Rounders was born too soon. When the film debuted in September of 1998, televised poker was a once-a-year, one-hour proposition on ESPN. Online gambling sites virtually didn't exist. College students were still gambling on sporting events or in fantasy leagues. And so Rounders, starring Damon as a law student whose real talent is poker, never became a zeitgeist film. It never did for poker what Saturday Night Fever did for disco. -----snip----- Ebert, a casual poker player himself, astutely observed that Rounders is anything but a cautionary tale. "If this movie was about alcoholism," he wrote, "the hero would regain...