During this weeks I wached and watched again two italian movies about poker, they are "regalo di Natale" (Christmas present) and "La rivincita di Natale", (Christmas rematch). The first one was of 1986 and the 2nd is of 2004. I don't like too much the actual italian movies production but this is an exception. Probably you'll never watch them because I don't think they were dubbed or subtitled, and expecially in the American contintent they are probably unfindable and it's a pity because I think that they are 2 of the most dramatic movies about card games.
The first one tell about the friendship of 4 friends, one of them became very rich and he's the owner of a big movie theater. They were poker players during teen age and now they come together again to play during Christmas' night with a rich lawier in order to win money for help one of them who is in difficult economical conditions, but the lawier won't be exactly what some of them thought about him and the last hand will be dramatic and a disaster for one of the 4 friends, the rich one who will realize that one of the other friends betrayed him.
This movie tell about the lost of friendship and I think that the character of the lawier is something very near of what I imagine to be the devil...
In 2004 they made the sequel, called "rematch": after 17 years the one who lost all in the first match succeded to have success and now is rich and have a lot of movie theaters and he want his chanche of revenge. They will reorganize the same table but the things are very different because everyone knows who are the others... Or they think to know it... The match will be more dramatic than the first with a lot of "coups de theatre" and the last hand will be a very strange surprise. This movie is about revenge but show that after a lot of years the characters are worse than before and they are the mirror of our era: they are disposed to do all for money, sell themselves and betray friends.
They are very, very sad movies but I liked them a lot, rent them if you find them !
these are the imdb pages:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0091837/
http://imdb.com/title/tt0403452/