Allotta guys spend allotta time on the internet analyzing what Teddy KGB’s (John Malkovich’s) poker hand must have been in the final hand of Rounders, when Teddy famously loses it all to Mike McDermott (Matt Damon) and then tells Gramma to “Pay that man his money.” One the greatest scenes in one of the greatest movies of the 90’s, the decade acknowledged by anyone with a brain and/or testicles (or a single testicle, not to discriminate) as the greatest decade for movies in the history of movies.

Since the late 90’s, this single iconic scene from Rounders has provided me and my friends (and other guys I spend time with) so many lines that we still repeat to this day, whether gathered around a deck of cards, a craps table, or on a text string. To wit:

• “No, no, no. He beat me. Pay that man his money.”
• “I can go on bustin you up all night.”
• “In my club, I will splash the pot whenever the fuck I please.”
• “He lays down the monster.”

Maybe not so much the last one, but there are probably a couple that I missed, so whatever. Check it out for yourself.

But here’s the funny thing, and what got me back into the blogging game. All these young poker players online, with their blogs and their YouTubes and their TikTok’s, are all online analyzing and breaking down KGB’s bets on each round of that last hand, trying to figure out how he lost, or why he bet what he did. They of course know better, and argue he should have done this or done that. These fuckers, however, miss the point of the entire movie. And more importantly, poker was an entirely different game back then, on several levels. This iconic scene from the best poker movie ever must be understood in the context of history, which I will now endeavor to explain.

So where to begin. I think there are four main points here.

First off, in 1998 when Rounders came out, Texas Holdem was not the only poker game played, like it essentially is today. In the 80’s and 90’s, we played Texas Holdem at times, but the games were usually Dealer’s Choice, with each dealer picking the game as the cards went around the table. The dealer’s game could be a standard poker game, like 5 card draw or 7 card stud, or one of those games with wild cards or multiple rounds (7 Card Reckum, Jacks or Better to Open, Trips, etc.), or a variation of those games fucked up by the way the cards were laid on the table (Criss Cross) or played from a blind hand (Baseball). OR, and this was usually where I came in, we played games that required a loser to match the pot, such as Guts or Kentucky, and the doubled pot stayed for the next round, with the loser taking it in the ass and the pot growing and growing and growing until some guys were writing markers that a winner may or may not be able to collect, which is another story. And yea, sometimes we played Texas Holdem, but not exclusively.

Admittedly, the World Series of Poker has been a Texas Holdem tournament game since the 1970’s, but it was originally a cash game with a variety of poker games. People forget that. Regardless, Texas Holdem didn’t catch on with most poker players until the 2000’s when ESPN started broadcasting the tournament.

But the point is that we played a lot of poker back in the day, but different types of games, and developed a feel for what might or might not win. We weren’t using statistics or following rules or what some book said to do in a particular situation, like it was Blackjack and there was a chart of hands. There were no right answers. That was the state of play at the time of Rounders. All the YouTube “experts” analyzing Teddy KGB’s game forget that.

Here’s what else they miss from 1998. Back in the day, we couldn’t get on a computer and play thousands of hands, and tournaments all night every night, learning what hands to play to start, and how to bet them against a big blind raise, or a second position check raise compared to the size of the pot and all that shit these tech geniuses study and talk about these days. All we had in 1998 was our smarts and our guts and our testes, and a pregnant wife who would yell down the stairs to the basement that it was time for all of your friends (and the other guys there) to go home because it was late and we were keeping her up.

So back to Teddy KGB and his decisions in that iconic scene, and the three other points the movie is about, namely, Tells, Bluffs and being On Tilt.

The key plot of the movie is obviously Teddy KGB’s Tells with the Oreo cookies. In the second to last game shown, after a shitty but connected flop, Teddy opens his Oreo cookie, and then eats it. Damon has a pair of Kings. Damon folds, but shows the Kings, letting Teddy KGB know that he has figured him out, which made no sense whatsoever except for the plot development. Teddy then throws his Oreo’s against the wall right by Gramma’s ear, knowing that Damon has treated him like he had just torn down the Berlin Wall.

Tells are a real thing, you guys. And that was the main point and poker lesson of the movie, along with “You can sheer a sheep many times, but skin him only once.” Amarillo Slim held to his father’s maxim on that point.

That was the point of the movie, that Teddy had a tell. I was shown in the movie and you could pick it up if you paid attention. That was good enough for us back then, and in my book, it still us.

And on the other two points, Teddy doesn’t have a hand. He is bluffing the entire time on that last hand. Maybe he has a ten, who gives a shit. HE IS BLUFFING. But more importantly, Damon knows Teddy is ON TILT (also a real thing). He busted him up and he will do irrational shit. So Damon doesn’t bet the nut straight and lets Teddy KGB go full wild Russian on whatever bullshit hand he had and couldn’t read because he was blind drunk on vodka and Oreos. Makes perfect sense.

But those were simpler times, and probably more fun, if we are being honest with one another. No need to analyze whatever hand he had.

Or maybe he had a pair of 10’s and wasn’t bluffing. Who the fuck knows.