A Poker Player's view of Lucky You

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It's an hour into the movie, and already I'm ARRRGGGLEEEBBBAARRRRGGGGLLLEEE'ing.

I tuned it right at the beginning to see this guy pawning a wedding ring and using the money to buy into a game of poker. He bought in for $350. It's clear that he's playing no limit, so here's the problem: If this was $1/$2, that's too much and is not allowed. If it's $2/$4 or higher, it's not the max and therefore not enough. You do not short-buy (buying in for less than the full buy-in). A good player no limit player will win an all in bet more often than he loses. If he's up against someone with $400, then even if he only wins 2/3rds of the time, that's $16 gone because he didn't buy in for the proper amount (the formula for that is: (50 * 2 - 50 * 1)/3... it's the amount you'd win times how many times you'd win it minus how much you'd lose times how many times you'd lose it, divided by the number of times you're going in).

A guy bets $16 on the end, and he MINRAISES (raises the minimum amount, in this case $16) with nothing, which causes the guy to fold.

After that, it's off to a higher limit table, because the money that he has in front of him? It's his entire bankroll (bankroll is the total money you have to play with). He keeps moving up in limits (after meeting the female lead) and we come to the only good part of the movie (IMO): A game of Stud8, my favorite poker game. He scoops (wins the whole pot in a game with two different pots) with an 8-6 low and ace high against an 8-7 low and, I guess, a worse high hand. I was so excited that someone was paying attention to a poker game aside from Texas Hold 'Em that I failed to get the specifics of the hand, but, well... there are very few ways that he could have played the hand properly to end up with that outcome.

Soon afterwards, a man sits down at the table and it's clear the main character doesn't like him. They're playing Omaha now, and a guy calls the "bad guy" with a queen in his hand and one on the table. The "bad guy" turns over his hand, and there's two kings, which match the king on the board. The loser asks to borrow $20, which the "bad guy" gives. Apparently, the main character is the only one that doesn't owe the "bad guy" money. If playing a pair of queens in Omaha on a K-Q board is how players in Las Vegas play poker, I can imagine that's true. Later on, the "bad guy" goes all in with a straight flush draw, and the main character calls with three nines with one card to come. Since the main character is, as the movie makes as obvious as it can, the unluckiest player in the world, the "bad guy" catches a diamond and he loses his buy-in. For this guy, that means all his money as well as a side bet with the "bad guy," which was the pawn ticket from the earlier pawn shop against the "bad guy"'s watch.

As he's storming out of the casino, a small guy comes up to him and tells him that he's be best poker player he's ever seen, but he's got too big of an ego. No mention is made of his horrible bankroll management skills in this entire conversation where the small guy offers to buy the main character into the World Series, splitting the profit 60/40, since he might play better if he wasn't playing with his money. The main character refuses, claiming that he couldn't play very well if he was staked.

He goes to borrow some money from a friend (the sister of the love interest), but she's not there. The love interest is, though, and she gets a call saying that she got her first job as a lounge singer. They celebrate by her staking him into a cash game. He explains the rules to her and wins some money and loses some money. The "bad guy" shows up and he lets her know that the "bad guy" is his father. During this time, they also meet with a character who's a prop bet ("I'll bet you $1,000 you can't run a marathon," for example) junkie and he loses $100 to him, but takes it out of what the guy owes him ($1,000). She soon leaves to go sing in the lounge and he gives her back her stake money plus 20%. He apparently loses the money he had left (he was quite upset by the visit from his father) and goes to see her singing in the lounge... and takes her money.

She finds out and gets very upset with him, which he apparently can't understand. He buys into a satellite tournament that would get him into the World Series (it's not clear which event, but the assumption is that everyone is talking about the Main Event, rather than one of the many 200-man tournaments that he has a much better chance of cashing in). It's down to three. Him, some guy, and Jennifer Harman. Jennifer Harman eventually moves all in on him with Kings and Twos, and he has Kings and Eights. The very next hand, now that it's heads up, some guy moves all in. He calls the 5,100 bet and turns over two tens against some guy's two eights. His two tens stand up. ...But the dealer didn't burn (get rid of) a card on the river, so they have to burn the river card and deal a new one. Which turns out to be an eight (in case you didn't get it, this guy is the unluckiest player in the world). Somehow, this means that he's completely out of the tournament, in spite of the fact that that would make the total chips in play 10,200 or less. It's unclear how many players there was or how many chips they started with, but any combination makes this rather unlikely.

He goes back to the guy that offered to buy him in, and says he'll do it for a 50/50 split. It's now 70/30, since he lost with a pair of tens against a pair of eights. Somehow, a bad river card is a reflection of his playing abilities. Then again, he's the unluckiest player in the world. He agrees, but only if the guy adds on an extra $1,200, so he can pay the love interest back.

They go for food and she asks him if he's a gambler. He claims that he's not. His father comes in and takes his $10,000 (the buy-in to the World Series) in some sort of card game. He offers to give the money back, since it's the main character's stake money, but the main character refuses. He calls a guy about a prop bet that the guy was pushing for, which is for a guy to run five miles and play 18 holes in 3 hours or less, which the main character does. ...Except he's two seconds over, and the main love interest, who had the stopwatch, can't lie about it. After this, the guy that was staking him sends some guys over to beat him up for losing the money.

At some point, he had gotten the ring back and so he sells it to his father so he could grind his way up to a buy-in for the World Series, which he does.

It's now two hours in and the World Series is at the final table and he managed to knock out some guy with some guy bluffed all in with AK high and he called with a pair of fives (bottom pair on this board). This is something he does on a regular basis, apparently. Maybe it's the fact that I play poker online, but seriously WTF.

Oh, and at some point, he says that tournaments aren't what determines who the best player is. It's if two players play heads-up, no limit, with their own money.

No. Just... no. You play a series of games with different numbers of players with no limit, pot limit, limit, and spread limit games in tournament and cash games. Some people are great at playing tournaments, horrible at cash games. Some people can play limit games like no other, but can't get the no limit setup right. Some players are great heads-up players, but suck at full ring. Others can play shorthanded (say, 3-6 players) but cannot play heads up or full ring. The best poker player isn't one that manages to be a winner with a certain set of criteria. The best poker player is the winner overall in all those criteria.

Well, he and his father have a touching reconciliation in the men's room (that's where poker players have their touching reconciliations, you know). The ring is a metaphor for the main character's mother's forgiveness (of the father) or some such.

He ends up getting third place ($650,000, 30% being $195,000) after his father and he go all in at the end. His father turns over kings and he mucks his hand (he had his father beat). His father goes out in the next hand against a bad river.

His father catches up with him and they play a game of poker with pennies, nickels, and quarters (like from his childhood). He meets up with the main love interest, and all the crap he put her through (including the argument they had because she couldn't lie about him losing the bet) is forgiven.

that movie sucked.........basically a lame attempt to try to cash in on the poker frenzy.

Rounders is still the only real good "poker" movie. But honestly its less to do with the poker than it about being a good movie, with good characters and character development. Rounders is a great movie and I don't think you need to be interested in poker too much.

Lucky you, whether you are into gambling or not will just suck no matter what.....its an awful movie