Lucky Us, Poker Is Big In Movies

Poker's big,but why so popular all of a sudden?

By: Andre Rivas
Published: Monday, April 30th 2007 at 1:24 AM

Lucky You is the orphan counter-programming feature set to battle (or at least throw a girl-punch) against Spider-Man 3 this week. Eric Bana stars as a gambler out to win the World Series of Poker while juggling the relationships of his girlfriend (played by Drew Barrymore) and his estranged father (Robert Duvall). This movie has had more scheduled release dates than I can remember. I think it was originally scheduled for my birth but there were post-production issues. We know that's never a good sign but I have to give this movie a chance. I like director Curtis Hanson, I like Eric Bana and I love poker.

But where did this sudden poker craze come from?

You can't escape poker these days. Bravo has the Celebrity Poker Showdown which – even though I can't ever recall which day it's on – I always seem to catch. For the last few years I've been straight-up addicted to the Travel Channel's World Poker Tour shows. There's great play and nice commentary by Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten (who was not only a professional tennis Rookie of the Year who once defeated John McEnroe, but also starred in the ABC movie-of-the-week, The Bionic Boy! Yup, a true renaissance man). Sabina Gadecki fills in the co-host spot for Shana Hiatt these days but I still get my Hiatt fix on NBC's Poker After Dark (at 2:00 a.m, the show's a hit).

Lately, it looks like ESPN got their big burly hands on the the U.S. Poker Championship which airs weeknights, because their 3,480 hours of year-round World Series of Poker coverage isn't enough for crackheads like myself. But hey, I'm not complaining. Hosts Lon McEachern and Norman Chad have become kind of like houseguests. Even when it's getting late, I feel bad telling them to leave, so I leave the TV on. I haven't even mentioned Fox Sports Network's slew of poker shows, but I'm not much of a FSN guy in general.

These days I can't enter a sports bar without seeing a local tournament taking place. I used to frequent two of them on Tuesdays and Thursdays to rack up points (you rack up enough and you get to enter a bigger satellite tournament at like, say, the Hard Rock casino) but it gets too damn expensive after a while. It's not the poker that costs you because the tournaments are free. It's the beer … and the wings … and the over-tips to hot waitresses … and the beer.

If you're wondering how poker became so popular, well everyone has their theories. But the way I see it, there were three big events that helped the game of poker become what it is today. Let's have a look-see.

Reason # 1: Rounders becoming a cult hit.
I think the poker age was coming no matter what, but this movie was a serious kick in the ass. Remember, it wasn't just poker that got popular. It was Texas Hold'em that got popular. Everything else is just fallout. It's like Ordell said in Jackie Brown:

Them Hong Kong movies came out, every nigga gotta have a forty-five. And they don't want one, they want two, cause nigga want to be "The Killer." … The killer had a .45, they want a .45.

Rounders came out in 1998 and everyone wanted to be Mike McD. When I went to see it, I went in thinking my friends and I were a bunch of poker gurus by playing in HUGE $20 dollar buy-in games. Ooooh! There was nary a weekend where we didn't have a poker game and we played every game imagineable: Seven Card Stud, 5 Card Draw, 44, Jacks or Better, 4X4, Trip Jacks or Better, Low Club In The Hole, Chicago, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Baseball … almost everything but the grown man's game: Texas Hold'em (and Omaha, but screw Omaha).

I remember we went to the midnight showing at the AMC theatre in Mizner Park, opening night. We were practically the only people there. We watched a classic that night, a little John Dahl film with the kid from Good Will Hunting and the guy from Primal Fear. I watched the movie another three, four times in the following weeks and it's still one of my favorite films. It opened our eyes up to Texas Hold'em and we really haven't looked back since. The movie became immensely popular on video, a sleeper pick if there ever was one. I contend that as the movie's popularity grew, so did the game of poker. I don't know anyone that plays the game that hasn't seen the movie and I know a ton of people that said they started playing – or at least became serious about playing – because of it.

Reason # 2: Online poker gaming takes over the internet
When sites like PartyPoker.net and PokerStars.net started popping up, it made it a lot easier for you to feel like you were a poker champ. No longer were you stuck beating the same old faces in the same old neighborhoods. Now you could bluff some chest-puffing fish across time zones. Online gambling took a big hit last year and a lot of these sites had to go the way of cash-free tournaments. But I'm willing to bet there's still plenty of college dropouts due to online poker. I'm not a big online poker fan, myself, especially now that you're playing with fake money. Everybody just calls everything. There's almost no skill involved. It's frustrating.

Reason # 3: The 2003 World Series of Poker
In 2003, sensing the emerging popularity of the game, ESPN decides to do humungo coverage on the World Series of Poker and an amateur by the name of Chris Moneymaker wins the whole shebang. It was the shot heard 'round the poker world – a message to any schmuck at home that they could be a millionaire by playing poker. Think about it. His name is Moneymaker. That's the name of legends. Now everyone wants to be a legend. Everyone wants a nickname, a personality. You should see some of these clowns on TV these days. Jeez.

The then 2003 record of 839 players turned into 2,576 players in 2004. In 2005 there were 5,619 entrants and in 2006 … 8,773. The purses keep growing too. When Moneymaker won, he grabbed 2.5 mil. Last year Jamie Gold took home 12 million bucks. 12 million! These days you can't turn on ESPN2 or ESPN Classic without catching either a World Series of Poker or a US Championship Tourny. It's insane, the popularity of the game.

The irony is that it's actually getting less fun to watch as a viewer because you know so many of these guys that make it to the final table are just lucky as hell. When you have like five tables left, you want at least 80% of the players to be pros. But I keep watching these lucky, clueless bastards getting knocked out on dumbass plays late into the tournaments or making bad calls they luck out on to stay in. It's horrific. The more amateurs out there, the less likely you're going to see true skilled professionals like Daniel Negreanu or Gus Hansen. These are entertaining players to watch. You can actually see the skill. Negreanu is Mike McD in Rounders, only real (he actually looks more like Worm, though). No one has the ability to call out a hand like this guy does.

Meanwhile, Hansen is a complete lunatic. I've never seen anyone play more crap cards than he does. He truly doesn't play the cards, he plays the man (or woman). He's got to be a bitch to play against because you can never tell what he has. And nothing is better than watching actress Jennifer Tilly play. First off, she's really good. Her boyfriend, The Unabomber (Phil Laak), taught her well. Second, she's totally hot and completely stacked. And I think that super-high pitch voice she sports in movies is fake because she doesn't sound anywhere near as annoying at the poker table. There's fewer things hotter than a real babe who can play cards. Nobody is ever looking to take away her chips anytime soon. I'm actually surprised she doesn't make the final table more often.

Anyway, those are the three big reasons I account for poker's popularity and I think they are all equally important. There's been a ton of movies involving poker … Cincinnatti Kid, Maverick, California Split (which I've never seen) to name a few. There's also been a ton of movies that featured poker games. The Sting has one of my favorite poker scenes in any movie. The game also shows up in films the like of Honeymoon in Vegas, Ocean's 11 (with a bunch of young actors learning to play the most hip game around), and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Really, without the poker craze, Casino Royale would still have had a game of baccarat instead of Texas Hold'em.

And again, I think much of it has to do with Rounders, a film that actually seeped into our culture. Anyone who reads ESPN's Bill Simmons knows what I'm talking about (speaking of which, Simmons has a great two-part interview with the screenwriters of Rounders. You can read part one here and part two here).

I seriously doubt Lucky You will have any effect on the poker world (though if it's lame enough, it could turn away a potential player or two) but maybe it's romantic subplot will lure some extra female players. We could always use more of them at a poker table.