#82. 'Rounders' Bonus
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This bonus episode is a full-length celebration of Rounders (1998), and both Sonny and JVL love it unreservedly, even though they argue about what it's actually about: Sonny insists the movie is really about cutting negative influences out of your life (Worm, and even Gretchen Mol's character leaving Matt Damon), while JVL counters that it's simply a love letter to poker itself, tracing the modern poker craze back to a 1997 Harper's piece and crediting the film with mainstreaming Texas Hold'em in America; the two also spar over whether John Malkovich's Teddy KGB is secretly the film's real hero, a man of honor who "would put you through a wood chipper but never skip out on the check." The episode opens with Vic solo-hosting the intro before JVL derails things by claiming he watched the wrong movie — a 1966 Naziploitation film called Gestapo's Last Orgy that Sonny found on a boutique DVD site's clearance mailing list — leading to a long, gleeful tangent about grindhouse subgenres, YouTube's algorithm serving up unwanted Nazi content, and Vic's supposedly all-encompassing interests (orgies, Nazis, "history"). From there they run through other poker-movie contenders (Maverick, The Sting, Casino Royale's absurd final hand, Bringing Down the House/21, Molly's Game) before diving into Rounders specifics: John Turturro's Knish, Famke Janssen's Petra, the tracksuit as eternal Russian-mobster shorthand, the tense poker-with-state-troopers scene, the bathhouse scene with Johnny Chan's story, and the late Martin Landau's judge. The episode closes with the trio half-seriously planning a listener meetup and gambling trip to Las Vegas (complete with a proposed Vic Mattis buffet tour), with a stray mention of a legal poker room Sonny found in Dallas.
From the show notes
We're jonesing for some action, baby.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder, the Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com, you'll easily find us. Please subscribe. Tell your friends. Today, we're talking about the movie, the 1998 movie, Rounders. It's also on HBO Max. It's on the Max. And I think Hulu. Sonny's shaking his head.
Sonny00:00:40Nobody calls it the Max.
Vic00:00:41What? Oh.
Sonny00:00:42Nobody calls it the Max.
Vic00:00:43Oh, right. That's right. Because, well, if you listen to the other episode. JVL, what is wrong?
JVL00:00:49I'm sorry. I believe I watched something else. Oh, what did you watch? I believe I watched the 1966 Knotsploitation film, Gestapo's Last Orgy. Why would you get confused with Rounders and that, JVL?
Sonny00:01:06Those don't sound similar at all.
JVL00:01:07Wow. I don't know. Did you guys, were you aware, Victorino, before Sonny sent this to us over the text machine last night?
Vic00:01:15Before Sonny Bunch sent us this, yes.
JVL00:01:18Were you aware that there was a film called Gestapo's Last Orgy?
Vic00:01:23I was not aware of that. I was not aware of that until I saw Sonny Bunch's text to us. Yes, no.
JVL00:01:27Were you aware that there was a grindhouse subgenre referred to as Knotsploitation? No.
Sonny00:01:35Well, yeah, but like.
JVL00:01:36I was also not really aware of that.
Sonny00:01:38No, but like Ilsa, Ilsa Wolf of the SS and those movies. Stuff like, yes. You're aware of that. You've joked about that on the show.
Vic00:01:45Yeah, yeah.
Sonny00:01:45You liar. Yeah, I've tried it. Filthy, filthy liar.
Vic00:01:48I just don't know what you're talking about. JVL, did you watch it? Did you end up watching this? Or you just went to Google Images?
Sonny00:01:55No, it was funny. It was just very funny. So I was looking at an email from a boutique nerd DVD, whatever site called Zavi. It's like a UK store, Z-A-V-I, something like that. And I'm on their mailing list because I'm on all these dumb mailing lists. And I was just like scrolling through the winter clearance sale and I came across, I came across the Gestapo's Last Orgy and I was like, I know who would like this movie. Vic Mattis.
JVL00:02:29Does very well in the quadrants.
