How Hollywood Depicts the Life of a Gambler

Relying on movies to know more about the world is a big mistake. Hollywood is known to handle important things like politics, society, even physics lightly, so expecting it to produce gambling scenes that are not only apparently credible might seem a bit too much. A truly realistic movie about the world of gambling hasn’t been made since “Casino“. The movie came out right at the beginning of the online gambling era, shedding a bit of light on what goes on behind the glittery curtains of Las Vegas. Today, in turn, more people cross the virtual doorsteps 7Sultans casino online than ever. Gaming has become a different reality for many people around the world, something much more casual than most Americans would imagine. Visually, the 7Sultans – and online gambling in general – is much more like the scenes of “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” than those of “Casino”. In today’s world of gambling, no matter if it’s a land-based operation or an online one like the 7Sultans, a lot of things are computer-controlled, and most of the action happens on-screen. Gambling has become more similar to social gaming than to gambling. Hollywood movies, in turn, depict a glorified version of the industry, focusing more on the drama of the game than on its realism, even when gambling has an important role in the story.

Ridiculous showdowns

Casino Royale was the first James Bond novel, published in 1953. The book puts 007 to a baccarat table with Le Chiffre, a Russian spy and the treasurer of a French union, in a high-stakes game with more than money at the table. All this at the Royale-Les-Eaux, a casino in Northern France, inspired by the Monte Carlo Casino. The movie, in turn, used the spa at Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic) for exterior shots of the casino and replaced baccarat – a game of pure chance – with high-stakes Texas Hold’em, a game of skill. And the game between the two characters – Daniel Craig’s Bond and Mads Mikkelsen’s Le Chiffre – becomes ridiculous for versed poker players thanks to the super-massive hands and the over-emphasized role of physical tells in the game.

Maverick, the “Wild West Gambler” movie starring Mel Gibson, also has its share of over-inflated poker showdowns. In one scene, the three players that remain at the table have hands like a four of a kind, a straight flush, and a Royal Flush – hands that are hardly ever seen in real life poker events, even at the highest level.

Risky bets

Roulette is one of the best-known casino games of the world. There is no true casino without one – even if only as an electronic simulator, roulette is there in all gambling establishment of the world. It is an ambivalent game, with both safer and riskier bets. As you might expect, the lower the chance to win, the higher the payout. The odds of winning a bet placed on a single number are relatively slim, yet in many movies, these bets are used as last resort solutions to a series of money-related issues. They make winning such a bet seem easy, which is unrealistic at best, distorting the picture certain individuals can form inside their heads about the whole gambling world.

Hollywood is often referred to as a “factory of dreams” but this doesn’t make it all right for it to present things from real life in such a biased, distorted way.