the cincinatti kid ~ luck of the draw: final hand well played. i give the movie a ten....copped this over @ IMDB message board. excel99's post follows
Many people who claim to be experienced poker players criticize the play of the final hand as unrealistic. First they criticize the hand on the grounds that the odds of a straight flush vs full house are preposterous, but when they are shown that hands like this happen regularly they resort to "well, professionals like Lancey and the Kid would never play this hand as shown; they would never get to the showdown with such speculative holdings." Ok, let's analyze it card by card.
Hole cards:
The Kid: AH
Lancey: JD
First card:
The Kid: 10C
Lancey: 8D
The Kid is on the button with A-10 off-suit. Not a monster, but definitely playable. With position, heads up, holding an ace, a raise is definitely in order. $500 is a bit much considering the Kid's stack, but aces are quite powerful heads up. $500 is nothing to the man, and with suited cards, a call seems justified.
Second card:
The Kid: 10S
Lancey: QD
The Kid now has a pair of 10s with an ace kicker. Yes, he sees that Lancey has a queen, which paired would beat him. Lancey also could be on a flush draw with two diamonds. But the Kid also has the ace which, if it hits, would seemingly give him the nuts. Furthermore, pros will bet with underpairs just to get information, to see where they stand. He bets $1000 which Lancey raises another $1000. Lancey has 3 diamonds to a flush and two overcards to the Kids 10s, so a raise here isn't beyond the pale; I've seen pros, even WSOP champions, make worse plays. Lancey can surmise the Kid doesn't have three of a kind based on the smallish $500 original bet. So it's a pair of 10s. That is a beatable hand, from Lancey's perspective. If the re-raise doesn't make the kid fold, Lancey can certainly draw out on him and win.
Third card:
The Kid: AC
Lancey:10D
Here is the point where most poker 'experts' criticize the play. The kid has aces over tens, two pair, and he bets $3000. Lancey surely should know he is behind at this point. He should definitely be leery of that ace. I couldn't agree more! But Lancey is a pro and he smells blood. The critics say that holding out for the 9D to make the straight flush is ungodly stupid, all the while forgetting that ANY 9 will give him a straight (which beats two pair) and ANY diamond will give him a flush (which also beats two pair). Lancey isn't necessarily banking on the 9D here! He has a TON of outs (13 outs, to be precise, which is quite a lot)! Sure the Kid might spike the full house BUT HE DOESN'T HAVE IT YET! Lancey knows that! He calls.
Final card:
The Kid: AS
Lancey:9D
From here on out it's pretty standard. The Kid makes his full house and Lancey makes the straight flush. The kid checks. Why bet and allow Lancey to just call, assuming he has a straight or a flush? If Lancey does have one of those hands he will surely bet; if he doesn't, he wasn't going to call a bet anyway. As expected, Lancey bets $1000, the Kid raises $3500 and goes all in. Perfectly reasonable move.
Sure, there is a straight flush possibility, but sometimes you just have to put the statistically improbable hand out of your mind and go all-in; if you can't do that, I doubt you can really play effective poker. When I make a full house with a big overpair and three of a kind on the board, I go all-in. I don't sweat the the possibility of quads, I go all-in! 9 times out of 10 I will win that hand. Same thing here; odds are that Lancey has either a straight or a flush and is putting the Kid on two pair. Time to make the move!
It works out badly for the Kid, but he played the hand well. Likewise, looked at card by card, Lancey didn't do anything so far outside of acceptable poker play. I have seen hands just as improbable and similarly played in actual games on TV played by pros. So why is this so unbelievable in a movie?
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