Best Poker Movies and Documentaries of All Time

These are the best poker movies and documentaries ever made: 17 titles ranked by poker accuracy, cultural impact, and how well each film holds up today.

Four-time WPT champion Darren Elias rated Molly’s Game 9 out of 10 for poker realism and Casino Royale just 3 out of 10. The Cincinnati Kid’s final hand has odds of 332 billion to 1 against. We break down which films get the game right, which ones fake it, and where to stream each one in 2026.

Movies

Documentaries

1. Rounders (1998)

Directed by John Dahl, written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien. Matt Damon plays Mike McDermott, a gifted law student pulled back into underground poker to help his reckless friend Worm (Edward Norton) pay off a dangerous debt to Russian gangster Teddy KGB (John Malkovich).

Two-time WSOP Main Event champion Johnny Chan appears as himself, and the film uses real 1988 WSOP footage of Chan’s heads-up victory over Erik Seidel. To prepare for the role, Damon entered the 1998 WSOP Main Event himself and was eliminated when his pocket kings ran into Doyle Brunson’s pocket aces. Darren Elias rated the final Teddy KGB showdown 8 out of 10 for poker realism.

No single film did more to bring Texas Hold’em into mainstream culture. Pros including Brian Rast, Hevad Khan, and Gavin Griffin have all said Rounders is what drew them to the game. Alongside Chris Moneymaker’s 2003 WSOP win, it remains the single biggest cultural driver of the poker boom. IMDb: 7.3.

Where to watch: Rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and YouTube. Free with a library card on Kanopy.

2. Molly’s Game (2017)

Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Jessica Chastain plays Molly Bloom, the Olympic-class skier who ran the most exclusive underground poker games in Los Angeles and New York before the FBI shut her down. Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, and Jeremy Strong round out the cast.

No professional poker players appear, but the real games involved celebrity poker players including Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Ben Affleck. Michael Cera’s “Player X” is widely understood to be based on Maguire. Molly Bloom consulted with Sorkin throughout production and has said the film stayed close to the truth.

Four-time WPT champion Darren Elias rated its poker scenes 9 out of 10, the highest score he gave to any film he reviewed.

Where Rounders captures the underground grind, Molly’s Game captures the celebrity ecosystem around high-stakes poker. It renewed mainstream interest in private games and turned Bloom into a household name. IMDb: 7.4.

The one procedural error that bothers pros: a house taking a rake mid-hand, which would never happen in a real game.

Where to watch: Rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and YouTube.

3. The Cincinnati Kid (1965)

Directed by Norman Jewison (who replaced Sam Peckinpah shortly after filming began). Steve McQueen plays Eric “The Kid” Stoner, a hotshot young five-card stud player who challenges the aging master Lancey “The Man” Howard (Edward G. Robinson) in Depression-era New Orleans. Ann-Margret, Karl Malden, and Joan Blondell co-star.

The film created the template for the young-gun-versus-old-master poker narrative that Rounders and dozens of others would follow. The final hand is one of the most famous in cinema history, and also one of the most ridiculed by poker players.

In Big Deal: A Year as a Professional Poker Player (1990), Anthony Holden calculated the odds of that specific straight-flush-beats-full-house showdown in heads-up stud at 332,220,508,619 to 1. As Holden wrote, in poker terms the hand is a joke.

Despite the mathematically impossible ending, The Cincinnati Kid remains a landmark. It was the first major Hollywood film to build its entire story around a poker game. IMDb: 7.2.

“You’re good, kid, but as long as I’m around, you’re only second best.”
Lancey Howard (Edward G. Robinson) to The Cincinnati Kid

Where to watch: Rent or buy on Fandango at Home and other transactional platforms.

4. Casino Royale (2006)

Directed by Martin Campbell. Daniel Craig’s debut as James Bond, facing terrorist financier Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) in a high-stakes No-Limit Texas Hold’em tournament in Montenegro. Ian Fleming’s original novel used baccarat, but producers switched to Hold’em to reflect the mid-2000s poker boom and poker expert Thomas Sanbrook coached the actors.

The climactic hand is the most mocked in poker cinema. Four players hold monster hands simultaneously (a flush, two full houses, and Bond’s straight flush), and four-time WPT champion Darren Elias scored the scene just 3 out of 10, calling it “fantasyland.” Le Chiffre’s slow spread of his four jacks is a textbook slow roll, the dealer narrates the action out loud, and players check huge hands for dramatic effect.

Despite terrible poker accuracy, it is a great Bond film and one of the best poker scenes in mainstream cinema purely as spectacle. It introduced Texas Hold’em to a massive global audience at the peak of the boom and made the game look glamorous in a way no other film has matched. IMDb: 8.0.

