James Bond: Licence to Skill? - 007's High Stakes at the Poker Table.

JAMES BOND meets TEXAS HOLD 'EM

POKER QUOTATIONS ABOUT 007 and CASINO ROYALE  (2006)

For years James Bond played Chemin De Fer or Blackjack or Gin Rummy (with Goldfinger) or - against all common sense even for a devil may care secret agent - the roulette table. With 007's twenty-first century rebirth the man with a licence to kill was granted a licence to luck out on the river.

The following quotations are a choice selection of what has been written about James Bond answering the clarion call from millions of online poker players and turning his hand to the Cadillac (or in Bond's case the Aston Martin) of Poker - No Limit Texas Hold 'em.

"The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the sole-erosion produced by high gambling - a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension - becomes unbearable, and the senses awake and revolt from it." 
Opening lines from the original Ian Fleming novel Casino Royale (1953) 

"Casino Royale when it was written by Fleming involved a Chemin de Fer game in the South of France and that was a big stakes game in those days. Today the big stakes game is Texas Hold 'em. It's not unreasonable for ten, twenty million dollar pots to be seen. So, when we came to think about what the game would be, Chemin de Fer didn't seem appropriate but Texas Hold 'em was."
Michael G. Wilson - Bond producer (2006)

"In Ian Fleming's original novel, James Bond attempts to bankrupt Le Chiffre - a shadowy financier of international terrorism - at the baccarat table. To give the movie a modern twist, the game has been changed to poker. This is in keeping with 21st-century fashion, but the characters are still dressed for baccarat, in tailored dinner jackets. If only poker players really wore those clothes, instead of old tracksuits covered in soup."
Victoria Coren in The Guardian (2006)

"I heard 007 doesn't play baccarat anymore; now it's Hold 'em. I keep waiting for Phil Hellmuth to talk smack at the table right up until Bond puts one right between his eyes."
Matt Bramanti in The Houston Chronicle (2006)

"Switching the game between le Chiffre and Bond to poker is no doubt because most audiences are unacquainted with baccarat, though it could be that it reminded the producers of Burt Bacharach, who wrote the music for the 1967 Casino Royale."
Philip French in The Observer (2006)

"Royale Flush. The Bond franchise takes a gamble on a new guy and comes up aces!"
Robert Wilonsky in The Village Voice (2006)

"The latest Bond movie … in which Bond plays a high stakes Texas Hold ‘em poker game. Before seeing it I thought about how some hands might play out. Maybe Bond makes an amazing sick call with Jack high and wins … or lays down Kings against Aces pre-flop because he can see into the villain’s soul! I mean he is James Bond after all. He can dodge bullets baby! Well, Phil Hellmuth he ain’t. James Bond is nothing but a total luck-box."
 Nicky O’Donnell (2006)

"Unfortunately, the final showdown, like The Cincinnati Kid, features card combinations you wouldn’t see in a real poker game if you played every day for a thousand years ... The odds of this happening on any given hand are so astronomical that I’d have to use up the rest of Page 11 and borrow Stephen Hawking’s brain to figure it out."  
Richard Roeper in The Chicago Sun-Times (2006)

"A high-stakes poker game in which Bond must beat Le Chiffre to defeat the terrorist network - slows the pace and trivializes the present reality of terrorism: If only al Qaeda could be done in by a full house."
Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal (2006)



"What [teenagers] will make of Casino Royale - no babes, no toyland, and the poker not even online - is anyone’s guess, but the earnings of the new film will doubtless affect the look, and the casting, of the next. If Craig falters, then I guess it’s full speed ahead to Chris Rock as 007 and Borat as Blofeld."
Anthony Lane in The New Yorker (2006)

"We grant that high-stakes poker has its tension, especially if it's your hand and your multimillion-dollar stake. But dramatically there's something lacking in a movie climax that needs the hero to be holding higher cards than the villain. Luck is not fate."
Richard Corliss in Time magazine (2006)

"The villain is not the usual Blofeld-like wannabe world dominator but a financier called Le Chiffre whose milky eye weeps blood. He’s played by the amazing Dane Mads Mikkelsen, made up to bring out his liver lips and Munchian cheekbones - the clammiest actor alive. When Bond sits opposite Le Chiffre at a high-stakes poker game in Montenegro’s Casino Royale, Mikkelsen clicks his rectangular plaques as if he’s a new breed of praying mantis. He’s bloodcurdling."
David Edelstein in New York magazine (2006)

"The climactic hand sees 007’s improbable straight flush, which he smugly unveils as if he’d somehow willed this result rather than just winning the poker equivalent of the state lottery. Hell, I could defeat international terrorism getting hit by the deck like that. So could you. So could a sponge. Move Bond just a single seat to the right in that hand and all he possesses is a license to tilt."
Mike D’Angelo in Esquire magazine (2007)

"The movie spends a lot minutes, because we all know who’s gonna win ... only this time, the poker tournament goes on and on and on ... and unlike, say, the battle of wits in the similarly high stakes card game in The Sting, Bond here finally wins his tournament by flashing a straight flush. A straight flush!  Dude, anybody can win with a straight flush! Winning with a pair of twos ... now THAT would have been superspy impressive!"
Andrew Osborne on Nerve.com (2008)

"When he meets the people on whom he is supposed to be spying, his first instinct is to beat them humiliatingly at chemin de fer, poker or ping-pong, and then go to bed with their wives. His ‘secret’ codename, 007, is known to all self-respecting villains."
Daily Telegraph (2008)

On the after-hours poker games on the 'Casino Royale' set - “Never play poker against actors. After all it’s their job to be able to create a credible poker face. And believe me they can. I lost every game I played against Daniel [Craig]!”
Martin Campbell - director of Casino Royale (2006)

Reviewing the Casino Royale Poker Chips set - "I hand these to my lovely wife to look at and the first words out of her mouth are: 'Where is the picture of Daniel Craig naked?' So...I suppose you can't please them all. That said, these are some pretty damn nice chips ... and you are that much closer to being 'Bond' than you were five minutes ago."
John Tucker on PokerChipReviews.com (2006) 

"As a poker film, Casino Royale is better than Rounders, miles better than Maverick, but not as good as The Cincinnati Kid. Nothing is as good as The Cincinnati Kid … I also loved the break during the game where James Bond goes upstairs, kills a couple of Ugandan hostage takers, showers off the blood, changes his shirt and comes back down to play. That kind of thing always happens in the tournament breaks at Walsall."
 Victoria Coren in The Guardian (2006)

Some of the above quotes have been taken from ...

JAMES BOND: LICENCE TO QUOTE - THE QUOTABLE DOUBLE-0 SEVEN.

1500 Humorous Quotations about the world's favourite secret agent. 

For more details of this book, click on the book cover above.

Poker Movies - Poker Reviews and Quotes about Poker Films

Poker-Themed Reviews of Poker Movies

The following thirteen poker movie reviews have been specially chosen because they have cleverly used poker speak and poker references to sum up their reaction to the film.

A. ALL IN (2005)
"Then there's a movie called All In, featuring Louis Gossett Jr. It had a premiere in Beverly Hills a couple of years ago. I saw it, and don't expect that it will be in theatres anytime soon … if ever. The plot centres around a young woman named ‘Ace’ who plays poker to pay her way through medical school. I can just see it now. She is taking her medical exams, and one of the questions is: “You are examining an elderly man whose face is flushed and who is having trouble breathing. What hand would you put him on?"
Max Shapiro in Card Player magazine (2007)


2. CASINO ROYALE (2006)
"If you go do to see Casino Royale this week, pay no attention to the poker game, but if like me you are also a big Bond fan it's still worth seeing. There's a torture scene that will make it hard for any grown man not to leave the cinema walking like John Wayne. Bond ends up holding the nuts, in more ways than one."
Nicky O'Donnell on UK.Pokernews.com (2006)


3. THE CINCINNATI KID (1965)
"By the time all the bets are in, Cincinnati Kid appears to hold a losing hand."
Time magazine (1965)


4. DEAL (2008)
"Deal, aka The Colour of Money with cards instead of cue balls. Fascination with Texas Hold ‘em and other poker variations will likely bolster B.O., though more discriminating auds may choose to pass. Or fold."
John Anderson in Variety (2008)

