The Cincinnati Kid - Notes On The Play

Notes On The Play

  • When reciting the rules, Shooter clearly states "no string bets," though players (including Howard) go on to make string bets during the game.
  • The game is open stakes. This is unusual in modern times and almost never allowed in casinos, but permissible in home games and was common for the time period of the film.
  • The unlikely nature of the final hand is discussed by Anthony Holden in his book Big Deal: A Year as a Professional Poker Player, "the odds against any full house losing to any straight flush, in a two-handed game, are 45,102,781 to 1," with Holden continuing that the odds against the particular final hand in the movie are astronomical (as both hands include 10s). Holden states that the chances of both such hands appearing in one deal are "a laughable" 332,220,508,619 to 1 (more than 332 billion to 1 against) and goes on: "If these two played 50 hands of stud an hour, eight hours a day, five days a week, the situation would arise about once every 443 years."

Read more about this topic:  The Cincinnati Kid

Famous quotes containing the words notes on, notes and/or play:

    ‘Tis the gift to be simple ‘tis the gift to be free
    ‘Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be
    And when we find ourselves in the place just right
    ‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
    —Unknown. ‘Tis the Gift to Be Simple.

    AH. American Hymns Old and New, Vols. I–II. Vol. I, with music; Vol. II, notes on the hymns and biographies of the authors and composers. Albert Christ-Janer, Charles W. Hughes, and Carleton Sprague Smith, eds. (1980)

    Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you—like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist—or else it is nothing, an empty formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.
    F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

    To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute.
    Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)