The Poker Sports League: A Royal Flush?

The Poker Sports League Is a Battle of Not Just Masters of Cards, but Also of Mindsets.

- Tanmoy Mookherjee

Now sports films are usually well received. They tend to be biographical in nature, which helps them connect on an emotional level. They look at the stoic heroism of the main character in question and are usually underdog stories. There exists, however, another kind of depiction in the movies of a particular sport—whether or not it can be called that is another matter.

No game has been as stylised and romanticised by Hollywood as poker, and almost every time it seems to carry dark undertones. Be it the James Bond movie Casino Royale, where Daniel Craig as 007 rejoins the game against his antagonist with a sly “The last hand nearly killed me!” or High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story, where the protagonist says, “See, life is a people game, too. Only, the emphasis is just a little bit different.” These lines are uttered by Stu Ungar, widely revered as the best poker player in the history of the game, who won more than $30 million in prize money in his life but died broke.

Think of poker and a few stereotypes spring to mind. Men and women dressed in their finest, the lavish casinos of Las Vegas and Monte Carlo, or the dingy back alleys of a shady neighbourhood; Hollywood is replete with such references. Will it be the same when the Poker Sports League (PSL), the first of its kind in India, has concluded on a cruise-casino in Goa? The setting will be dramatically different, but the organisers of the tournament have pulled out all stops to make it a resounding success, having given it a “twist” not seen in the game of poker before.