5. FINDER’S FEE (2001)
"Watching other people play poker is boring at the best of times, but when one of them is Matthew Lillard, seemingly playing the same annoying guy as in Scream, it’s more painful than watching amateur snooker in slow motion. The film’s only saving grace is James Earl Jones, who somehow manages to convince us of some sense of coherence, while all around him is wholly unbelievable. That is until the end, when a final twist is employed, and the script finally admits deceit and caves in like a house of rigged playing cards."
Nick Jones on EyeForFilm.co.uk


6. THE GOOD THIEF (2003)
"A casino heist movie so smooth and satisfying it makes the similar Ocean’s Eleven look like a game of Three-Card Monte."
Lou Lumenick in The New York Post (2003)


7. HIGH ROLLER aka STUEY (2003)
"As a movie, alas, High Roller ain’t much. For poker fans, I’ll put it in terms you can understand: Think of it as sitting on a Jack-eight. Off suit."
Christopher Null on FilmCritic.com (2005)


8. LUCKY YOU (2007)
"After several delayed release dates, Warner Bros. finally lays down its cards with Lucky You, and it’s a weak hand."
Brian Lowrey in Variety (2007)

9. MAVERICK (1994)
"Jodie Foster, who throws herself into this flirty role, makes Miss Kitty look like an old sourpuss, and whether it’s Five-Card Stud or a studly card player, she knows when to Hold ‘em and when to walk away."
Rita Kempley in The Washington Post (1994)


10. OCEAN’S ELEVEN (2001)
"Vegas remake holds less than a full house."
Steve Schneider in The Orlando Weekly (2001)


J. ROUNDERS (1998)
"Everything in Rounders is right there on the surface. Watching it is as exciting as playing poker with all the cards face up."
David Ansen in Newsweek (1998)


Q. SHADE (2003)
"Card sharks and grifters look like the stuff of an engrossing movie in Shade, but, in the end, under-realized direction and characters deliver less than a full deck."
Robert Koehler in Variety (2004)


K. WILD BILL (1995)
"20 minutes in, writer-director Walter Hill puts his cards on the table. It’s a dead man’s hand."
Mick LaSalle in The San Francisco Chronicle (1995)


If you have any similar poker-themed poker movie reviews, please share them with us in the comments boxes below.

Colin M Jarman
The Quotable Poker Player

James Bond plays to win
at High Stakes Texas Hold 'Em Poker

POKER QUOTES ABOUT JAMES BOND & CASINO ROYALE  (2006)
"The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the sole-erosion produced by high gambling - a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension - becomes unbearable, and the senses awake and revolt from it." 
Opening lines from the original Ian Fleming novel Casino Royale (1953) 

"Casino Royale when it was written by Fleming involved a Chemin de Fer game in the South of France and that was a big stakes game in those days. Today the big stakes game is Texas Hold 'em. It's not unreasonable for ten, twenty million dollar pots to be seen. So, when we came to think about what the game would be, Chemin de Fer didn't seem appropriate but Texas Hold 'em was."
Michael G. Wilson - Bond producer (2006)

"In Ian Fleming's original novel, James Bond attempts to bankrupt Le Chiffre - a shadowy financier of international terrorism - at the baccarat table. To give the movie a modern twist, the game has been changed to poker. This is in keeping with 21st-century fashion, but the characters are still dressed for baccarat, in tailored dinner jackets. If only poker players really wore those clothes, instead of old tracksuits covered in soup."
Victoria Coren in The Guardian (2006)

"I heard 007 doesn't play baccarat anymore; now it's Hold 'em. I keep waiting for Phil Hellmuth to talk smack at the table right up until Bond puts one right between his eyes."
Matt Bramanti in The Houston Chronicle (2006)

"Switching the game between le Chiffre and Bond to poker is no doubt because most audiences are unacquainted with baccarat, though it could be that it reminded the producers of Burt Bacharach, who wrote the music for the 1967 Casino Royale."
Philip French in The Observer (2006)

"Royale Flush. The Bond franchise takes a gamble on a new guy and comes up aces!"
Robert Wilonsky in The Village Voice (2006)

"The latest Bond movie … in which Bond plays a high stakes Texas Hold ‘em poker game. Before seeing it I thought about how some hands might play out. Maybe Bond makes an amazing sick call with Jack high and wins … or lays down Kings against Aces pre-flop because he can see into the villain’s soul! I mean he is James Bond after all. He can dodge bullets baby! Well, Phil Hellmuth he ain’t. James Bond is nothing but a total luck-box."
 Nicky O’Donnell (2006)

