From brawls over card games in Old West saloons to masterfully orchestrated heists such as those in the Oceans series, time and time again films have used gambling as a means to raise tension or as a glamourous backdrop for the action.
While classic film scenes, such as those in Rain Man or Casino Royale, have undoubtedly helped shape popular perceptions of games like poker and blackjack, creative liberties are taken and the writers get many of the intricacies of the games wrong.
Now join us as we take a look at some of the most iconic gambling moments from the big screen and examine the misconceptions about gambling they are responsible for...
Rain Man: Card Counting in Blackjack
In Rain Man, the character Raymond, played by Dustin Hoffman, uses card counting to win big at blackjack. While card counting is a real technique used to gain an edge over the casino, the film greatly exaggerates its ease and profitability, even when accounting for the rare mathematical brilliance of Hoffman's character.
Reality Check: Card counting, such as the high-low system Raymond uses, involves assigning values to cards (2-6 as +1, 10 and Ace as -1) and tracking the count to adjust betting strategies. However, card counting can't be done on a whim unlike in this film. Successful card counting requires a lot of practice and teamwork. The amount of money that can be made from card counting is also much less than Hollywood suggests. A well-coordinated card-counting team can make a modest profit over time, but it usually requires long hours and significant effort. The idea that anyone - no matter how unusually talented - could walk into a casino and suddenly win huge sums by counting cards is pure Hollywood fantasy.
Casino Royale: Extraordinary Poker Hands
Casino Royale features one of the most iconic poker games in film history, with James Bond facing off against the villain Le Chiffre in a high-stakes, no-limit game of Texas Hold'em. The climax of the game involves a sequence of implausibly strong hands, eventually resulting in a victory for Bond, the statistical probability of which is infinitesimally small.
Reality Check: The poker hands shown in Casino Royale are extraordinarily rare. The final hand, where Bond wins with a straight flush against a full house and two other strong hands, would have poker players collapsing with shock in real life. The film also conflates tournament poker and cash games. In a tournament, players compete for a set prize pool, and the chips have no real monetary value, simply acting as symbolic game counters. The artistic license is forgivable for a spy thriller but Casino Royale should not be taken as a realistic representation of high-level poker.
The Hangover: Splitting 5s and 10s in Blackjack
In The Hangover, the socially inept Alan, played by Zach Galifianakis, saves the bachelor, Doug, from gangsters by using card counting to win $82,400 at blackjack. The scene riffs on the earlier mentioned Rain Man and jokingly portrays the calculations taking place in the character's mind as he counts the cards as being the kind of advanced algebra you'd see on a physicist chalk-board, but perhaps most egregiously, Alan splits pairs of 5s and 10s.
Reality Check: Splitting 5s and 10s is a big no-no in blackjack. Splitting 10s, in particular, breaks up a strong hand of 20, statistically one of the best hands in the game. Splitting 5s is also a bad idea because it's better to double down on a total of 10 for a chance at a high-value card. While the scene is amusing, these moves would certainly draw unwanted attention and show a lack of understanding of proper blackjack strategy.
Casino
Casino: The By-Gone Era of the Mafia-Run Casino
Like his earlier Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese's epic crime drama, Casino is based on real events. Robert De Niro's character, Sam "Ace" Rothstein, is based on the real-life casino executive and mobster, Frank Rosenthal, who ran the Stardust, Fremont, Marina, and Hacienda casinos in Vegas for the Chicago Outfit crime family from 1968 to 1981. The film features graphic violence and a notorious scene where a cheater is caught and punished by casino goons using a taser, circular saw, and hammer.
Reality Check: While organized crime did hold a strong influence on Las Vegas casinos in the mid-20th century, modern casinos are highly regulated and run by legitimate businesspeople. Today, cheaters will be asked to leave and banned from entering the casino again, but that would be as far as the matter goes. Thankfully the type of cruel and unusual punishment depicted in this film has long since been consigned to the dustbin of crime history.