Sonny00:02:31I was like, this is-
JVL00:02:33There's a separate quadrant.
Sonny00:02:35This appeals to all of Vic's interests. Orgies, Nazis. History.
Vic00:02:41History. History. I like to call it history.
JVL00:02:45So I was shocked that YouTube has the trailer for it, the theatrical trailer for it. And it's the first time I have ever seen- Tons of nudity on YouTube.
Vic00:02:56Yeah. You know what?
JVL00:02:58Does YouTube allow that?
Sonny00:03:00Yeah.
Vic00:03:01They do, there's a filter. There's a filter.
Sonny00:03:03Well, there was a, what's his name's music video with Emily Ratajkowski.
JVL00:03:07Oh, I guess that's right. Blurred Lines. Yeah, Blurred Lines was YouTube. Yeah. Okay. Nevermind. Maybe that's Instagram I'm thinking of, which is a hard line of-
Vic00:03:14But you do get, I, you know, like if you do worry if anybody else in your family is going to use YouTube, that those things pop up.
Sonny00:03:20So you don't want to get fed that by the algorithm all of a sudden. Very embarrassing.
JVL00:03:25All of a sudden Nazi stuff. Yeah. All of a sudden G-Money's like- A lot of Pepe frogs showing up for G-Money.
Sonny00:03:29All of a sudden G-Money's like, "Dad, what's this Ilsa?"
Vic00:03:33Right. Because after that, it starts suggesting things. It's like, I didn't mean that, not this.
Sonny00:03:37Is this like Elsa from Frozen? Is it Elsa's sister, Ilsa? That's right, click that on.
Vic00:03:41It's like, it's, it's like getting confused with Frozen and the movie, the horror movie Frozen, remember that one? And that would pop up and every now and then you'd say like, oh, you're interested in this and I, I ended up watching basically the whole movie and the version of clips of Frozen where they go and the, the teenagers on the ski lift and it freezes and this has nothing to do with Frozen.
JVL00:04:01It's like open water, but, uh, but for ski lifts.
Vic00:04:03And, and the guy gets like, and there's like the unrated version where the guy gets eaten by wolves as the friends watch it. After he drops down. Yes. And he's getting his intestines pulled out. It is horrific.
JVL00:04:13This is what is funny about, uh, Gestapo's Last Orgy.
Vic00:04:16We're going to eventually get to Routers, but before we do that-
JVL00:04:18Gestapo's Last Orgy is an Italian movie. Okay. That doesn't surprise me at all. All of the, all of the dialogue and- Is it Italian? Italiano.
Sonny00:04:29Yeah, that makes sense. Spaghetti Westerns. It is a spaghetti western, spaghetti Nazi orgy movie. Crazy. Makes sense.
Vic00:04:35Hmm. Uh, so rounders and the reason why we're doing it, not just because it's streaming for free.
Sonny00:04:40Vic is very desperate to get off the topic of the Gestapo orgy movie.
Vic00:04:45The, uh, uh, one of the other reasons is because your friend JVL, who was in the world series, who won, who won a world series of
JVL00:04:54poker bracelet. And we were talking about this yesterday and our last week rather. And I just started jonesing for this movie hard.
Vic00:05:01I'm thinking of other poker movies. This is really the one that comes to mind. Doesn't it? What am I missing here? Uh, well, there's Maverick, right?
Sonny00:05:09Maverick, the gambler, uh, uh, the, the card counter. I was going to say, I was going to say the, uh, which is really more of a Guantanamo Bay movie than a poker movie, but it's neither here nor there.
Vic00:05:21And, and, and the, uh, and, and the sting. Right. But that was like, partly was the horse. No, the sting is not really a, the sting is gambling and there was card playing in the train. Casino Royale is a poker movie.
Sonny00:05:33Casino Royale, which has the most ridiculous poker hand of all time, where it's like, yeah.
Vic00:05:38How did he pull that off?
