin Landau), during a late night poker game and instantly
reading every player's hand, impressing everyone at the table.
Mike's friend, Lester "Worm" Murphy (Edward Norton), enters the picture after being
released from prison. Through Mike's commentary it becomes clear that Worm, a deft poker cheater before he was even sent up, has
only honed his skills more while in the joint. Mike picks up Worm after his release and Worm quickly convinces Mike to join him
in a night of poker playing. Mike rationalizes that it is only one night and there is not much risk as the pair plan to just
cheat a few rich kids out of their money.
Worm owes $15,000 to various people and needs to make that money before they start to come looking for payment. When Mike and
Worm return to New York City, Mike introduces Worm to a local high-stakes game, warns him
to play straight, then leaves.
Mike returns home to his girlfriend who is suspicious of his activities. Her fears are confirmed when she discovers a wad of
cash in Mike's pocket when he is taking a shower. She leaves him there but he quickly catches up with her and their law school
partners to start preparing for a mock trial. However, just as Mike sits down, Knish shows up
and tells Mike that Worm is cheating and ruining Mike's reputation since Mike vouched for Worm. Mike finds Worm up $8,000 and
cheating two members of the Russian Mafia. He tells Worm to stop cheating and lose the
money back to them before he gets hurt. Worm agrees and Mike leaves him again.
Worm, however, has other plans. He cashes out and takes a break from playing poker by going to a strip club. Worm is found by
his old partner Gramma (Michael Rispoli), who tells Worm that he has consolidated his
debts with the help of his new partner, Teddy KGB, and now Worm owes him $25,000 with only 5 days to pay it off. Gramma then
assaults Worm and takes the $10,000 he has made so far.
As Mike is returning home, he meets Worm in front of his apartment building. After they go upstairs, they find that Jo has
left Mike and taken most of their furniture. Worm tells Mike that when he is feeling down, poker is the only cure. Mike agrees
and they both leave for Atlantic City. While there, Worm comes clean and tells
Mike about his debt. When they return to the city, Mike and Worm meet with Gramma to try to buy more time. Worm ends up angering
Gramma and Mike vouches for the debt to prevent Gramma from attacking Worm. When they leave Mike tells Worm that he will help,
but it has to be on Mike's terms: straight games, no cheating.
After a couple of days and several games, Mike and Worm have about half the money they need. Worm gets impatient and tells
Mike of a high-stakes game with "some municipal" employees in Binghamton, which is
about three hours away from NYC, although Mike mentions it being "five hours each way". Mike agrees and they make the trip, only
to find the game is held by a collection of state troopers. Mike tells Worm to go bowling and proceeds to play poker and increase
his stake. After some time Worm shows up, sits at the table and immediately begins to cheat, much to Mike's dismay. Mike pretends
to be a stranger to Worm, and tries to continue to play straight, but Worm repeatedly deals Mike cheating hands. It's not long
before they are caught and are severely beaten by the off-duty policemen, who take all the money they have made. With nothing
left Worm decides it is time to run, but Mike tells his friend he cannot do it and they part ways.
Mike first tries to borrow the money from Knish who turns him down, offering to help any way he can but not by giving him any
money. It is at this point that Mike reveals why he risked everything at KGB's place at the beginning of the story: because he
had earlier gone to the casino and won a hand against the legendary Johnny
Chan (who played himself in the film). Mike then tries Professor Petrovsky, who sympathizes with Mike, but can only lend
him $10,000. With only hours left to pay off the debt, Mike decides the only one thing left to do is to face Teddy KGB again.
Mike returns to KGB's club, who is more than happy to accommodate Mike with a game. It is not long before Mike doubles his
money. With enough to pay off the debt and be half way back to paying back the professor, Mike starts to leave the club. KGB says
he feels "unsatisfied" and goads Mike into staying by saying that he's only paying Mike with his own money.
Mike continues to play masterfully, and discovers KGB's tell. He actually makes KGB
aware of the tell and that he (Mike) knows it. Mike notes to himself that he would normally never inform another player about his
tell as Mike could have used it to slowly bleed money away from KGB and eventually bust him. However, the short timeframe he has
to repay Teddy forces him to try to make KGB tilt by informing him of the tell.
This enrages KGB and visibly puts him on tilt. With no possibility of any "glasnost",
Mike proceeds to take KGB for $60,000+. Mike's final hand is 89 (an eight and a nine), and the flop is 67T (a six, a seven and a
ten), giving Mike not just a straight (five cards in order, a strong hand) but indeed the nut
hand: the strongest possible hand given the community cards in play. Mike slow-plays it, leading KGB to believe that he is
trying to draw into as yet unmade hand. Based on this belief KGB concludes that the final ace dealt means that Mike has a busted
hand, and so KGB bets all-in to finish Mike off. This hand plays nearly identically to the video that Mike had watched over and
over where Johnny Chan closes out Erik Seidel
in the 1988 World Series of Poker.
KGB is infuriated and Mike prods him: "Are you satisfied now, Teddy? Because I can keep busting you up all night if you like."
