Finally got to see this...Wow!

Fair enough to your opinion, if you did'nt like it then thats your shout. I must've caught this film maybe 7 years ago and easily put it in my top five all time favorites films ever since.

The context and backdrop may be poker and gambling in general, but the point of the film for me is the human element. Gambling in its very principle is existing in the realm of risk. There's a deep and broad range of emotion in that and it's explored quite beautifully in George Segal's character.

In a nut shell and avoiding spoilers the components that make this such a great film to me are,

The buddy chemistry between Gould and Segal is fantastic. As a vewier you bond right along side them and feel their high's and lows. The drunken revelry and the next morning hangover is a good example. Dialogue has a pace and interraction that defies it to be script written. The ad-libbing skills shown by the two are a real treat. Gould's infectious personality and humour shine here just as they do in M*A*S*H and many of his other films. Altmans setting and backdrop of a then Contemporary Hustling down and out fabric of 1970's america.

I could elaborate and go on, but i really would say that it's best that little is said of the film so that people can happen upon this absolute treasure of a movie compleatly unawares to get the full benefit of it.

I have to disagree--the ending is one of the most interesting things about California Split. Its ambiguity, the different responses of the two main characters, demonstrates the split between the kind of gambler who is happy to win, one who may be in mostly for the thrill and is therefore excited when winning a huge pot, and the gambler who loves to lose, whose motivation in gambling is a kind of self-punishment, a desire to strip himself down to the lowest point and is therefore paradoxically disappointed when he gets a big win. This kind of gambler is also the focus of The Gambler (with James Caan) an interesting movie though far less so than this one.

I don't like The Cincinnati Kid so much 1.) because Sam Peckinpah was thrown off as director--and I'm sure it would have made a better film; 2.) the poker scenes feel overly stuffy and staged; and 3) those final hands between the Kid and the Man--have you ever seen such things in 5 card stud??! wow! But it does have many interesting features, one being the suprise ending in which (spoiler alert) the Kid in fact loses. We are so set up by typical films to expect the kid to succeed at the end, that the conclusion of CK really proves a surprise--plus it shows the merciliness of trusting your life to cards, since the cards don't give a crap about your winning and losing.