"Unfortunately, the final showdown, like The Cincinnati Kid, features card combinations you wouldn’t see in a real poker game if you played every day for a thousand years ... The odds of this happening on any given hand are so astronomical that I’d have to use up the rest of Page 11 and borrow Stephen Hawking’s brain to figure it out."  
Richard Roeper in The Chicago Sun-Times (2006)

"A high-stakes poker game in which Bond must beat Le Chiffre to defeat the terrorist network - slows the pace and trivializes the present reality of terrorism: If only al Qaeda could be done in by a full house."
Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal (2006)



"What [teenagers] will make of Casino Royale - no babes, no toyland, and the poker not even online - is anyone’s guess, but the earnings of the new film will doubtless affect the look, and the casting, of the next. If Craig falters, then I guess it’s full speed ahead to Chris Rock as 007 and Borat as Blofeld."
Anthony Lane in The New Yorker (2006)

"We grant that high-stakes poker has its tension, especially if it's your hand and your multimillion-dollar stake. But dramatically there's something lacking in a movie climax that needs the hero to be holding higher cards than the villain. Luck is not fate."
Richard Corliss in Time magazine (2006)

"The villain is not the usual Blofeld-like wannabe world dominator but a financier called Le Chiffre whose milky eye weeps blood. He’s played by the amazing Dane Mads Mikkelsen, made up to bring out his liver lips and Munchian cheekbones - the clammiest actor alive. When Bond sits opposite Le Chiffre at a high-stakes poker game in Montenegro’s Casino Royale, Mikkelsen clicks his rectangular plaques as if he’s a new breed of praying mantis. He’s bloodcurdling."
David Edelstein in New York magazine (2006)

"The climactic hand sees 007’s improbable straight flush, which he smugly unveils as if he’d somehow willed this result rather than just winning the poker equivalent of the state lottery. Hell, I could defeat international terrorism getting hit by the deck like that. So could you. So could a sponge. Move Bond just a single seat to the right in that hand and all he possesses is a license to tilt."
Mike D’Angelo in Esquire magazine (2007)

"The movie spends a lot minutes, because we all know who’s gonna win ... only this time, the poker tournament goes on and on and on ... and unlike, say, the battle of wits in the similarly high stakes card game in The Sting, Bond here finally wins his tournament by flashing a straight flush. A straight flush!  Dude, anybody can win with a straight flush! Winning with a pair of twos ... now THAT would have been superspy impressive!"
Andrew Osborne on Nerve.com (2008)

"When he meets the people on whom he is supposed to be spying, his first instinct is to beat them humiliatingly at chemin de fer, poker or ping-pong, and then go to bed with their wives. His ‘secret’ codename, 007, is known to all self-respecting villains."
Daily Telegraph (2008)

On the after-hours poker games on the 'Casino Royale' set - “Never play poker against actors. After all it’s their job to be able to create a credible poker face. And believe me they can. I lost every game I played against Daniel [Craig]!”
Martin Campbell - director of Casino Royale (2006)

Reviewing the Casino Royale Poker Chips set - "I hand these to my lovely wife to look at and the first words out of her mouth are: 'Where is the picture of Daniel Craig naked?' So...I suppose you can't please them all. That said, these are some pretty damn nice chips ... and you are that much closer to being 'Bond' than you were five minutes ago."
John Tucker on PokerChipReviews.com (2006) 

"As a poker film, Casino Royale is better than Rounders, miles better than Maverick, but not as good as The Cincinnati Kid. Nothing is as good as The Cincinnati Kid … I also loved the break during the game where James Bond goes upstairs, kills a couple of Ugandan hostage takers, showers off the blood, changes his shirt and comes back down to play. That kind of thing always happens in the tournament breaks at Walsall."
 Victoria Coren in The Guardian (2006)

Some of the above quotes have been taken from ...

JAMES BOND: LICENCE TO QUOTE - THE QUOTABLE DOUBLE-0 SEVEN.

1500 Humorous Quotations about the world's favourite secret agent. 

For more details of this book, click on the book cover above.