Sonny00:05:39The cards, the cards, like the hands, there are five people left in the hand. And it's like, I have a full house, I have four of a kind, I have, I have a better four of a kind. I have a Royal flush. And it's like, oh boy, look at this. Those are great cards. Crazy hand. Cause in a real game of poker, in a real game of poker, it comes down to two guys and one of them wins with like, eight, six off suit. Right, I was gonna say, a pair of eights.
JVL00:06:05I have a high card.
Sonny00:06:06So I've got an ace in the hole.
Vic00:06:09I believe Rounders played it at the Uptown Theater. Cause I believe I watched it with my friend, Peter Lowe. And we came out of there like, this is so amazing. And we bought, we're both degenerates. So we really enjoyed it. Even though I, again, as we've said in the last two episodes ago now, I don't, I've never played poker in a casino. Only Sonny has done that. I prefer craps.
Sonny00:06:30We should go to Vegas. We should do a meetup in Vegas. You know what?
Vic00:06:33People do these live podcasts. It would pay, the trip, as I say whenever I go to Vegas, anyway, it pays for itself.
Sonny00:06:40Right, we could do a tour of the buffets. I think our listeners would be into that. Imagine that. Imagine a Vic Mattis gastro tour of Las Vegas. How many people would, I think we could get dozens.
JVL00:06:53Yeah.
Vic00:06:54Of people to sign up for that. If the Frontier was still open, we could have done the 1495 prime rib buffet. I just slightly off strip and we could have had all these people show up. That would have been quite the treat. Yes, so rounders. Rounders. Do we need to give a big boy review or no? We just go right into it. Rounders.
Sonny00:07:18Sonny. I mean, it's funny.
Vic00:07:21If you missed rounders, and I can't believe people who have not seen this
Sonny00:07:23Yeah, I feel like most of the people who listen to the show probably have watched rounders. It is a basic cable classic, right? It is a favorite of the ringer. Bill Simmons was always very, very big on rounders. But the basic plot is Matt Damon is a law student and like serious and very good poker player who as the film begins, loses his nest egg to Teddy KGB. Loses 30 grand. Gets busted out 'cause he gets outplayed, very importantly. He doesn't get out drawn, he gets outplayed. And the whole rest of the movie is first Matt Damon's character trying to avoid getting back into the life and then his buddy Worm gets out of prison, played by Edward Norton. And he and Worm start playing poker again and this causes his girlfriend, played by Gretchen Moll, a favorite of the Weinstein company, to exit the scene. And by film's end, Matt Damon has to win, he has to defeat Teddy KGB in a one-on-one battle to reclaim his money and his honor and get off to the, but what's interesting about the film is that, so it comes out in 1998, right? - Yeah. - And this is, people watched poker on ESPN2, it was definitely an ESPN8, the Ocho type show. - Yes. - It was like a thing that you would watch late night on ESPN2 or whatever. And it wasn't like super respectable, but there is that clip in the film of Johnny Chan playing Eric Seidel. - 1988 World Series of Poker. - The 1988 World Series of Poker, which was broadcast by ESPN. So it was on TV, it was a thing, but it wasn't really, this was before ESPN made the World Series of Poker like a weeks long event and before Chris Moneymaker, the fabulously named Chris Moneymaker, won the World Series of Poker as an amateur from, who had like qualified on Poker Stars or Ultimate Bet, one of those sites.
JVL00:09:27- It was before math took over poker too.
Sonny00:09:30- Well, math has always been, well, we can talk about, I mean, math has always been a very important part. Eric Seidel is basically a math guy. Like he was a, he's a guy who understood math and math has always been important. It's always been important to understand things like pot odds and-
Vic00:09:46- As in the book, "Bringing Down the House." Oh, and yet another movie that was made based on that.
