Mike D’Angelo, in Esquire, laments the fact that poker does not work as a subject for films and really has no place being in a movie.

But the film still propagates a lie that almost everyone, consciously or unconsciously, knows to be false: the idea that winning a given poker game or tournament has any meaning whatsoever. Poker is a game of skill, but only in the long run — great players sometimes endure losing streaks that last for months, and a complete idiot with ten grand to spare can win the world championship. (Some would argue that that’s already happened.) Imagine, say, a football movie in which our heroes score the winning touchdown in the final seconds — but then the referee flips a coin, it comes up tails, and six points are awarded to the other team instead. Do you still care? That kind of short-term caprice makes poker profitable (because bad players occasionally win big, and thus keep playing), but it also means that, no matter what happens to the characters playing onscreen, the audience takes a bad beat.