The ludicrousness of the Casino Royale final poker scene

Doctors cringe when they watch House or E.R. or Grey’s Anatomy. Lawyers can’t abide the proceedings in court TV shows and movies. The hours Monica “worked” as a chef in Friends were outright comical.

I’m sure, if they ever make a TV show about an out-of-work fantasy football editor (I’m available, Hollywood!), I will be absolutely repulsed by the liberties they take with my reality. But the closest I ever really get to that is when Hollywood tries to script poker.

For years, scripted poker was garbage. I’m talking multimillionaire games with five-card draw, guys who can’t call a bet if they don’t have enough money, Urkel coming in and running the show for no real reason. Nobody who has ever played poker watched scripted poker at any point before the late-‘90s with anything but derision.

Then two (related) things happened. The first was Rounders, which gave us fairly well-scripted poker (there were problems, to be sure, but far fewer ones, and subtler ones, than scripted poker had before). The second, which was heralded by the first, was the explosion of popularity in the World Series of Poker.

The first showed that it was possible to script poker that wasn’t stupid. The second made them try it with James Bond.

You probably know this, but in the original Casino Royale, Bond and Schiffre played baccarat. And it made sense to change that for multiple reasons, chief among them the fact that no one has played baccarat on purpose since the 1800s. But also, baccarat is so heavily luck-based that it’s more of a mechanism for a story and not a story element in itself.

The positive: The poker in Casino Royale isn’t bad. The negative: It still isn’t good. Poker aficionados have written on the hand in the above scene in the past, namely on the unlikelihood of the four players remaining in a tournament all stumbling into such monster hands. But you know what? Yes, it’s ridiculously unlikely, but it’s not impossible. Things happen. I will accept the craziness. What I will not accept is the poor play that had to go into that hand.

Where we come into the hand

Okay, we’re heading to the turn. The board reads Ah8s6s. But if we go to the end of the hand, we can backread some of the information here (especially given that everybody checks the turn). We hear that at the end of the hand, when everybody is all in, there is “115 million” in the pot — it’s possible he said “150 million,” but (a) I think it was 115 after several listens, and (b) I’m trying to make this as generous to the players as possible, which would require a lower number. (Rene also says there is “$24 million” in the pot before the final round of bets, but that math doesn’t work at all, so I’m literally just assuming he counted wrong.)

We saw at most $64 million come into the hand after the river — Fukutu goes in for $6 million, Infante follows with a lower $5 million, Le Chiffre raises it to $12 million, Bond comes over the top, all in for $14.5 million more (once again, this isn’t totally clear — it’s possible Bond only raises it $2.5 mil over the top, but I think it was the bigger number and I’m being generous to the players).

Subtract all that out from the $115 million pot at the end of the hand, and that means the players get to a $51 million pot after the flop (we don’t get to know what the pre-flop and post-flop action looked like).

So, to recap: Fukutu gets through the flop with KsQs, meaning he was four to the second-nut flush. With so many possibilities out there, that’s a hand you can get away from … if the pot isn’t already virtually 9x what you have. Fukutu is pot-committed already at this point (and with blinds at $1 million, even if he folds he has six big blinds left, so he’s basically done), and the only move is to try to make whatever bet as big as possible and hope to scare someone out or maximize return.

Infante is better off in a hand but even worse off financially. He has 8h8c, good for the second-nut hand at the time. There are draws to a straight and draws to a flush on the board, and he only has $5 million (five big blinds) left at a pot of $51 million. The only move he has is all-in, and the only excuse for not doing it after the flop is that you can’t actually speak (since, you know, he doesn’t). You have to try to scare off any draws. Frankly, any bet that either of these two made coming into the turn were dumb, because betting just enough to leave you with only $5 or 6 million is just squandering resources.

Le Chiffre has Ac6h, so top and bottom pair. I might take issue with him not trying to bully the others out of the hand with so many draws on the board, but at the same time they were basically pot-committed, so it’s possible he just wanted to play things out. I can’t take issue with his flop play.

Bond has 5s7s. After the flop he’s got an open-ended straight-flush draw. And he’s the chip leader (although it appears that it’s close with Le Chiffre). I don’t hate him getting to the turn with options.

The turn

The turn card comes out at 4s. That gives Fukutu the second-nut flush (albeit with a straight flush on the board), Infante with a set of eights that looks way less exciting with straight and flush possibilities out there), Le Chiffre has two pair (somewhat yawn), and Bond has hit his straight flush.

