Rounders

I saw Rounders on Netflix this week. It was really good. I quite enjoyed a movie about poker life. The poker scenes were very accurate and well shot.

There was a lot of great poker advice in that movie such as

• never lend to a degen
• never vouch for someone else's debts
• play within your bankroll
• do not borrow from gangsters
• don't let others play on your bankroll or credit
• pay attention to your opponents you can pick up tells

There was definitely a cautionary tale element to it. I think everyone who plays poker to some extent dreams of playing high stakes, taking a shot, being in the world series main event.

I enjoyed the use of the Socratic dialog technique in the film. The villain Worm expresses contempt for the quiet conservative tight players, ridiculing them as "grinders", "leatherass". Hero Mike is himself a grinder, content to grind 1 BB / hour long term profit - that is until he takes a shot and loses his entire bankroll on the first hand early in the film.

I love that saying "three stacks of high society".  Who knows maybe some day I will be able to use stack of high society as a unit in a real way.