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The opening scene, Mike McD losing his 30 grand to Teddy KGB

Five nominees are read: the opening scene where Mike McD loses his shirt ('I don't think you have the spades'), and Mike McD's poker comeback, whose clip is played; 'let's play some fucking cards' plus the guitar riff gets a host fired up to gamble, like the Vegas moment in Swingers.

An aside: the comeback is a bit of a cheat, because the two hosts played cards on the same night earlier this summer and real poker is slow and awful, everyone is Joey Knish and no one is Mike McD, whereas the movie makes it feel like a jet engine down the tarmac; one host's favorite thing in life is driving to Vegas and sitting silently at a poker table for eight hours.

"Hanging around hanging around kids got alligator blood"

A rip-through of quotes: 'Welcome to Chesterfield South'; 'Rule number one, throw in your cards when you know you can't win. Fold the hand', good life advice and a senior yearbook quote; and 'you can't lose what you don't put in the middle, but you can't win much either', another yearbook quote.

The film

Rounders (1998)

Directed by John Dahl · Drama / Crime

120 minutes

Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

Matt Damon Mike McDermott
Edward Norton Lester 'Worm' Murphy
John Turturro Joey Knish
John Malkovich Teddy KGB
Martin Landau Abe Petrovsky
Josh Mostel Zagosh
Lenny Clarke Savino
Tom Aldredge Judge Marinacci
Michael Lombard District Attorney Shields
Lenny Clarke Savino
Chris Messina Higgins
Goran Višnjić Maurice
David Zayas Trooper Osborne
Johnny Chan himself
Bill Camp Eisenberg
Josh Pais Weitz
Adam LeFevre Sean Frye

Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

Sources

The episode

Episode identity, air date and credited participants come from the official podcast listing. Of the producers, only the show's lead producer is credited.

Conversation notes

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Read the source transcript

Movie facts

Release year, director, runtime and selected cast credits are gathered separately from the discussion. Genre tags are editorial browsing labels.