Oh, the days when that show had a laugh track.

"You're gonna be living the rest of your life on a charitable grant on the [insert name] Foundation" could also get added to the list above.

Also, Sports Night had a poker game, The West Wing showed it several times (Mrs. Fiderer value-towned Toby). Fearless prediction: Jim, Maggie, Don, Sloan and Will will enjoy a rousing game of PLO in an upcoming episode of The Newsroom.

I love this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu4UPet8Nyc

Trailer for the movie. Looks good. Release date in November.

i'll watch it in hopes that they don't use those generic walmart chips in their high steaks gamez.

I hope the "bark like a seal" Tobey Maguire quote made it to the movie.

The early reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are favourable: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mollys_game_2017/

The film is premiering at the Toronto Film Fest this week. The free newspaper's review of it is not so great: https://nowtoronto.com/movies/tiff20...s-game-review/.

The Guardian reviewer, who also saw the Toronto premier, sounds a similar note: https://www.theguardian.com/film/201...-festival-tiff

Just saw it. Mini-review below. No major spoilers, though if you want to go in 100% fresh, then I suppose read no further.

As a movie, it's not terrible but runs way too long at 2:20, though I guess the official release date isn't for another 10 weeks, so they may still do some editing. Several scenes were disjointed and unnecessary, with one being downright cringe-worthy, drawing an eyeroll from me and an audible "come on" from someone in the row behind me. So poorly done imo that I wonder if they'll edit it before release date.

The poker scenes are inoffensive for the most part with one glaring exception: one of the first scenes describes a high-stakes fish literally folding the nuts on the river in a 5-figure pot to a stone cold bluff from the Tobey character (played by Michael Cera who's as awkward as ever, but funny in what's a pretty minor role.) Molly's character is narrating the scene in a voice-over, and she first defines "the nuts" for the benefit of noob audience ('mathematically unbeatable hand'), and then she explains that the fish (whose cards aren't shown) was so intimidated by being in a big pot with a movie star that he folded the nuts on the river to a big bet. Utterly insane. (I mean, even if that's what happened IRL, the only purpose of the scene is setting up Cera as a shark; just have him bluff villain off a good non-nut hand FFS.) Of course in typical Hollywood fashion, the other players at the table go crazy when Cera turns over his bluff and no mention is made of the fish folding the MF'ing nuts on the river JFC, alright /end rant. That scene Fail, while bad, is pretty inconsequential to the movie and the other poker scenes are meh; there aren't that many of them tbh, and actual poker play is pretty much an afterthought to general themes of how she got started running the games, bad debts, mafia players in the game, plea deal considerations etc.

Early critic reviews on rotten tomatoes are v good (92%), but it's not that great a movie. Most of the chatter on the street afterwards was positive; audience (nearly all noobs to be sure) seemed to largely enjoy it. Projected effect on the poker world, online or B&M: nil.

That fold makes me not want to see it

^ It was one of the first poker scenes in the movie too, so I figured I was in for a 2-hour sh**show of Lucky You proportions. But the rest of it was fine, if forgettable. Movie used cheesy-but-straightforward illustration overlays for a couple hand-explanations, such that even someone who didn't even know the rules of the game could get the gist of what was going on. Not unlike what The Big Short did with the explanatory interlude scenes, except with on-screen graphics. Put it this way: I took more issue with the non-poker scenes than I did with the poker stuff. It's really more a character study of Molly than about gameplay in any respect, so the poker Fails feel ancillary.

Jessica too old to play Molly Bloom.

A friend of mine saw it last week at the Toronto Film Festival. He emailed me to say that he preferred "the really good, if implausible, poker scene in The Other Side of Hope, the latest from the great Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki."

From the Wikipedia entry on that film: "In Helsinki a traveling shirt salesman quarrels with his wife and leaves her. He decides to leave the sales-business and goes for a long poker tour. With his winnings he buys a restaurant. "

Bingo! By nearly 15 years.

2 hours and 20 minutes...I think I'll wait to stream it, unless I need an afternoon nap at the mall.

Movies are way too long these days...90-110 minutes should be the goal.

I just finished reading the book and I really enjoyed it. I hope the movie is nearly as good. As far as the scene where Tobey supposedly gets an amateur to fold the nuts as dumb as this seems coming from the perspective of a competent winning poker player it is possible. I mean we've probably all seen an opponent check back the river with the nuts last to act before right? Folding isn't much worse than that and rank amateur players make mistakes all the time so it might not be impossible. Also though it is apparently explained to mean actually nuts, maybe they mean the nuts like AA with the nut full house only beat by quads or something.

That's the funny part. All they had to do is have the player fold an unbelievably strong hand, just not the stone nuts.

On the flip side, maybe that will get a few more fish to attempt to push people off monster hands because they saw it in a movie. After all, who among us hasn't had someone try to run a really ill-timed bluff in a spot where they had zero chance to get a fold? Maybe it will happen more often now.

Almost two decades ago, we had a Rounders boom. Now let's bring on the Sorkin boom. Dare to dream, man, believe in something!

Fwiw I have seen a player fold AA preflop to an all in because they didnt want to gamble. This was in high school playing a quarter game and the guy had 25$ in front of him.

Haha nice. As I recall, it happened on that PokerStars show The Big Game. The guy had AA but he had already locked up an overall profit that had him in the lead for the show's larger prize package. Thus, he folded it pre to avoid the possibility of losing a pot that costs him that lead.

But at least that made sense given the format. Folding the stone nuts on the river would be one of those things that would take even a casual fan/player out of the moment. You don't have to be a poker expert to know that can't be right, maybe the equivalent of a basketball movie set in the 1940s that shows someone shooting three-pointers. (Or something like that, anyway.)