Sonny00:09:50- Right, but yeah, "Molly's Game" was that- - That's right. - "Bringing Down the House" is the card counting one. "Molly's Game" is another poker movie and book. But anyway, the movie, like it is a very good poker movie in the sense that like, it shows people playing poker, how they actually play poker. You know, it shows how the games are played and how the, like the idea in theory of betting works, playing the man, not the cards. You know, if you sit down at a table, you don't, and you don't spot the fish in the first 30 minutes, you are the fish, et cetera, et cetera, all that sort of stuff. But like really what it is, and the reason the movie works and the reason I keep coming back to it is because it is, it is a movie about interpersonal relationships and it is a movie about the importance of cutting negative influences out of your life forever. Like "Worm" is example number one, Edward Norton's character. But frankly, the person who makes the best decision in this movie, Gretchen Moll. Cutting Matt Damon out of her life and being like you are a toxic influence, you are a degenerate gambler hanging out with your D-Gen friends, like Knish, played by the great John Turturro, and Famke Johnson, right in the prime of her like, right in the prime of her like golden eye to X-Men 2 run.
Vic00:11:11- She's tall, isn't she? She's tall.
Sonny00:11:14- Anyway, the movie, again, the movie works because it's actually a movie about relationships and it is a, it is a, it's a fairly, look, it's like, it's the sort of movie, a friend, I was talking about watching this with a friend, and he was like, you know, it's a great movie because it's like, it sells itself as gritty, but it's actually just sublimely ridiculous. And it is, it is, it is that. It is, it's a ridiculous movie. Teddy KGB with his ridiculous accent, the great John Malkovich with his ridiculous Russian accent.
JVL00:11:45- Piesism and his money.
Sonny00:11:48- It is, and that's the other thing this movie is about. This movie is about the honor amongst thieves. These people, they have a code, they have a very important code, and that code is if you win, you win. These are not guys who are like losing 60 grand and then ordering their Russian mob pals to like rob you afterwards, right? - No, a man of his word in that sense. - You win, you win, that's how it works. And that's how these, that's the only way these games can work because at the time, and still really, they were all totally illegal. These were all, there are places like this throughout New York City, they exist, totally illegal, and the only way they work is if people have faith in the folks running them. So anyway, I quite, I still love this movie, I've probably seen it a dozen times over the years, and it is, I wouldn't, I would not say that it is necessarily responsible for the amount of gambling that I did from, or the amount of poker playing that I did in the early 2000s, but it was certainly a gateway drug of sorts.
Vic00:12:51- James, Sonny, one last question, when you played poker, did you wear the sunglasses?
Sonny00:12:56- No, well, no, no, I never, when I played in person, on the rare occasions when I played in person in a casino, I never wore glasses, and I never listened to music. I was not a music listener.
Vic00:13:09- I didn't know that was allowed.
Sonny00:13:10- Yeah, you could sit there with headphones on. You may not be able to anymore because of, you know, phones and everything, but I--
JVL00:13:17- If you do that, you can't be social and get popular with your fellow players at the table. - Why would you do that, Sonny?
Vic00:13:24- I mean, how can these other people not be your friends?
Sonny00:13:26- Vic, come on, man, we gotta go to Vegas and play poker. You gotta sit at a table and just chat everybody up.
Vic00:13:33- Yeah, well, I would be your Ed Norton. I'd be your worm. I'd be like, you know, and then we could work as a team. And then they're gonna take me in the back.
Sonny00:13:41- They'll get the shit kicked out of us.
Vic00:13:42- Yeah, I was gonna say, then they're gonna take a hammer. Like, are you lefty or righty?
Sonny00:13:45Okay, sorry, I'm mixing movies here. - Yeah, that's "Casino," another great movie. - Another great one. - Another great movie about interpersonal relationships. And cutting negative influences out of your life.
Vic00:13:54- JVL, would you agree with Sonny's assessment that this is what "Rounders" is really about?
JVL00:14:00- No, I don't, I would not. But I have a question for Sonny.
Sonny00:14:05- Yeah.
JVL00:14:06- Question. - Question. - Why is Teddy KGB the real hero of "Rounders"? Because surely this is a Sonny take.
Sonny00:14:17- Well, I mean, he is, I mean, I wouldn't describe him as the real hero, but he is a man of honor and a man of principles and a man of will.
