If you can’t tell who the sucker is at the poker table within a half hour, then it’s a sure bet you are the sucker.

This and other tidbits of poker-playing advice give viewers of “Rounders” a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to know what it is like to not be one of those poor suckers.

“Rounders” is a movie about the hidden world of professional poker. Poker may be an ordinary game to some, but to professional players, the game is a way of life.

Matt Damon plays Mike, a New York City law student who plays professionally to pay his tuition.

Mike insists that poker is not about luck — it’s a game of skill.

However, all the skill in the world does not help Mike when he loses his $30,000 life savings to the Russian mobster Teddy KGB (John Malkovich).

Faced with the harsh reality that he was outplayed, Mike decides to give up poker and start making money the old-fashioned way, by finding a real job.

Mike’s newly-acquired honest lifestyle is put to the test when his childhood friend Worm (Edward Norton) is released from prison. It seems Worm has been working on his own poker skills.

In particular, Worm has perfected some new strategies for cheating, and he wants Mike to be his partner in crime.

Poker players, of course, do not follow many rules. The one rule that they do live by is to never cheat. For this reason, Mike refuses to partner with his friend.

But soon Worm’s cheating ways and growing gambling debts put him on Teddy KGB’s bad side.

Near the end of the movie, Mike is left with Worm’s debt troubles. In order to avoid a severe beating, Mike must confront Teddy KGB, and the two come to blows in full force, rounders’ style.

Mike must also decide whether keeping his girlfriend Jo (Gretchen Mol) is more important than the poker-playing life he loves.

Jo makes it quite clear that she believes Mike’s gambling is wrong. In fact, because of her continuous badgering, whining and spying, the character becomes immediately tiresome.

The movie’s dialogue is also difficult to follow, especially for non-poker players. Mike, Worm and all the other pros share their own poker-playing vocabulary, which is loaded with double meanings (a “cowboy” is a jack) and unusual phrases (“spine up the back” means getting caught cheating).

A lot of the lingo can be figured out by following the action of the characters. However, sometimes the players truly are speaking a completely different language.

When all else fails, the fast-paced, descriptive language is actually pretty terrific to listen to even when the audience has no clue about what is being said.

In addition to learning some great new lines, the movie offers the audience a chance to be members of a group of winners.

The best scene in “Rounders” is when Mike and a group of his professional poker friends meet at a poker table in Atlantic City. Two inexperienced tourists sit down at their table to test their luck.

Unfortunately, poker is not a game of luck. The pros grin as they proceed to squeeze every penny from the tourist’s pockets.

Poker may not be about luck, but the audience should feel lucky to watch such an entertaining film.

4 stars out of five

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Teresa Halvorsen is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Northwood.