- A hotshot poker player tries to win a tournament in Vegas, but is fighting a losing battle with his personal problems.
- In Las Vegas, Huck Cheever is a poker player, brilliant but also prone to let emotion take over. It's the week of the poker world series, and Huck must come up with the $10,000 entry fee, which he wins, loses, borrows, and loses - and even steals part of from Billie Offer, an earnest young woman who's new in town and who catches Huck's eye. By the time the tournament starts, Huck owes everyone. Complicating things is the arrival of Huck's father, whom Huck detests for having left his mother, a champion player in town to win. Can Huck learn to play poker the way he lives and to live the way he plays poker? Or is his only flush the sound of his life going down the toilet?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
- Vegas, 2003. Huck Cheever (Eric Bana) is a young and talented poker player in Las Vegas haunted by his relationship with his estranged father, L.C. Cheever (Robert Duvall), a two-time World Series of Poker Champion. Huck is a regular in Vegas poker rooms and wants to get a seat in the $10,000 main event No Limit Texas Hold'Em tournament at the World Series of Poker. Huck is a tremendous judge of negotiations (& human behavior and how they perceive and react to value) and regularly sells stuff at the pawn shop to raise money for his poker games. He even pawns off his mother's engagement ring.
Huck is great at reading players from their betting patterns, and this is how he makes his money at the poker tables. After a good night at the Bellagio poker room, Huck goes to a party and meets aspiring singer Billie Offer (Drew Barrymore), who has just arrived in town. The two seem interested in each other, but Billie's older sister Suzanne (Debra Messing) warns her that Huck is "hustle 10, commitment zero." Back at the Bellagio, Huck is doing well at the tables before L.C. returns to town from the South of France. Huck greets his father coldly. The two poker players go up against each other, heads-up.
LC goads Huck (by trying to school Huck on the right thing to do) and Huck is easily riled up against LC and goes all-in when the right thing would have been to fold and wait for the next hand. Huck puts up the pawn ticket for his mother's engagement ring against LC's father's watch which he wore through the war. LC draws a diamond flush, against Huck's triple 9's and wins the hand.
Loan shark Roy Durucher (Charles Martin Smith) who just observed the hand tells Huck that he plays poker as well as anybody, but he's a "blaster" (not patient enough) and always goes for broke. Roy proposes to finance Huck in the $10,000 main-event with a 60% (Roy) 40% (Huck) split if they win, but Huck refuses.
After failing to borrow money from his friend Jack (Robert Downey Jr.), Huck goes to Suzanne's place hoping to get a loan. Instead, he runs into Billie, who gets a call confirming that she has landed a job singing at a nightclub. Huck proposes a celebration and takes her to play poker at Binion's Horseshoe with the $1,000 in traveler's checks she has brought to Vegas. After introducing the game to her, they play at a low stakes table. Billie can see how good Huck is at reading people and their hands from their betting patterns. L.C. arrives and shows Huck his mother's wedding ring that Huck had pawned, and that LC has redeemed. Huck repays the money that he borrowed from Billie with interest. However, he loses his winnings after she leaves. He returns home and fails to borrow money from his apartment owner.
Huck heads to the nightclub and asks Billie out to dinner. Over Chinese food, Huck explains that his father was an English professor before he became a poker player. He stole from his mother before leaving her. Billie observes that Huck hates his father but still became a poker player. Huck says his father taught him how to play on the kitchen table with "pennies, nickels, and dimes." After dinner, they make love at Huck's place. As Billie sleeps, Huck steals from Billie's purse to play poker at the Bellagio again. Huck wins and even has a side bet with his father and wins back his mother's engagement ring. Huck and Billie fall out over him stealing money from her.
Huck plays in a "super satellite" for his entry to the main event. He appears to have the seat won, but a misdeal (when the dealer neglected to burn a card) costs him. The river is burned, and a new river card is dealt which makes Huck lose the game and the seat. Roy agrees to stake Huck and even gives him an extra $1200 so that he can repay Billie. He apologizes to her, saying he feels they have a chance at something special. They later run into L.C., who wins all of Huck's stake money for the World Series in a quick game of guts. LC offers the stake money back to Huck, but he refuses to pick it up.
Billie holds the stopwatch in a golfing marathon that Huck must complete in 3 hours to win a bet that pays $5000. She declines to cheat for him when he finishes two seconds too late. Huck gets a black eye when Roy's thugs toss him into his empty pool.
They warn him to return the $11,200 stake that he owes to Roy or get a seat in the World Series within 48 hours. When Huck goes to Suzanne's apartment looking for Billie, he learns Billie has gone home to Bakersfield. Huck sells the wedding ring to his father for $500 and makes the 10 grand playing poker in one night to buy a seat in the World Series. Huck travels to Bakersfield to tell Billie that he meant what he said when he felt they had a chance at something special.
Back in Vegas, having found the entry money, Huck enters the World Series. He and his father both advance to the final table of nine. Billie looks on from the audience as Huck and L.C. have a showdown. Huck deliberately folds a winning hand, going out in third place. A few minutes later, L.C. gets Rivered and goes out in second place, losing the title to Jason Keyes (Evan Jones_ who had "won his entry in an online satellite" (a nod to Chris Moneymaker, who did win the 2003 Main Event after a similar entry to the tournament).
After the tournament, L.C. offers his son a one-on-one rematch, playing only for pennies, nickels, and dimes. Their relationship is restored, as is Huck's and Billie's in the final scene.
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