Sometimes, poker is front and centre, dominating the big or small screen with its presence, as fans gather around the box to watch the game in all its glory. Other times, such as the scene in this week’s Poker on Screen, the game is flashed past with barely any time to appreciate whether the makers of the movie got the inclusion of poker right, or very badly wrong.

We’ll get to exactly why it’s the latter in due course.

Bodied is a 2018 movie that centres on the notion of rap battles, and of itself, isn’t a bad movie. Highlighting the youth of today’s understanding of offensive language is a neat twist on the ‘all teenagers do is swear’ trope and as a result, the film has a lightly arch touch throughout as it builds to the finale, a rap battle to end them all. In that sense, it’s a little predictable, but horses for courses; the film’s cast were unlikely to all decide that instead of rap battles they might take up the game of poker instead… especially if they learned how to play from the game going on in the library. 

Yes, the poker game in question takes place in a library, where the main protagonist is on a video conferencing app on his laptop with a buddy. When shushed by Daniel Negreanu, he apologises – kind of – by making a kind of reverse slur about being gay before then being given the classic line by ‘DNegs’: