Daniel Craig’s genuine lack of poker knowledge “only adds” to the tension of Casino Royale, fans say.
The James Bond star had no clue what he was doing in scenes depicting the agent playing against Le Chiffre, portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen. A post of the fact made its way onto both the r/Jamesbond subreddit and the r/TodayILearned subreddit, the latter of which has since been deleted. A screenshot of the fact has been shared and verified, with everyone around the poker table at least confident of their abilities in the game, except for Craig. The fact reads: “In the poker table scene in Casino Royale, there was only one actor who didn’t understand how to play the game. That person was Daniel Craig.” They then claim Mikkelsen confirmed this, which has left people, surprisingly, praising Craig.
A now-deleted post to the r/TodayILearned subreddit read: “Despite his lead role as James Bond in Casino Royale (2006), Daniel Craig was reportedly awful at Poker. Le Chiffre actor Mads Mikkelsen recalled, ‘Everybody knew how to play poker actually around that table, except for one, Daniel. He had no clue. He sucked.'”
In Ian Fleming’s original book, Bond defeats Le Chiffre through a game of Baccarat, but this was altered due to poker’s surge in popularity during the mid-2000s.
A fan pointed out: “It’s supposed to be Baccarat in Casino Royale, as it is in the novel. They changed it to poker for the 2006 movie because of how insanely popular poker was at the time.” Critique wasn’t reserved for the actor but extended to the depiction of poker itself.
A disgruntled fan stated: “I mean you don’t need to know how to play poker, you’re just reading your lines as an actor. The actual poker in the scene is very silly, as is almost every poker scene on TV or in a movie. They try to convey that the way to show a skilled poker player is just to give them a really good hand, which is nonsense.”
Others believe it’s an accurate reflection of the character’s terrible poker-playing skills. One fan wrote: “Well, that’s true to form since Bond is a garbage poker player as well. The director needed to find a way to make the hands exciting and they knew that if they showed actually skilled poker plays, most people wouldn’t understand what was going on.
“However, most people know relative hand strengths so the way they chose to portray it involved Bond being impossibly lucky, then adding narration to make it seem like he was very skilled.”
Another agreed, adding: “That’s what it always means to be good at poker in movies and TV, you have the skill to be dealt with good hand.” A third joked: “James Bond takes place in the same setting as Yu-Gi-Oh.”
Others believe that, had Craig known how to play poker, he’d have rejected the final scene and “asked for a better script.” The fan claimed: “To be fair that final hand is so ridiculous that if he knew how to play, he might’ve just laughed his ass off or walked away and asked for a better script.”
