In the discussion (14)
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- The first line, 'if you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table then you are the sucker', may not be the greatest opening line in movie history but is one of the most memorable; the hosts want to see that list, which must exist on the internet, and float it as a vacation column.
- There is Billions DNA in the film: watching Rounders is like watching Tracy McGrady on the Raptors, and the pop culture throwaways such as Buckner going into Shea became signatures of Billions, which also brought in Malkovich in season three.
- The face Mike McD makes after losing the 30K is one of the best acting moments of Damon's career: the face everyone makes when destroyed in poker or blackjack, the life sinking out of your body; the sports-fan equivalent is the Marco Bellinelli corner three or the Case Keenum pass.
- Having a big hand cracked while deluded with euphoria is called the most crushing unimportant thing that can happen in life; all the throwaway poker lines have aged beautifully and one host understands the lingo partly because of this movie.
- Damon and Norton at fun points in their careers: Norton arrives with Primal Fiction (as transcribed), American History X, one of the most interesting performances of the last 25 years, then Rounders and Fight Club; 25th Hour mixes that guy with Worm; also Everyone Says I Love You, a terrible Woody Allen musical, and The People vs. Larry Flint, which has not aged well.
- The Larry Flint writers, Larry Krasuski and Scott Alexander (as transcribed), also wrote the OJ Ryan Murphy show and Ed Wood and set the template for the clever, controversial biopic, like Man in the Moon, a style that now lives on TV in 13-episode runs.
- The late-nineties talent cluster: in a fantasy draft Leo, Damon and Norton are the top three or in the top five, with Brad Pitt, Affleck gravitating to popcorn movies, feeder films like School Ties and Dazed and Confused, and Vince Vaughn; weirdly no black actors went to the stratosphere, Halle Berry aside.
- Clooney, Matthew Perry twenty years ago, Wahlberg after Boogie Nights, Will Smith and Jim Carrey round out one of the best clusters, all 35 and under, compared with the Godfather generation around Brando; these people get credit as movie stars rather than actors, in the era when the Entertainment Weekly cover mattered and Carrey got $20 million a movie.
- Norton took a left turn after the mid-nineties string: directing Keeping the Faith, which Juliette Littman likes, The Score with De Niro, Death to Smoochie, then 25th Hour, probably his best of the 2000s, and The Illusionist; he never had the Pacino or Gene Hackman career one host wanted, though he may still.
- Worm is a character unique to Norton, out of the John Cazale 1970s: the lovable scumbag you root for without knowing why, with a little Fredo in him.
- The movie looks surprisingly cool and undated for 1998 and is a good New York movie that still looks like the New York the hosts remember; the Chesterfield is based on a club called the Mayfair, and one host once played in a private room like it, the film's room being a slightly nicer red leather version of his, with that seedy but exciting feeling.
- Russians as villains has aged the best: in 1998 the Cold War had ended eight years earlier and Russia was in free fall, but twenty years on Roman, Maurice, Teddy KGB and the underground network are far more believable villains.
- Forgotten from aged best: Teddy KGB's accent, ridiculous in 1998 and loved in 2018 largely from familiarity; in the theater it was the movie's biggest flaw, a completely unnatural choice in a natural film, but twenty years later it works, is distinct, fun to imitate and almost a parody of bad Russian accents.
- The ending of Mike McD heading to Vegas and the World Series of Poker makes far more sense now, since within five years that became the dream of basically everyone who played; it could have been aged best too.