Community Cards: The Pull of Poker in HBO’s Luck

Poker in Popular Culture

Topics: Epic Poker League, Community Cards, Poker in Popular Culture

Following the path of other “high-end” television dramas like The Sopranos and The Wire, the new HBO series Luck starring Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte has begun to capture viewers and critical notice. While primarily featuring the business of high-dollar horse-racing as a dramatic setting, the show’s initial episodes have also given poker a prominent role, with the game so far representing the worst sort of gambling temptation, having the potential to cause grievous harm to a primary character.

Like a well-bred racehorse with an impressive pedigree, Luck sports an ensemble cast of established, familiar faces from film and television as well as proven names among the production staff, among them creator David Milch (NYPD Blue, Deadwood). Milch, Michael Mann (Miami Vice), and Carolyn Strauss (Game of Thrones) serve as the show’s executive producers, with many other respected writers and crew also part of the creative team.

Four episodes of Luck have aired thus far, introducing more than a dozen significant characters and multiple plots all of which have some connection to the Santa Anita Park racetrack in California. We meet and follow the actions of bettors, jockeys, trainers, agents, owners, and others pursuing various goals that sometimes conflict with one another, and more often than not involve a desire to increase personal wealth.

The first episode presents Dustin Hoffman as Chester “Ace” Bernstein, a mobster just released from a three-year prison stay who is now eyeing to purchase the track and add a casino, and who possibly has other unstated, revenge-related goals in mind. Meanwhile, Nick Nolte co-stars as Walter Smith, an embattled owner of a horse with tremendous potential of which few are aware.

Among the many threads presented and slowly built over the first few shows is one involving a group of four bettors named Marcus, Lonnie, Renzo, and Jerry. Together the men comprise kind of a dysfunctional family of gamblers united by a similar hope to one day achieve a big score. Jerry (Jason Gedrick) is the one among them with special talent for handicapping, and in the show’s premiere we watch the four pool resources to place a pick-six bet using Jerry’s picks that promises a multi-million dollar payday if it hits.

If you happen to have these first four episodes of Luck waiting for you in the DVR or plan to watch the shows otherwise, you may want to skip down to the final three paragraphs to avoid spoilers. As mentioned the show features numerous storylines, most of which have yet to be connected to one another, and what follows only focuses on the one involving the four bettors, of which Jerry is the lone poker player.

From the start, poker is a problem for Jerry. After winning $390 at the track the day before, he lost it all that night playing poker at the Commerce. We then watch him supply the group with his picks for the day’s races, and after an episode’s worth of atmospheric, chest-tightening action we see Jerry’s picks hit one by one and the quartet manage to win their pick-six and earn a staggering payday of more than $2.68 million.

The second episode then finds Jerry amid a hand of No-Limit Hold’em over at the Hustler Casino. Action has reached the river with the board showing 6873K, and after being checked to Jerry bets $2,000. Jerry is playing higher now, which his opponent Lester points out while considering the bet.

Lester asks Jerry about his newly-bolstered bankroll, and Jerry lies about an aunt dying and leaving him an inheritance. Finally Lester check-raises all-in and Jerry calls, tabling 109 for a flopped straight. But Lester has A10 -- he rivered the flush -- and wins the pot.

“Jerry on tilt,” says the Asian-American Lester, whom we later learn owns a restaurant in Chinatown. “Maybe go get more money from Auntie's shoebox," he suggests. Jerry doesn’t, and we later learn he left having endured a $7,000 loss for the session.

Jerry obviously played the hand badly, proving he’s better at handicapping horses than reading opponents at the poker table. And before the episode is through we watch him play still more bad poker when he returns to the Hustler to battle Lester again.

We see Jerry call another river all-in from Lester holding only second pair on a 10KQ94 board, then watch his opponent turn over pocket tens. Then near the episode’s conclusion we see Jerry obtaining a special ruling to buy an extra $25,000 worth of chips while in the middle of yet another hand against his nemesis Lester. It’s clear that Jerry is not only playing badly, but is chasing losses on tilt.

With the extra chips, Jerry commits all in again on a A8Q flop, and Lester turns over AQ for top two pair. Meanwhile Jerry shows KK, having made another poor decision. The river saves him this time, though, bringing a king and reminding the viewer of the show’s title.