His underlings are about to rush upon him, but KGB admits, "He beat me. Straight up. Pay him. Pay that man his money." (Note that
"straight up" means "honestly.") After Mike pays back everyone he owes, Mike is left with his original $30,000. It is unsure how
Mike came out with 60,000+ at the end of the movie, but before Mike and KGB played the second time Mike said you can load up any
time. Meaning that he could add more to his stack and so this is where Mike got his three stacks of "high society." He makes
peace with his ex-girlfriend, entrusts her to repay the professor, and the movie ends with him heading off to Las Vegas to try his skills at the World Series of
Poker.
Production
Rounders began filming in December of 1997 and was set mostly in New York City, with the
notable exception being that the law school scenes were filmed at Rutgers Law School in
Newark, New Jersey.
Featured cast
Reception
Despite an unremarkable theatrical release, Rounders has gone on to become somewhat of a cult classic, particularly amongst poker enthusiasts. In an interesting chicken or the egg situation, some speculate the film is directly responsible for the recent
increase in the popularity of Texas hold 'em, while others believe that the substantial
increase in the popularity of poker has nothing to do with the movie Rounders, but that same increase does have everything
to do with the come-lately increase in the popularity of the film, so many years after its theatrical release.
2003 WSOP champion Chris
Moneymaker and 2006 WSOP champion Jamie
Gold have both cited the movie as respectively igniting and reigniting their interest in poker. The movie is widely quoted
by poker players at physical and online poker rooms.
Rounders earned $8,459,126 during its opening weekend and closed with a domestic gross of $22,912,409.[1]
Trivia
- Matt Damon and Edward Norton were both sponsored by Binion's Horseshoe Casino in
the 1998 World Series of Poker tournament. Damon was seated at a table with
poker legend Doyle Brunson. Norton was beaten holding a full house by Surinder Sunar holding four tens. Damon was beaten about an hour later by Brunson. Damon went all-in with
pocket kings, Brunson called with pocket aces and said "I hate to do it to ya, Matty." When asked if they would ever play in the
tournament again, Norton said "Anytime they want to stake us $10,000."
- Johnny Chan agreed to be in the movie because his daughter wanted to meet
Matt Damon.
- The infamous "Judge's Game" scene where Mike McDermott reads the hands of five players with complete accuracy is often cited
as being the most substantial Hollywood embellishment in the entire film, as it pertains to poker. While talented pro players can
often put their opponents on a range of starting or drawing hands with some degree of accuracy, and occasionally, read a specific
opponent for a specific hand, the hand-reading ability suggested in the "Judges Game" scene is beyond the scope of credibility
for even the most skilled players.
- The uniforms worn by the New York State Troopers in the game in which Mike and Worm are beaten are not standard issue New
York State Trooper uniforms.
- Professional poker player Chris Ferguson has been quoted as saying that Joey Knish is
the true hero of Rounders.
- Mike is seen taking money out of a book called "Super/System", a poker book written by
the legendary Doyle Brunson. Mike himself pulls multiple quotes from the book, namely calling Texas Hold'em the "Cadillac" of
poker games. Ironically, in one section of the book, Brunson writes that one should never risk all of his money at once, which
Mike is preparing to do.
- Mike states that Worm employs the "Double Duke," a technique where the dealer intentionally gives the mark a strong hand, and
then deals an even stronger hand to a cohort to encourage betting.
- Judge Kaplan is named after long time actor turned poker pro Gabe Kaplan.
- The movie's depictions of New York City's underground poker clubs were based upon several of its then-existing clubs. The
"Chesterfield" club shown in the movie was a thinly-veiled homage to New York's "Mayfair
Club", which at the time the movie was released was the largest and longest-running such club. Several of the characters
in the movie had real-life counterparts as well. Joey Knish was based on New York rounder Joel Bagels. Petra, depicted as the
manager of the club, was based on a woman with similar responsibilities at the Mayfair named Ingrid. The real-life Teddy KGB was
actually Eddie KGB, an old man who played relatively low-limit games, and had none of the mob connections of his fictitious
analogue.
- The writing team behind the movie went on to co-create a poker-themed television mini-series for ESPN in 2005, named Tilt
- American Punk Rock Band Public Uproar wrote a song entitled "Rounders" after the film.
- It is unclear what Teddy KGB (John Malkovich) is holding during the final heads up
hand against Mike (Matt Damon), when Mike flops the nut straight. The consensus is that KGB
was holding pocket aces. This is evidenced by the way he is betting, his dialogue when the Ace of
Spades hits on the river ("That ace could not have helped you."), his decision to push all of his chips in when the ace
appears on the river, and his reaction when he loses. On the DVD commentary track, where four poker pros do the commentary
(Johnny Chan, Phil Hellmuth,
Chris Ferguson and Chris Moneymaker), they
speculate KGB was holding aces because of these facts, although Chris Ferguson offers the theory that KGB was trying to bluff
Mike out of the pot with rags.
References
- ^ Box Office Mojo Rounders (1998). Retrieved on
2007-06-07.
External links
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