Episode #487 - January 10th, 2018

Live from the Two Plus Two Studios - This week on the Pokercast: We bring you up to date on what’s happening at the PCA and talk about Molly’s Game, then answer a heap of your mail! To begin Adam talks about the second weigh in for the weight bet and coming a bit unravelled afterwards. Terrence has been a Dad for another week and Ross gets a second job on the radio. We then answer an email about the movie Molly’s Game and review it. In the news: PCA is in full swing, the guys break down all of the high roller winners and plus the main event. Also, Daniel Negreanu blogs about his net profit/loss from the last year and a few stars pros retire. We also have some funny tweets in 140 or less and your mail! Mail topics this week include PLO strategy vs an old lady, losing bitcoin after selling drugs on the dark web and more!

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2nd wow

Turd

Terrence - how does the MMA in a film like Warrior compare to the poker in a film like Casino Royale/Rounders/whatever?

Yes

Always coming 7

I posted about going to a pre-release screening of "Molly's Game" in the Ep. 480 thread but never followed up with a review. My general thoughts were echoed on the show, but one comment by my girlfriend was that it seemed long. She doesn't play poker, but works in film and television. She figured they would edit it down before the theatrical release. But based on the 2h 20m running time and Ross's comment that "it dragged on a bit," they didn't cut much, if anything.

Hey guys - They did have a consultant on the movie. He pointed out the scenes everyone has mentioned but lost the discussion with the director.

See more: https://cardplayerlifestyle.com/inte...josh-leichner/

Regarding the PCA/Bahamas discussion and >10k being declared at customs.

How does crypto fall into that? Definitely a huge legal grey area IMO.

Great show guys as always! Thought you might like this Adam!

crypto newb here but do you ever have crypto physically?

Just wanted to say thanks so much for sharing my interview with Josh here on the forums. Much appreciated, and thanks for reading!

Cool interview, Robbie. When the guys discussed this on the show, my immediate thought was "Aaron Sorkin wouldn't allow someone to change his script."

I'm a HUGE Sorkin fan, but by all accounts he gets pretty stubborn with his work. This is probably why I enjoyed some of the behind-the-scenes clips from The Social Network. In one of the table reads, Fincher all but rewrote a few lines right in front of Sorkin. Almost no one else would be able to do that, but Fincher is one of the few people more headstrong than Sorkin.

Molly's Game will still get my viewership at some point, as I'm probably willing to look past the technical flaws based on what I've heard/read. Besides, as I've said many times in other threads:

a) In 90 percent of sports movies*, the sports scenes tend to be mediocre to downright awful. Sometimes the actor just looks completely unathletic (Tim Robbins in Bull Durham**), other times they get historical details wrong (Shoeless Joe was left-handed, but he batted righty in Field of Dreams), or sometimes the in-game action is just wildly exaggerated (Any Given Sunday).

b) Rounders, generally beloved among poker enthusiasts, gets a few technical things wrong when it comes to showing the game. One of them is the order of action when KGB and Mike McD are playing heads up. I won't get into this, as there are already dozens of threads on this site discussing some of the more ridiculous plays shown in that otherwise fine film.

So yeah, if the overall story is solid and the writing is good — on which most people seem to agree – I'll still likely check out Molly's Game.


*To be clear, I'm not saying poker is a sport. I'm just saying any subject as a backdrop often gets dumbed down for a mass audience, or you'd spend another hour just on exposition alone. So this includes law enforcement, medical dramas, Wall Street trading, ANY subject.

**Bull Durham is probably my favorite sports-themed movie relative to its actual depiction of the sport. Surprisingly, it was written/directed by a former professional baseball player. But I'll spare everyone THAT analysis.

I might have missed this in the discussion, and if so I apologize, but how well does MOLLY'S GAME compare to the book? From what I saw on the trailer, I got the impression the movie takes place after the events in the book, which seems odd.

Read the book about a year ago, enjoyed it well enough.

Saw the film, thought it was awesome. Slow in places, as others have said, but on the whole very enjoyable. The dice chips I can let slide, the first game was very amateur set up, so kinda makes sense. The illegal raise was very brief, if I hadn't known it was in there I might of missed it. I understand why the director was more about the flow than the detail. Even the fold with the nuts could happen in a game when the player is very new or nervous. It just seems everything was amplified to get the point over to the people not so familiar with the game. She was a delight on the eye by the way, when she walked in the room and asked for everyone's attention.... She already had it (and mine) WOW.

would love to know exactly who attended all these games, seen the names thrown around, but there must be more.

What makes Rounders great is certainly not the technical aspects, but the feel. Rounders nailed "feel" like no other poker movie ever did. Most people who played in that era have played in a game that felt a bit like KGB's or the Chesterfield. The look the pros give each other when the two fish take open seats at the Taj is priceless. Mike value betting the river with "another 40" and a shrug in the stud game against the cops (who can only shake their heads in disbelief at how good this kid runs) is a hugely underrated scene.

We've played with Russian gangsters like Roman and Maurice (with their fake Versace shirts and ****) and Greek degens like the man who does not know that Mike is not a man beaten by jacks. Maybe some of us were even lucky enough to know a Petra (though Mike turning her down was probably the most implausible scene in the movie). 20 years later, we still know shot-taking dreamers like Mike and eternal grinders like Knish.

That's why people don't really care that Mike opened to 1k (from 10k stack) at 25-50 with KK or that Johnny Chan 3-bet/folds the flop in LHE. The feel around these games is so good it overwhelms the technical aspects.

Also, for anyone who played poker in the Northeast, actually going to the Taj Mahal gave it a super real feeling.

I remember liking Warrior, but don't remember the fight scenes too well. Maybe when it's on Netflix I'll give it a rewatch.