JVL00:14:29- He allows Mike to play. He doesn't have to play Mike. Mike is six hours away from having grandma kick the crap out of him 'cause he owes 15 large. And the only person that Mike can play against to get that money is Teddy KGB. And Teddy KGB agrees to do it.
Sonny00:14:44- Well, Teddy KGB is not gonna turn down action. And Teddy KGB has beaten him before. He sees no reason why he couldn't beat him again.
JVL00:14:51- He himself is a small, small business owner, right? Which is, in your view, one of the most honorable things anybody can do.
Sonny00:14:59- Well, I mean, it's not as good as being a chain business owner, but yes.
JVL00:15:02- Yeah, well, fair enough. He's an immigrant, a bootstraps guy, and he likes Oreos. - Everyone likes Oreos. - And he, as you said, he would put you through a wood chipper, but he would never skip out on the check.
Sonny00:15:19- Yeah. - Right, that's the kind of guy he is. - The man of principle.
JVL00:15:22So I don't think it's about that. I think it is about, I mean, it's just about poker. This movie is a love letter to poker. The people in it are basically incidental. I believe that the poker craze in America can be traced back to a piece that ran in Harper's, of all places, called "Betting Big at the World Series of Poker." And in this, it was one of these amazing pieces of long-form journalism.
Vic00:15:56- Right, but it wasn't Ben Mesrich's.
JVL00:15:58- No. And so this is 1997, I think, that this piece is written. And this guy, so he's a long-form magazine writer who falls in love with poker, who then decides that he is going to try to get into the World Series, and he qualifies for the World Series in one of his regional tournaments. And then he winds up, at the final table in the World Series of Poker. This is back when it is Chris Jesus Ferguson and Johnny Chan and these guys who are legends. And Chris Ferguson is seen as a weirdo 'cause he's an MIT guy, and he comes from the background of math. A guy like Chan is much more of a play-the-guy, not the hand Ferguson. And the way poker is now is a lot of people who don't think you need to play the guy. They think everything is math, everything is basic strategy, software has eaten poker. And there is, as my World Series of Poker buddy, not really buddy, but email correspondent said, he disagrees with that. He thinks that you still have to play the man, especially when it's heads up. So I think that that magazine piece is what started all this. Rounders comes out like five years later. And Rounders is, I think, the breakout event that really mainstreams poker into America, or at least Texas Hold'em.
Vic00:17:22- This is post-Goodwill hunting, isn't it?
JVL00:17:25- So this is, I believe this is his first movie post-Goodwill hunting. - Okay, yeah. - Might be. - So there'd be a lot of excitement about it.
Sonny00:17:32- It was not a huge hit. It was not a huge hit.
Vic00:17:33- No, no. - But instantly a cult classic. I think everybody saw it and loved it. - And by a director who I'm not really familiar with, John Dahl.
Sonny00:17:40- Well, it's funny. So John Dahl, I was scrolling through his IMDb. - Me too. - And he is now like a prestige TV director. It's what he does. And he is like, he is a super competent like, he's very good at what he does, but there's, Rounders feels like a very nice episode of television. - Yeah, I think that's right. - And there's nothing wrong with that. - Oh, no, it's not bad. - Like, I don't mean that as an insult, but it is, you know, it is a lot of static shots, a lot of, you know.
JVL00:18:10- There was a, one thing about this movie that made me slightly nervous was that this felt a little bit like
Sonny00:18:20Days of Thunder,
JVL00:18:22following Top Gun or Cocktail following Top Gun for Matt Damon, right? So, you know, Good Will Hunting fall disease.
Vic00:18:30- Yeah, because again, he's playing a guy who's, you know, math and he's gotta be good at the cards and stuff. So there's a similar thing going on.