Where to watch: Rotates across Prime Video and subscription platforms. Rent or buy on Apple TV and YouTube.

5. Maverick (1994)

Directed by Richard Donner, written by William Goldman. Mel Gibson plays Bret Maverick, a charming Western con man scrambling to raise the $25,000 entry fee for a winner-take-all five-card draw championship aboard a Mississippi riverboat. Jodie Foster co-stars as a rival card sharp, and James Garner (the original Bret Maverick from the 1957 TV series) plays a lawman with secrets.

No real poker players appear and the climactic hand is pure Hollywood, but that’s not the point. Maverick is a comedy Western, not a poker accuracy showcase. It grossed $183 million worldwide, earned an Oscar nomination for Best Costume Design, and kept poker visible in mainstream pop culture during the gap between the old-school era and the early 2000s boom.

It is also one of only three films on this entire list currently streaming on Netflix, which makes it the easiest entry point for anyone looking for a poker movie tonight. Entertaining, quotable, and lighthearted in a way that most poker films are not. IMDb: 7.0.

Where to watch: Netflix. Also rent or buy on Prime Video and Apple TV.

6. Mississippi Grind (2015)

Directed and written by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. Ben Mendelsohn plays Gerry, a down-on-his-luck gambling addict who teams up with a charismatic younger drifter named Curtis (Ryan Reynolds) for a road trip down the Mississippi toward a high-stakes game in New Orleans. The directors have cited California Split (number 7 on this list) as a direct inspiration.

No professional poker players appear and the film doesn’t try to wow you with hand-by-hand poker accuracy. Instead, it does something harder: it shows what gambling addiction actually looks and feels like from the inside. Mendelsohn’s performance is the most believable portrait of a compulsive gambler in any poker film, and Reynolds plays perfectly against type as the calm, unreadable presence Gerry orbits around.

Mississippi Grind is the film on this list that poker players respect the most and casual audiences know the least. If you’ve ever watched someone chase losses or talked yourself into “one more session,” Mendelsohn’s Gerry will make you uncomfortable in the best way. IMDb: 6.4.

Where to watch: Rent or buy on Prime Video, Apple TV, and YouTube.

7. California Split (1974)

Directed by Robert Altman. Elliott Gould and George Segal play two compulsive gamblers who bond over a chaotic night at a California card room and chase increasingly reckless action from LA to Reno. A young Jeff Goldblum appears in one of his earliest roles alongside a cameo from legendary road gambler Amarillo Slim Preston.

Roger Ebert gave it four stars and wrote that Altman’s gambling world “felt genuine and looked real.” It was the first non-Cinerama film to use eight-track stereo sound, enabling Altman’s trademark overlapping dialogue. That technique makes the card room scenes feel like you’re sitting at the table rather than watching a scripted exchange.

California Split is the film that Mississippi Grind (number 6 on this list) owes its existence to. Altman did in 1974 what almost no poker film attempts: he made the characters more interesting than the cards. It is the godfather of realistic gambling character studies, and it holds up better than almost anything from its era. IMDb: 7.1.

Where to watch: Rent or buy on Fandango at Home. Has streamed on Amazon Prime Video previously.

8. High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story (2003)

Directed by A.W. Vidmer. Michael Imperioli (Christopher Moltisanti from The Sopranos) stars as Stu Ungar, the three-time WSOP Main Event champion who won everything at the card table and lost it all to cocaine. Also released under the title “Stuey,” the film is structured as a flashback on the last night of Ungar’s life.

The cast includes Michael Nouri and Pat Morita, with cameos from Vince Van Patten and poker commentator Andy Glazer. A key scene dramatizes Jack “Treetop” Straus’s famous 7-2 bluff. Pros have noted that Imperioli looked far too healthy compared to the skeletal, drug-ravaged real Ungar of 1997, but his performance captures the manic energy that made Ungar magnetic at the table.

This is a low-budget film with mixed reviews, but for poker fans it serves as a companion piece to the real Stu Ungar story, which is even more dramatic than anything the film captures. Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, Dune) acquired Ungar’s family life story rights in 2025 for a new scripted series, so a definitive screen version may still be coming. IMDb: 6.0.

Where to watch: Rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video.

9. Lucky You (2007)

Directed by Curtis Hanson, co-written by Eric Roth (yes, the same writer now developing the Stu Ungar series). Eric Bana plays Huck Cheever, a talented but self-destructive pro battling his estranged two-time champion father L.C. (Robert Duvall) at the 2003 WSOP. Drew Barrymore and Robert Downey Jr. co-star.

What makes Lucky You unique is the sheer density of real poker talent on screen. Doyle Brunson served as poker consultant, scripted the hands, and coached Bana and Duvall for months. The pro cameos include Johnny Chan, Sam Farha, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein, Antonio Esfandiari, Jennifer Harman, and tournament director Matt Savage, who plays himself.

