Who doesn’t like watching a movie or two in their free time? Movies are a great source of entertainment and one of the most fun ways to spend time. While all types of movies are great in their own genre, most people like watching movies that they can relate to. Gamblers and those who work or own casinos especially love movies that have gambling and casino scenes in them. Watching professionals play in casinos at games like roulette, blackjack or poker creates a whole new atmosphere of suspense and anticipation.
And a sure way to break that anticipation, all gamblers would agree, are unrealistic scenes. Nothing can put one off more than unrealistic scenes, especially in a casino set where you’d expect things to be more professional and realistic. There are several things in movie scenes about gambling that almost all directors seem to get wrong every time! Even if you aren’t a gambler but watch too many gambling movies, you too can find out what movies are getting what scenes wrong. However, we don’t recommend watching too many gambling movies; just like we don’t recommend gambling too much because, according to betway.com, gambling isn’t fun when you can’t control it and thus should be done in moderation.
In this article, we’ll point out several mistakes and faults that movies get wrong about casinos and gambling in a detailed but concise list. We recommend you read till the end of the article for an insightful and interesting read.
Casinos are owned by the underworld
Those who haven’t been to a casino in their life always seem to have a premonition that under all the gambling and casino operations, the mafia and various criminal gangs have illegal criminal operations of their own and that the casinos are owned by them just so they can provide cover for these operations. While this may have been the case in the past where mafia gangs held significant power, it couldn’t be farther from the truth in today’s world.
All casinos are owned by legitimate business owners who don’t have anything to do with the mafia or the criminal world. These owners are licensed and their casinos are heavily regulated by the government. As a matter of fact, casinos actually do more good than most organizations by giving a significant amount of their wealth to charity and non-profit social organizations. This is in sheer contrast to the image portrayed by movies where casinos are shady places with criminals loitering around covering their money-laundering operations.
Counting cards can get you millions and also get you beat up
Wrong and wrong. Counting cards can surely make you win but it’s a time-consuming practice and getting millions with it is near to impossible. Movies that have casino scenes seem to forget about this and show players get millions just by counting cards. Additionally, when these players start winning big, a hunky safeguard will come along their way and beat them up for counting cards.
For the sake of drama, movies give up on realism because casinos will never intentionally try to put a player down for counting cards. It’s a common strategy that many blackjack players are familiar with. Counting cards isn’t illegal but it is frowned upon by casinos and they urge players to avoid this – that’s all. Unlike movies, casinos won’t send a big safeguard to beat you up for counting cards. If the casino has strict policies against counting cards and you still do it, all they will do is politely force you to leave the casino – without any physical farm.
Casino security can be bypassed easily
If the movie has a heist scene set in a casino, chances are 90% of things you will see would be either unrealistic or exaggerated heavily. You’ll see movie characters dodging security cameras with their agility by rolling in front of them or covering them with a cloth or paper. The casino security wouldn’t know what hit them, and the heist would be performed perfectly.
Real casino security, however, doesn’t entertain such antics. Every nook and every corner of a casino is under security surveillance by a team of dedicated personnel. Often, a spot in a casino is covered by two or three security cameras from different angles simultaneously so even if you were to somehow evade one security camera, which is quite hard in itself, you will be spotted by another security camera watching your every action. At the slightest suspicion that something is amiss, security personnel will be dispatched to you right away without hesitation.
You always get fantastic poker hands
If you have ever seen a movie with poker being played, one look at all of their hands and you’d realize how ridiculous the whole thing is. While players who have never played poker and aren’t familiar with it may be deceived by the poker scenes in movies, professional gamblers who rely on gambling for their livelihood will only frown on these scenes.
When movie characters play poker, all of them get such ridiculous hands that in reality would never be possible. The “lucky” main character always seems to have a straight flush in his deck while his counterparts have nothing short of full houses. Seeing this in a real game has more than a one-in-a-billion chance of happening. Movie characters even seem to get a royal flush quite easily, which has a 0.000154% chance of happening in a 5-card poker hand! Players are known to go their entire lives without seeing a royal flush while playing poker in a casino, let alone get one on their own.
Casinos hire misfortune bringing ‘coolers’
This term was popularized by the movie ‘Cooler’ and many people, even gamblers, believe it to be true. A cooler is a person hired by the casino to go and transfer their bad luck and misfortune over to someone who has been winning over and over again. Firstly, luck is not a commodity that you can give or take from others, and secondly, casinos don’t hire people for this fictional job.
If anything, the term cooler is still relevant because of bitter gamblers who won at first but then lost just as hard and blame others for it to justify their own actions.
Conclusion
There are many more things that movies get wrong about casinos and the gambling world and listing them all would make this article too long. We hope you liked this article, and if you did, please consider following our website for regular updates as it will help us out immensely.