Philosophizing about Rounders

[coffeecrazy1]

Maybe this is a dumb idea to post, but I just want to throw it out there:

Poker would never be what it is today without "Rounders."

Is this a blatantly obvious point, an overstatement, or something that gets overlooked amid the ESPN coverage?

[Your Mom]

While it did contribute, I think the ESPN and WPT have had way more of an impact.

[jokerthief]

I think Rounders may have scared away some fish who thought that you had to be Will Hunting to play winning poker. I think the WSOP and WPT makes poker look much easier than it is which has been were the boom came from IMO.

[SmileyEH]

Speaking from my own experience I would never have come to poker if it wasnt for Rounders. Could it be the way the movie approached poker as a skill game, grinding it out, good players winning in the end etc. etc. attracts people who would make good poker players? I dunno, but that seems right to me.

-SmileyEH

[Mike Gallo]

Poker was way popular before Rounders. I did not hear about Rounders until after I started playing poker.

[TimTimSalabim]

Overstatement to the nth degree. If Rounders was so great for poker, why did all those poker rooms close down in the late 90's and on into 2000-1? Rounders was nowhere near a box-office hit anyway. There's just no comparison between it and what has happened in the past couple years.

[MicroBob]

rounders was the reason but the boom didn't happen for 4 or 5 years after it came out?? I don't buy it.

I saw Rounders a couple of times BEFORE I knew how to play poker...and thought it was a great movie. And I was more afraid to try to play than anything else because I knew I would get eaten alive in a game I knew nothing about.
FWIW - I have yet to see Rounders SINCE knowing what I'm doing as a poker player and would be interested to see what I think of the film now.



Internet poker...specifically Party's marketing (as well as the other rooms to a lesser extent) and the acceptance and increasing comfortability of having one's money out there in cyber-space are the big reasons why.
WSOP on ESPN and the Chris Moneymaker story (as well as the WPT) are a very close second to the internet-poker marketing to explain the 'poker-boom'.


2 years ago when I started I didn't know if I could trust the sites so I deposited the minimum $50.
I had no idea if they would actually give me my money back when I cashed-out.


More and more it is increasingly understood that at the major rooms your money is safe.
This helps a ton.

The internet is far more common-place now then it was even 4 years ago as is the idea of putting your credit-card number online and leaving your money floating in some binary-code virtual-universe.


I just don't think Rounders had much to do with it.

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

I think Rounders had some to do with it, but mostly in an awareness kind of way - it got poker on the minds of the general public and it intrigued many people. I think that WSOP 2002 really got the ball rolling with a good, professional, entertaining broadcast and a new guy winning, although he was the classic uber-geek. Then, WSOP 2003 just blew the top off - the same great coverage on ESPN plus a young, likeable, normal guy who apparently picked up a poker book the day before and turned his $40 online into millions. This was essentially the perfect storm for poker. Not only did it make it look like any Joe Schmoe could do it, but it gave online poker a boost too, since MM came from $40 on a satellite tourney online. Online games gained a lot of credibility here and were very good at seizing the opportunity. I can't imagine a more perfect scenario for poker's popularity than WSOP 2003.