Grinders

'Grinders' shows poker from a down to earth perspective, but filmmaker Matt Gallagher has misjudged the landscape. His narrative doesn't have much to say about the game, his subjects aren't that interesting. Which means - as it's most likely to be viewed by a select audience - would you be better off playing if you have the itch or at the very least watch something more fun? I enjoy poker and didn't get much from this.

In Toronto, Canada circa 2011 we follow along three players stories intercut. Andre is the brash, talkative kid in his twenties with no real job but a good family. He's the kind of guy you'd expect to see splashing around in a 1/2, 1/3 game at the casino (if Toronto had real legit poker in 2011) but plays loose in the underground games captured here in which he considers himself a "grinder". Danny is the father who plays nonstop - live & online - to support his family much like the director who also narrates the tale. The dream very much still alive that this is a legit way to make money.

This doesn't comment on or dispel the notion, but rather just rolls with it. Andre enters into a contest by Victory Poker (they later folded) to become a sponsored member of their team, move to Vegas, but the poorly run end result isn't shown. What's Danny & Matt's overall success / financial picture? Don't ask because we never find out. In fact the entire documentary doesn't have much of a tale to present. There's no coda to their journey. Poker pro Daniel Negreanu pops up, but what he has to say doesn't even tie into the average joe presentation.

'Grinders' is the type of documentary that will get casual views from poker fans, but no message leaves it feeling empty. Some sentiment about the value of family rang true, but no one has ever sat in a live poker game with complete strangers and wondered what everyone's life story was. That's the problem with this relatively harmless but obvious lightweight cash-in doc.

1. As of 2024, he is the seventh-biggest live tournament poker winner of all time. He was named the WSOP Player of the Year in 2004 and 2013, making him the only player to receive the accolade more than once. He was also the 2004-2005 WPT Player of the Year. He is the first player to make a final table at each of the three WSOP bracelet-awarding locations Las Vegas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, and the first to win a bracelet at each.8In 2014, he was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.

2 Negreanu is an accomplished tournament and cash game player. He has seven World Series of Poker bracelets and two World Poker Tour.

Just watched this for the first time on PokerGo and found it a fascinating expose of life of people trying to make of go in the rough and tumble life of Professional Poker players. It is humerous and sometimes sad but never dull. No happy endings here just raw life with all our faults and dreams exposed to the element of luck. Enjoy and keep on dreaming.

Not-so-obvious tidbit about this doc is that it's told from the perspectives of the director and writer husband-n-wife team. No spoilers, other than it makes the accounts an memorializations seem more real. The glamour is given in small doses from Negreanu but from the lens of every-peeps looking to make it to that level. Why not, though? The more over-the-top poker streams get with wacky characters the more the grinder needs to be illustrated, even if it's in a somewhat clunky format. I liked it, despite the bleakness, mostly because every person in the poker scenes seemed like a relatable archetype of someone I'd met in my own travels as a player. We'll call it a realistic snapshot, mostly good but flawed and leave it at that.

So little of the documentary actually involved poker. A bunch of family drama, some guy trying to re-open his seized gambling den and way too much footage on this obnoxious 25 year old professional wanna-be. I want 1.5 hours of my life back.