The poker looks and sounds right because it was built by the people who actually play it. The film flopped at the box office ($8.4 million on a roughly $55 million budget) and drew a 28% on Rotten Tomatoes, mostly because the romance subplot buries the poker. But for anyone who cares about authentic card room atmosphere and real pro cameos, there is nothing else like it. IMDb: 5.9.

Where to watch: Rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video.

10. Runner Runner (2013)

Directed by Brad Furman, written by Brian Koppelman and David Levien (the Rounders writers). Justin Timberlake plays Richie Furst, a Princeton grad student who funds his tuition through online poker, loses everything to a rigged site, and travels to Costa Rica to confront the offshore gambling tycoon behind it (Ben Affleck). Gemma Arterton and Anthony Mackie co-star.

Despite the Rounders writing pedigree, this is a crime thriller with an online gambling backdrop rather than a poker film. Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Laak have brief cameos, but there is very little actual poker on screen and one production error even shows a play-money table. Affleck reportedly drew on real offshore poker cheating scandals to build his character.

Runner Runner grossed roughly $62 million worldwide but left almost no lasting mark on poker culture. It ranks here because the Koppelman and Levien connection gives it historical context, and the Costa Rica setting captures a real chapter of online poker’s shadier side that most films ignore entirely. IMDb: 5.6.

Where to watch: Rent or buy on Prime Video, Apple TV, and YouTube.

1. One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stu Ungar (2006)

Produced by ESPN Original Entertainment, directed by Al Szymanski, and based on the biography by Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson. This is the definitive screen account of Stu Ungar’s life: his gin rummy dominance, his three WSOP Main Event titles, and his death in a Las Vegas motel room at 45 with $800 in his pocket.

What separates One of a Kind from the 2003 movie is access. The documentary includes interviews with Ungar’s wife and daughter Stefanie, plus excerpts from audio tapes Ungar recorded during the final year of his life. Those tapes give the film a haunting quality that no dramatization can replicate.

Stefanie Ungar confirmed on social media that the documentary won 4 Emmy Awards, including Best Documentary of the year and Best Writing. It is the single most important poker documentary ever made and required viewing for anyone who wants to understand the human cost behind the game’s greatest natural talent. IMDb: 6.6.

Where to watch: Free on YouTube.

2. KidPoker (2015)

Produced by PokerStars Original Films, directed by Gary Davis and Francine Watson. The film follows Daniel Negreanu from his teenage years hustling pool halls in Toronto to becoming the youngest WSOP bracelet winner in history at the time and one of the highest-earning tournament players of all time.

The documentary features interviews with Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth, Antonio Esfandiari, Jennifer Harman, and Negreanu’s brother Mike. It is well produced and genuinely moving in places, especially the sections covering Negreanu’s early struggles and his relationship with his parents.

The PokerStars production stamp does show: the film avoids the Full Tilt scandal entirely and glosses over Negreanu’s personal life. But as an entry point into who Negreanu is and why he matters to poker, nothing else comes close, and it is one of three titles on this list currently streaming on Netflix. IMDb: 6.7.

Where to watch: Netflix. Also free on YouTube in some regions.

3. Nosebleed (2014)

Directed by Victor Saumont, a French filmmaker and poker player. The documentary follows elite online cash game pros Alexandre “Alexonmoon” Luneau and Sébastien “Seb86” Sabic over seven weeks as they travel from their screens to Las Vegas to chase a WSOP bracelet. Shot in French with English subtitles.

This is the closest any poker documentary has come to showing what the online high-stakes grind actually feels like from the inside. Luneau and Sabic were winning millions in the “nosebleed” stakes (the highest cash game limits online), and Saumont captures both the mental pressure and the strange isolation of playing for six figures from a laptop. The film references Gus Hansen, Viktor “Isildur1” Blom, and Tom Dwan as the players Luneau and Sabic measured themselves against.

Nosebleed won the European Poker Award for Media Content of the Year and carries the highest IMDb rating of any title on this entire list. Many serious players consider it the best poker documentary ever made. IMDb: 7.7.

Where to watch: Free on YouTube.

4. Bet Raise Fold: The Story of Online Poker (2013)

Directed by Ryan Firpo, financed by high-stakes online pros including Jay Rosenkrantz and Taylor Caby. The documentary follows three players through the rise and sudden collapse of the online poker industry: Danielle “dmoongirl” Andersen (a young Minnesota mother), Tony Dunst (now a WPT host), and Martin “AlexeiMartov” Bradstreet (an Australian grinder).