JVL00:18:36- Right, he's trying to rise above his station. There's a little bit of that aspect to it, but it's just about poker. And it's about how addictive poker is and how interesting it is. And the idea of how you can play without even looking at the cards, if you're good enough, right? And it's a glimpse into a world that most people, really a world that was real, but that most people didn't understand was real. And so it felt in a way like a docudrama. You know, it felt like you were getting almost a documentary and view of what this all looked like. And I just love the crap out of it. And then you layer on the performances, right? - Yeah, across the board. - I mean, Turturro is so good as Kanish. And Malkovich's Teddy KGB is an instantly iconic character.
Vic00:19:27- Right, it's so over the top. And I don't know if it's true, but the story about how he intentionally cheesed it up for the role and everybody loved it. And his whole point was to prove that, you know, he goes, I'm really bad at, I'm really a bad actor at this. He tells Matt David, but everybody loves it 'cause they're afraid to, you know, tell John Malkovich that, you know, it's over the top. And so he just kept it. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's one story. - It is. - Because it is, it is so over the top. But one of the interesting things about that character also is the tracksuit.
JVL00:19:59- Oh my gosh, the tracksuit, which is to this day, is if you want to denote a like degenerate Russian, think about the tracksuit mafia in Hawkeye, right? Like this is, they're still dressing like Teddy KGB.
Vic00:20:13- That's right. In 1994, when I was in Europe, I was traveling with my buddy, Todd Palladino, we end up in Prague, but you know, I was in charge of finding it where we're gonna stay. And it was at this, it turns out to be like, we can't stay downtown, it's too expensive. But of course in 1995 or 1994, it would have been dirt cheap. But in my mind, it was like, oh, we can't spend, you know what I mean? 'Cause like the Czech crowns, I mean, it was like nothing. But we end up in this like hostile, like on the outskirts of town. So we get there and we're there for a few days. And while we're there, there was this one guy and all he did, he stayed, he never left. And all he did was watch football, soccer games. And he just walked around the place in a track suit. And he had like flip flops and just sort of sauntering and meandering back and forth down the hall, watching the games. And that's all, I have no idea what else this guy did. But the one thing I remembered was the track suit. And then seeing this, I'm like, wow, that's pretty spot on.
JVL00:21:16So anyway, I really like it. - It's amazing.
Vic00:21:18And you know what, Fonka Jansen, I,
JVL00:21:22the scene where she comes over to his apartment to collect is such a subtle piece of work that she does with him. And I love it, I love everything about it, especially when she's like, "Hey, thanks for making this easy." And then they watch the Johnny Chan Seidel thing. - Yeah. - And then she sort of says, "I could stay." The only false moment in the whole movie is there's no way this guy would want Gretchen Maul over Petra. - Of course.
Vic00:21:52- Yeah, yeah.
JVL00:21:53- Right, I'm sorry. - No, I-- - Gretchen Maul's sort of like mousy, goody-two-shoes, quasi-harpy girlfriend versus--
Sonny00:22:02- Well, that's what he thinks he wants. That's the life he thinks he wants. He thinks he wants to be a lawyer and he's lying to himself the whole time. I mean, that's the heart of the movie is that he is pretending to be a thing that he is not. He has to learn that he is the other thing.
Vic00:22:19- Did you see the poster for this? I looked at it again and it's Ed Norton and Matt Dillon and Gretchen Maul in the middle. I mean, do you remember?
JVL00:22:29- What do you think she had to do to get this part?
Vic00:22:32- I'm not gonna comment on that. She is, by the way, Kate's high school classmate. - I know. - Just leave it at that. I think they probably did Brigadoon together. I'm not quite sure, but you know. - Is that a euphemism? - No.
Sonny00:22:46- I don't know what that even means.
Vic00:22:47- I had all sorts of questions for Kate. She's like, "No." I said, "So were you ever "like in gym class together, like, you know, in the locker?" No, but it wasn't none of that. I do wanna add, I do wanna point, mention one of my favorite scenes, and it is the most harrowing, is when they decide to play poker with the state troopers. - The cops. - They walk in and clearly the first thing that you, Matt Damon realizes this, like this is a mistake. Find a way to get out. And of course, Ed Norton is like, "Nope, we're in. Let's do it and we're gonna con these guys." And it's so terrifying because, you know, Damon clearly doesn't wanna do it. And it just builds and it builds. And finally, and Damon refuses to play along.