By the end of the episode, we realize all four horseplayers have “leaks” threatening their being able to retain their newfound wealth. Renzo tries to negotiate a deal to buy a horse that eventually falls through. Lonnie (Ian Hart) has a problem with women, and two women nearly beat him to death in an effort to get some of his winnings in a revenge scheme for his having scammed them in the past. And the wheelchair-bound Marcus (Kevin Dunn) has increasingly significant health issues with which to contend.

Still, all four make it through the episode shaken but intact, and reunite at the end to form a rough-looking tableau of survivors. But chief among their leaks is Jerry’s poker-playing, the most ominous-seeming threat to their uncertain status. As one character outside the group characterizes Jerry, he’s a “brilliant handicapper” but “a poker room whore,” the events of the episode having well confirmed the observation.

The third episode finds the group successfully going in together to buy a horse and have him trained by the well-regarded Turo Escalante (John Ortiz). Again relying on Jerry’s eye for horses, they appear to have fallen into an especially good deal.

“I can break his balls all I want,” says the always-weary Marcus about Jerry’s poker-playing, but he has to admit Jerry’s genius at handicapping. “It’s a tremendous upside gamble,” he says of their purchase. “You know, his method going about it. Yeah, he’s really showing me something.”

The others agree with Marcus, with Renzo (Ritchie Coster) noting “that poker place does Jerry no good.” Just as they appear to think Jerry might have beaten his poker problem, though, the third episode ends with Jerry skipping happily away from them to go play. When Marcus objects, Jerry derisively calls out “I’ll be home by midnight, Mom” and as the show ends we see him again taking a seat at the table.

The fourth episode that aired last weekend shows Jerry falling further down the rabbit hole as he again loses considerable amounts to the same opponent (“Lester”) whose name now seems to be Leo Chan.

Chan bluffs Jerry out of a hand, raising big on the button preflop with 62 and getting Jerry to fold two black jacks from the big blind. He further sticks in the needle by showing Jerry his bluff, then successfully gets him to agree to a private heads-up game at his restaurant -- a $100,000 freezeout with $1,000-$2,000 blinds in which Chan offers to let Jerry have the button every hand.

We cut to Jerry’s partners feeding carrots to their new horse with Marcus fretting aloud about Jerry possibly jeopardizing his entire share of their winnings. Cutting back we see that the losing has continued at Chan’s place, with Jerry dropping another huge hand after making a lesser of two full houses versus Leo -- more a bad-luck hand than a misplay by Jerry -- before grabbing still more stacks of cash from his duffel bag.

The three go to Chan’s restaurant and successfully extricate Jerry from the game before he loses still more. As the others contemplate what to do about their partner’s problem, the kind-hearted Renzo mentions the possibility of allowing Jerry to take some of his share of the money to help keep the group -- referred to earlier by someone as the “Four Horsemen” -- in business together. But Marcus strongly objects to that idea.

“Whatever the fuck is wrong with Jerry, you don’t make him whole by giving him money,” Marcus explains. “Whoever made him didn’t make him whole. That’s the way he is. And we better fucking recognize that or else we’re assholes.”

While Jerry is clearly a poor poker player, and further challenged by trying to play at stakes at which Chan the restaurant-owner is comfortable, it is interesting to consider how poker is being positioned in the show as a temptation to be avoided, at least as far as Jerry is concerned.

During one of many instances of Chan’s needling of Jerry, he points out how Jerry makes decisions at the poker table “for some baby reason” rather than after applying a mature thought process as one assumes he does when handicapping horses. “Your baby reason make you play when the cards don’t let you,” Chan says. “You say ‘anyhow fuck cards... maybe I get lucky. I want get lucky for my baby reason.’”

It may well be that what Jerry seeks is not to win, but to get lucky. In the arena of betting horses he’s obviously skilled and operates -- as Marcus notes -- according to a well-practiced “method.” However, when playing poker Jerry gives up that edge in favor of the thrills associated with getting it in badly and winning nonetheless.

We poker players know Jerry could just as easily find other casino games to satisfy an urge to gamble with the odds against him, but perhaps there’s something about poker’s special mix of skill and luck that makes its temptations harder for Jerry to resist. It will be interesting to see where the show goes with Jerry’s poker-playing, and, of course, whether or not he’ll be able to avoid the path of self-destruction down which the game appears to be leading him.

In any event, the poker scenes certainly help highlight one of the show’s primary themes, namely, how individual merit isn’t always rewarded as it should be, with forces outside of our control -- i.e., luck -- often having as much or more to do with our successes and failures as our own efforts, well-meaning or otherwise.