It is a classic hollywood narrative, a high stakes poker game where the odds are stacked and lives depend on the outcome. The setting of the casino has lit up the sliver screen since cinema’s adolescence with audiences never getting bored of that tense final hand or one shot roll of the dice. Whilst movie characters, mainly villains, often resort to the underhanded or almost impossible to win, in reality they could have saved themselves a lot of stress, and possibly a lengthy prison sentence, by doing a bit of online training and winning the old-fashioned, honest way.

Getting in the red without anyone being dead

With popular microgaming casinos such as SuperCasino offering authentic gambling experiences against quality online opponents, not to mention daily casino bonuses of the hard cash variety, anyone can become a master poker player from the comfort of their own living room or evil lair. This option being the perfect choice for cinema’s criminal masterminds, who have never been the most willingly to part with their cash, as these websites offer plenty of money incentives. If it be a few free spins of the online roulette wheel or a couple of complimentary virtual chips, this is a deal that even the most harden criminal overlord couldn’t resist. But which two of cinema’s most diabolical villains would have benefited most from putting aside the plans of kidnap, blackmail or murder and siting down in front of their computer instead?

Harry “The Hatchet” Lonsdale

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ bald and brash antagonist is one of British cinema’s most beloved all-round bastards. Guy Ritchie’s 1998 black comedy/crime thriller begins with gang leader Harry “The Hatchet” Lonsdale fixing his weekly high-stake three card brag game so that cards whiz Eddy doesn’t win the £100,000 buy-in shootout. Not just content with rigging the game, Harry also finds time to bully the wimpy Eddy into borrowing an extra £400,000, from him, to add to the game’s pot. Naturally Eddy, and his friends Bacon, Tom and Soup – who contributed to Eddy’s stake – are forced to take extreme actions to ensure they can repay their wrongful debt. Needless to say, the chain of events set off by Harry’s manipulations end with him brutally murdered by the very men he tried to condemn. Surely, in hindsight, Harry may have seen the idea of brushing up on his poker skills online as a more sensible option.

Le Chiffre

Casino Royale‘s watery eyed Le Chiffre, played by future Hannibal star Mads Mikkelsen, is another villain who rather overcomplicated matters for himself. After a failed terrorist attempt on Heathrow airport leaves him with a rolodex of mildly miffed criminal overlords, Le Chiffre decides that the only possible way to reimburse his dodgy investors is to win big at a high-stakes Texas hold ’em tournament. Rightly concerned that Daniel Craig’s James Bond might outplay him, Le Chiffre employs the slightly questionable tactic of poisoning Bond’s drink, a Martini that was most definitely shaken and stirred. Bond, naturally, with the aid of a handy defibrillator, fits in a spot of amateur heart resuscitation during a break in the game before returning and handily beating Le Chiffre. It cannot be argued that if Le Chiffre had spent a little less time concocting poisonous cocktails and perhaps a little more time doing a few rounds of virtual Texas Hold ’em, he may have finally been the villain to put the undeniably smug Bond in his place.