Rounders: Ten Years Later

Something important happened in poker ten years ago, a few years before the poker boom really took off. Ten years ago, on September 11th ironically, Paramount Pictures released a relatively small movie starring Matt Damon and Edward Norton called Rounders. And almost instantly, poker became cool again. The number of poker players who took up poker after having watched that film is extraordinary.

The number of poker players who can quote long stretches of dialog from that film is even more surprising. All of us have seen that movie, and our own games have progressed since then. But there have been some interesting changes in the game since that film was made that are rather instructive of how far the game has come.

1. Limit vs. No Limit. Rounders was mostly about limit, rather than no limit. The most exciting scenes were played over a No Limit table, but the No Limit game at Teddy's club was set up as an exception, rather than the rule. During the movie, the players played limit holdem, but also stud, stud hi-lo, and what appears to be draw poker. Try to find a draw poker game nowadays.

At the time, it was hard to find No Limit cash games anywhere. No so anymore. Now, pure limit players are complaining that of the difficulty in finding a limit game higher than 4-8. At the same time, an entire generation of players have learned the game playing only No Limit.

2. Mr. Chan. Rounders made Johnny Chan cool. And he is cool, no doubt about it. But he's no longer the face of poker like he was in the early 90s. He's still playing tournaments, and even picked up a bracelet in 2006, but there are lots of exciting players out there with more telegenic personalities than Chan.

3. A Friendly Game. You got the feeling in Rounders that everybody who ever sat down to a game were all friends. The game was all about being a gentleman then, trying to outsmart your opponent, but accepting the consequences no matter how the cards fell.

Nowadays, you look around a table, and everybody is your enemy. Maybe you shake hands with the guy next to you, but it seems like every table has somebody who is behaving like a jerk, or worse, who thinks you're a jerk for calling him with middle pair, or not showing your hand once he folded. The guys back in the day needed the money just as much as players do now, only they didn't seem so entitled to it as we do. They accepted gambling as a series of short-term swings, and didn't complain when those swings worked against them.

4. Dealers. Did you notice, most games in Rounders were self-dealt, even for high stakes? Teddy KGB would play you for three racks of High Society, but he wouldn't spring for a professional dealer. Nowadays, even home games have a dealer, and some of the credit should probably go to Worm, the bottom-dealing ex-con who, shall we say, makes his own breaks when he plays cards. I believe that one of the reasons for the poker boom is that guys like Worm are no longer allowed to deal the cards.

5. Bluffing. Rounders was very much a tight player's game. Only once was a serious bluff made, that by the gold-necklaced loudmouth in the golf pros' game. And it worked too; the guy who was identified in the credits as "Johnny Gold" took a pot from Mike McDermott with nothing. But most of the big pots in the rest of the movie were won by slow-playing monster hands, as when McDermott won the last hand of the movie when he flopped a straight and checked Teddy all the way down.

6. Sunglasses. I didn't see one player wearing sunglasses during the entire movie. Nor did you see a single iPod. (Okay, they weren't invented yet.) That may be what I miss the most about poker in 1998.

There were a few poker movies before Rounders (The Cincinnati Kid, Maverick, and California Split) and a few poker movies since Rounders (Lucky You and the Tilt series), but none has been better than Rounders. It captured the spirit of the game and its players, competing in a battle of wits just outside the law. It also gave us a look into the game before the Boom -- before poker on TV, the Internet, and at every local casino big enough to fit a table into. We can never go back to that time, but at least we can watch Mike McDermott pursue his dreams all the way to Vegas.

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