Two mistakes (warning, spoilers inside)

I just finished watching this one today. Awesome movie!

As I understand it, Paul Ford enters the card room a little later after refusing Joanne's request for a loan from his bank based on her stupendous hand. Remember Paul is actually in on this big bluff, so the hand itself is irelevant.

When Paul sits down at the card room table he takes over Joanne's hand and then throws in the outstanding $500 dollars to stay in the game and then proceeds to raise everybody $5000. I believe that this is legal in a poker game.

At that point all the other high rollers around the table take a look at their own cards and determine that they could not possibly top what Joanne is holding. Especially after the big banker decides to help Joanne and adds a BIG raise. So everyone just folds. Joanne, the kid and Paul proceed to walk out of the room to go cash in their chips.

I'm sure everybody was thinking that Joanne was holding a Royal Flush or some other BIG hand. I don't think the the cards themselves were manipulated at all, just the minds of the players. A big bluff with too many other "palyers" involved.

Anyways that's how I remember it. Hope this helps.

I agree, since the other players already had their 35 hundred in the $500 call would have been the end of the betting without a raise by the lady. So Robards' comment about the pot getting bigger and bigger was not correct.

I also agree that it would be very unlikely for all the players to be in that big of a pot without a manipulation of the cards. Also in real life you would have to be careful with a bluff like that as someone couold always call. So if they were smart they would have rigged themselves a good hand just in case. In which case their comment that they bluffed and did not cheat would be incorrect.

Since Henry Fonda dealt the last and THE big hand of the game the betting for that hand would have begun to his left, with Ben Tropp, and Fonda would have been the last bettor in each round. Therefore, if he called at any time the betting would be over. Since Joanne Woodward was playing Fonda's seat at the table all she had to do was call the $500 and the betting would have been over. Henry Drummond was wrong about the pot getting higher and higher.

This movie has an interesting plot but the scam is way too far-fetched and unlikely. How could the conspirators know for sure that everything would play out exactly as it did? How did they know that Otto Habershaw would be in the bar when they came downstairs? How could they have known that he would even let Henry Fonda in the game room to watch, let alone play in the game? How could they be sure that the other four players wouldn't kick Fonda or Woodward out of the game when they ran out of money? (Western rules on betting). How could they have known that Habershaw would go the extra mile to "clean up the situation to everybody's satisfaction?" If I had been one of the other four original players in the game I would have been very suspicious of "Mr. Otto Habershaw." Habershaw brought Henry Fonda and his bratty kid into the game room to "watch."

Too many unlikely things would have to happen by coincidence for the scam to work without anyone getting suspicious. Things that the conspirators had absolutely no control over. Almost like a James Bond movie where 007 always experiences incredibly improbable good luck at the expense of the bad guys. Unlikely and unbelievable stuff, but fun to watch.

A good movie but not a great one...I give it a 6.

Im not an expert on Poker, but if she called the bet for $500, the hand would be finished. Wouldn't everyone then be required to show their hands to determine the winner? If so, there's a chance that she could have lost.
For the scam to work, she had to force everyone out by raising the bet a huge amount.

Robards was just BSing her. Remember that she didn't have the $500 to make the call anyway.

BTW, $3000 in those days is equivalent to $112,500 in today's dollars if gold is $750/oz.

Although I'm answering you 3 years late, I agree, this was definitely a mistake. It was his deal; all he had to do was call, and $500 was all he would have needed.




I asked the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.

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That's not as much a mistake as a cliche that many screenwriters of Westerns often lean on. They take idea of "open stakes", where you must call or raise previous bets to stay in the game, regardless of the amount, and then forget that regardless of the stakes, poker has a set number of raises allowed per hand.

It's much more dramatic if the players can just use endless bets to let the "rich" player threaten the "poor" player. Yes, they throw the basic rules of the game out, but such is drama. They did/do it all the time.