Sonny00:23:35And he's getting great cards and he's folding. Remember that? Until finally-- - Because Worm is cheating.
Vic00:23:40- That's right, and finally one of the cops grabs his, you know, wrist and that's it, it's over.
JVL00:23:47- Oh, so good. - My favorite scene, in the movie, and I think this scene is just pure magic, is when Matt Damon and John Turturro are standing just in the little sauna. There's a Russian sauna that Kanish is a member of, you know, like a bathhouse. - It's a bath, these Turkish baths in the city. - Yeah, well, it's Russian. This is a Russian bathhouse, right? Where they whip themselves with the cypress leaves. Anyway, and Matt Damon is recounting being in Atlantic City when Johnny Chan walked in and sitting down to play some hands with him. And it's just two guys sitting there talking, right? But Turturro's listening, like it is this act, like he is so taken by the story.
Vic00:24:36He is there with him. - As I am right now.
JVL00:24:38- And the whole, that's just this little scene that again, is just magic. And it's because of the direction, the writing and the two actors. They're just fantastic.
Vic00:24:48- And don't forget also Martin Landau, the late Martin Landau. He is the judge and he's a good man at this. And it was really good. I would say, I mean, for me, I don't know how Sonny feels about this. And I think JVL is with me too. I oftentimes just like watching other people gamble. Like if I go to a casino, what?
JVL00:25:06- Oh yeah. - Yes. Yeah, you know what I mean? - For me it's more fun. - I can get totally sucked in. - More fun watching people gamble
Vic00:25:11than doing it yourself. - There are always elements of regret. 'Cause I'm like, oh, I should have been on that hand or I should have been there at this table 'cause it's really hot at this point, but I can't get in or whatever. I can watch people play cards for a long time.
JVL00:25:24- You know what? You never regret the money you didn't lose.
Vic00:25:29- That's one way to look at it. Okay, so like, you know, for me, like I'm glad even at, I'm glad I like, I haven't gambled in so long. Sonny, you feel the same. It's been a long time. When's the last time you gambled? Ages.
Sonny00:25:41- I can't even, I genuinely, I literally cannot remember the last time I went to a casino.
Vic00:25:46- And yet, like if you were there now, I mean, I can feel the pull like exactly what would happen.
Sonny00:25:52- So when are we going to Vegas?
Vic00:25:54- Yes. - Let's do AC.
Sonny00:25:56If we're gonna do this, let's do Atlantic City. - AC's trash.
Vic00:26:01- You wash your mouth out. - But the worst is, however, Sonny, this is the one thing for you. I know how much you hate cruises. The cruise thing is, it's like, even if you're in a casino, you know, you're at a hotel room, everything is so far away and it's big. The cruise ship, you're just around the corner. You could hear, you could hear, open the door of your cabin and you'll hear the pinging noises and the slots. I mean, it just draws you in. It's a wonderful and terrible thing. That's all.
Sonny00:26:30- Yeah. Anyway, we should, we should, we should go, we should all go to Las Vegas and play poker together. It'll be fun. There's a poker room in Dallas. I actually looked this up. - Really? - There is like a legal poker room in Dallas somewhere that I might, maybe I'll have to go check that out.
Vic00:26:45- Did you say legal or illegal?
Sonny00:26:47- Legal. - Oh, legal. - You gotta join, you gotta become a member it's, you know, $5 a day membership. And then it's, you know, it's a member's club.
Vic00:26:55- That's how it starts. Next thing you know, it's a $10,000 buy-in.
Sonny00:27:00- If I build myself a $10,000 role, I'll be a...
JVL00:27:03- You want a couple of stacks of high society. Just like a young man coming in for a quickie. I feel so unsatisfied. - I'm sure it's fine.
?00:27:21I'll see you next time.
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