iGaming Daily went to the movies for its latest episode, where Steve Hoare, Editor of the Player Protection Hub, spoke to Elliott Gerner about his new short film, Friday Night Flop.
The film explores the world of poker through a mother-daughter relationship and Gerner began by explaining his own history with the game.
He said: “I’ve been playing [cards] for as long as I can remember. I remember playing cards with my grandparents as a young kid around the table when my hands were so small I had to put the cards on a tray on my lap.
“Poker came much later in my teens. I really got into it at probably 15 or 16. I’ve always loved those kinds of games, I used to play chess at quite a high level. I’ve been playing poker online from around the time my daughter was born which was around 15 years ago.”
During the film, a Jewish mother, played by Friday Night Dinner star Tracy-Ann Oberman, shows concern for her daughter’s obsession with playing online poker and enlists the help of a rabbi for help.
At one point the daughter argues that by playing poker she is not gambling and instead she is playing a game of skill, which is an argument that has featured in a number of court cases involving online poker, including the one that eventually led to the shutdown of Pokerstars in the US on ‘Black Friday’ 2011.
Hoare noted that the premise helped to keep Isai Scheinberg, the Founder of Pokerstars, out of prison as the judge in the case was lenient following advice from his lawyers that poker is a game of skill.
Gerner added: “That line about it’s a skill, I’d written it three or four times and we kept adding and taking away. It’s absolutely the case that it is a game of skill and that’s why it’s such a different game to any other casino game because there’s skill involved.
“That’s why I love it and why I like the daughter loving it. It’s why I always felt it worked really well. I was listening to a podcast with a women poker player who teaches her own daughter poker because she sees it as exactly that and it was really interesting.
“My son plays it a lot, my daughter less so, but it’s a fantastic game and that’s how we always felt.”
Ending the podcast, Gerner explained that after a successful showing at venues across the UK, the plan is now to submit it to film festivals around the world, such as Tribeca and Sundance, and also explore the possibility of turning the premise into a feature-length film.
“We’ve been asked whether we’d turn it into a feature because the characters have got legs so we feel we could potentially take the characters off to Vegas on a road trip.
“It would be a long road ahead and no doubt very difficult but I think we’ll give it a go. No one’s going to come and say, here’s a million dollars, go write it. We’re going to have to start by talking to producers and getting funding,
“To do that we’ll need a script but we’ve got a great calling card in the short films so that’s really helpful.”