Bond checks. Fine! At that point he has the best possible hand, and there is literally no card that could come on the river to hurt him. He wants action, and he definitely doesn’t want to scare anybody off.

Fukutu checks. Which … no. It’s true there is both a higher flush possible out there and a straight flush, but with an ace already on the board, he should be very wary of the ace of spades sitting there in someone’s hand, making for the top pair (with more?) and a four-flush. Again, his only move is to push all-in and hope to scare someone off a draw.

Infante checks. Again, no. At this point he’s beaten by Fukutu’s flush, but he doesn’t know that (especially given that Fukutu checks) and a set of eights, while good, is beaten to death by a straight or a flush, and with so many draws to both on the board, once again, the only reason for not going all in is because you’ve forgotten how.

Back to Le Chiffre. He has top pair and third pair, there’s a straight on the board, there’s a flush on the board. He checks. I could make an argument that he, too, should bet to try to force some draws out, but considering how pot-committed half the table is, I’m okay with his move.

So again, with a pot of $51 million and no player even having that to his name, they all check a turn when the worst hand out there is AA66. It’s absolutely ludicrous.

The river

Ace of spades. Every single draw in the world hits. Again, I’m not gauging the unlikeliness of a given hand, because when you play a bajillion poker hands, everything happens eventually (though, again, come on with the strength of these hands).

Bond checks. Still fine! He has to figure someone hit some draw with that miracle card and he’s going to get action. There is the tiniest risk that everyone checks around and he fails to capitalize on the dream hand, but considering what’s out there, that risk is indeed tiny.

Fukutu goes all in. No choice. Should have done it long ago, because while yes, he now has the nut flush, the board pairing opens up all sorts of negative possibilities for him.

Infante goes all in as well. Also, no choice. The only things that beat him are a higher full house (ace and something else on the board), quads, or Bond’s straight flush. But at that point, he has $5 million against a $70 million pot. All in is the only move.

Le Chiffre has a full house, aces over sixes. He considers. Thinks. Ultimately bets $12 million. Without knowing his internal reads, it’s hard to totally gauge his move here, but considering the faces he makes after all the bets are in, he clearly doesn’t think there’s a chance he’s lost the hand, so he’s making a small enough bet to hopefully convince Bond to pay him off. Except … as we see a moment later, if Bond could call that bet, all he’d have left is $14.5 million (maybe $2.5 million, but I don’t think so) with the winner of the hand having a virtually insurmountable chip lead. So while Le Chiffre min-raised, and it’s not that objectionable on the face of it, I don’t really see the point.

Bond thinks, Hollywoods, goes all in. Only move he had. We aren’t allowed to think Bond is a bad poker player. Kind of the point of the whole thing.

Bond wins. So, again, with the caveat that a monster high-roller tournament would go from four players to the winner all at once on four monster hands (nut flush vs. full house vs. better full house vs. straight flush) is ridiculously unlikely but possible, the poker after the river was basically fine. But everyone checking on the turn was patently ludicrous, and even getting to that point in the hand with the money each player had behind him was even moreso.

Big blinds were $1 million. As best I can tell, Fukutu started the hand with about $19 million, Infante with about $18 million. Four-handed, both had huge hands — pocket eights and KsQs. They had to be willing to go all in with those hands. And if either one had gone all-in preflop (as he likely should have), the chances Bond makes it to the flop are slim. Le Chiffre still might have stuck around, but a weak ace to two all-ins might not be worth it. They had one move early in the hand, and they failed to make it.

I’m not saying I could script a better poker game. I think I probably could — if nothing else, why wouldn’t they want a more believable and more intense heads-up showdown between Bond and Le Chiffre? What are Infante and Fukutu adding to the scene by the end? — but I’ve never done it, so I can’t say for sure.

But where Rounders had mostly strong poker scenes with a dash of unbelievable monster hands thrown in for cinematic effect, and the poker players (other than Worm, who just cheated) were all decent and played plausibly, in Casino Royale we get one of the richest single poker tournaments of all time, populated by what are supposed to be excellent poker players, and they played the biggest hand of their lives like we were back in the early ‘90s, like Urkel just sat down at the table, like all Bond might have had to do is say “I bet my car,” and the poor guys would not have enough to call and therefore lose.

Maybe we would have been better off with baccarat.