Many fantastic movies have been set in casinos, giving us a glimpse of players taking part in games such as poker and blackjack. While many are partly based on facts and strive to show us a realistic image, these films may also have led you to believe some things about casinos that simply aren’t true.
The Setting
If you’ve only ever seen casinos in the movies, you may think that they’re highly exclusive places filled with elegantly-dressed players placing huge stakes. This is a way of setting the scene and also raising the tension by letting us see how much is at stake in the game. While some places like Monte-Carlo and Baden-Baden have retained an air of exclusivity, most casinos have more relaxed dress standards and welcome players of all types regardless of their playing budget.
Another way this has changed is that you can now play casino roulette games and other casino classics online. This means that many people now play live dealer games at home, with the human presenter streamed onto their screens. These online games have mainly the same rules that have long been in place, but the variety of games now available means that some have extra features or unique aspects like multipliers or spread bets.
The Regularity of Amazing Hands
If you want to see a royal flush or any other highly sought-after poker hand, the best way to do so is by watching a movie. That’s because the very best hands like this are incredibly rare. The odds of getting a royal flush are calculated at 1 in 649,740, which is why some players have never seen one in a lifetime of playing the game.
Yet, the movies need to add drama and tension to their casino scenes. That’s why we see in films like Rounders, Maverick and Casino Royale that one player gets a strong hand that seems unbeatable but then the main character gets an even better set of cards to win the hand. It makes for great viewing, but card games just don’t work like that in real life.
The Chances of Winning
The confidence and security with which characters like James Bond place their bets make us believe that they have some secret way of winning. It shows us that they’re experts at playing blackjack, roulette, baccarat, or whatever other game they try. Yet, the truth is that these are all games of chance.
In roulette and baccarat, there’s simply no way of knowing what’s going to happen. With blackjack, you have a degree of control over your hand but the final result still comes down to the random nature of the cards being dealt. So, while these scenes are designed to show us the confidence and the experience of the character, in the real world they could lose their bets just as easily as win them.
There are good reasons why these movie myths exist and they will probably continue to be used to make casino movies more interesting, but as more people try online casino games, we can expect them to become less widely believed.