The film builds toward Black Friday (April 15, 2011), the day the DOJ shut down PokerStars, Full Tilt, and Absolute Poker for US players. Watching the three protagonists process what happened in real time is the strongest material in the film. The first half, which covers the broader history of online poker, drags in places but is necessary context for anyone unfamiliar with the era.

Bet Raise Fold is the definitive Black Friday documentary. If you played online poker before 2011 this film will hit hard, and if you didn’t it explains why that date still carries weight in the poker community better than any article or recap. IMDb: 7.2.

Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video (free with ads), Pluto TV, Kanopy, and YouTube.

5. All In: The Poker Movie (2012)

Directed by Douglas Tirola. An earlier cut premiered at CineVegas in 2009 and won the Grand Jury Prize, but the version most people have seen is the expanded 2012 release with Black Friday material added. It is a pop-culture history of the poker boom from illegal backrooms to televised phenomenon to government crackdown.

The film features Matt Damon, Chris Moneymaker (extensively), Phil Hellmuth, Annie Duke, Daniel Negreanu, and commentators Ira Glass and Doris Kearns Goodwin. Moneymaker’s 2003 WSOP win and its aftermath get the most screen time, which makes sense: it was the single event that turned poker from a niche pastime into a mainstream obsession.

Critics found it overly enthusiastic and light on the darker side of the boom, but as an accessible primer on why poker exploded, it does the job. It is the third and final title on this list currently streaming on Netflix, making it the easiest documentary to start with if you have a subscription. IMDb: 6.6.

Where to watch: Netflix. Also on Amazon Prime Video.

6. The Ultimate Stack (2024)

Directed by Michael Bailey (POKERfilms), produced by Thomas Keeling. Bailey previously made the Bracelet Hunt docuseries. The film uses a novel structure: it follows the chips through the record-breaking 2023 WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas ($40 million guarantee), starting with one player and shifting to whoever eliminates them, chain-style, all the way to the champion.

Featured players include Tony Dunst, Garrett Adelstein, Chris Moorman, Brad Owen, Andrew Lichtenberger, and Dan Sepiol. Lithuania’s Paulius Vaitiekunas becomes the unexpected heart of the film as the chain carries through to the final table.

The Ultimate Stack is the most recent poker documentary on this list and the freshest look at what the modern tournament circuit feels like in 2026. The chip-tracking format is a smart device that keeps the narrative moving and avoids the usual “follow one player and hope they make it deep” structure that limits most tournament docs. IMDb: 6.1.

Where to watch: Free on YouTube.

7. A Kid’s Game: The Story of Online Poker (2013)

Produced by BlueFirePoker (an online training site) with no individual director credited. The documentary was originally released to BlueFirePoker members around 2011 and circulated widely by 2013. Runtime is roughly 70 minutes.

This is a raw, unpolished look at the daily lives of professional online poker players during the golden age before Black Friday. Featured players include Isaac “Ike” Haxton, Di “Urindanger” Dang, Hac “Trex313” Dang, Andrew “Good2cu” Robl, Peter “Apathy” Jetten, Shaun Deeb, and Alec Torelli. The Dang brothers alone won more than $10 million on Full Tilt.

A Kid’s Game has no IMDb rating and no mainstream critical coverage. It is a niche community film, and that is exactly its value. Nothing else from this era gives you the same candid access to the people who were printing money online before the DOJ shut it all down.

Where to watch: Free on YouTube and the Internet Archive.

Several poker films narrowly missed the main list. Dead Money (2024) is the most recent fictional poker movie, starring Emile Hirsch as a pro forced into a high-stakes game after a home game robbery. Reviews were mixed but some poker players praised the hand accuracy, and the film is available on Prime Video and Apple TV.

The Galfond docuseries (2024) is a four-part YouTube series on Phil and Farah Galfond, covering the Run It Once saga and the famous Galfond Challenge. It features Jason Koon and Andrew Robl and is free on YouTube. For poker TV series rather than films, High Stakes Poker (debuted 2006 on GSN, revived on PokerGO in 2020) and Poker After Dark (debuted 2007 on NBC, revived on PokerGO in 2017) remain the gold standard for cash game television and are worth mentioning alongside any documentary on this list.

We ranked movies and documentaries separately because the two formats serve different purposes. Movies are judged on poker accuracy, cultural impact on the game, and how well they hold up today. Documentaries are judged on access (did the filmmakers get close to the real story?), production quality, and lasting value as a historical record.

VIP-Grinders has covered poker since 2013, and this list draws on that perspective. We are not film critics ranking these by cinematography or box office performance. We are poker people ranking them by how much they matter to the people and history of poker.

Streaming availability was verified in July 2026 but changes frequently. We recommend checking each platform directly before planning a viewing, especially Netflix, which rotates its catalogue monthly.