Poker misconceptions

Casino Royale

This refers to the scene in Casino Royale where Bond scoops up a 115 million dollar pot. In this scene many things occur which just don't happen in real life and have simply been put in in order to create suspense and adrenaline.
First of all, the biggest pot ever won online was for 1.3 million (between Patrik Antonius and Viktor Blom) 115 million dollar pots just don't happen. That being said, in 2006 a billionaire businessman named Andy Beal challenged the world's best poker players in a series of heads up matches at stakes $50,000/$100,000. However the poker players had to pool their money together in order to put up the $10 million to play against him.
Anyway, going back to the Casino Royale Scene, the hand itself is absolutely ridiculous. In this four-way contested pot there was a A-high flush, a full house, a bigger full house and a straight flush. I can safely (without embarrassment) say that out of the trillions of hands played all around the world since the creation of hold'em, that no hand to this extremity has happened. The odds of this are so astronomical we might as well say it is impossible.
And also there's some etiquette issues and technicalities but I'll save that for another time.

Rounders
Rounders is a 1998 film starring Matt Damon; it wasn't too bad if you want to check it out.
The first annoying part was when Damon told his friend that he got 'outplayed' by Teddy KGB in one particular hand.

The use of the word outplayed is absolutely incorrect. It is almost always incorrect to lay down a full house (except when there is trips on the board or you are only using one card from your hand to make a full house). In particular this is a heads up pot but even in multi-way pots it is very rare to hear of someone folding a full house. It is statistically wrong to fold a full house because there are so many hands in his range that you beat. He was not 'outplayed', we simply call that a cooler.

Also in this hand, he sat down at the $300/$600 table that Chan was playing and and bought in for $6000 (I believe), which is 10 big blinds (bb). He says he was playing real tight until this one hand where he decides to 5-bet bluff Chan. If he was playing tight then we can assume that his stack was, at best, stable (if not decreasing). Assuming the standard preflop raise is 3bb and a standard 3bet is 9bb then its obvious that Damon only had just enough for a standard 3bet, making it impossible to get to 5bets.

And finally this hand; skipping all preflop action, Damon folds top two pair to a single bet. Folding top two pair in a heads up game is stupid. Many high stakes players would happily get all there money in with just top pair (and rightly so). Even in multi-way pots top two pair is (for the majority of cases) a justifiable all-in. Damon then makes a comment like "I'm not gonna draw against a made hand". Even if he knows KGB has the straight he can still call if he's getting the expressed odds to hit his full house and there's also the factor of implied odds.

We are all degenerates and junkies
If you go to local casinos and bars there will probably be people there who are drinkers, smokers and just out to have a fun time or satisfy there cravings to gamble. This paints quite a negative picture of poker. If you look at professionals (or even lots of recreational players) you'll see that these people are quite civilised and entered the game of poker because it turned out to be a profitable situation (not to satisfy cravings). Actually a lot of high stakes poker players don't even touch games such as blackjack, craps, etc because in the long term the house will always win.
Also there are many players such as Bill Chen, Chris Ferguson, Brian Hastings, Vanessa Selbst that are in the fields of maths, computer science, economics and law respectively. I don't know them very well but I'm sure they didn't start playing poker and continue playing simply because they are degenerates.

Zynga poker
And to conclude my overly long rant is the facebook phenomenon that is Zynga poker. For the most part I believe that the game of poker has been translated well onto the virtual felt. Its efficient, convenient and the animations are nice. It's a good break from real money.
However there are a few things I noticed which aren't quite right. First of all if the pot hasn't been raised preflop and it comes back to the big blind and he decides he's going to check it, he can click the check button. For now it's all right. However a millisecond later under the user's display picture shows the word, "call". Wow that puts me on tilt more than you can imagine. What are you calling? The pot hasn't even been raised. It seems they only got it half right.
Secondly, when it gets to the flop suppose someone wants to open the pot (make the first bet). You have no choice but to click the 'raise' button and watch the word 'raise' show under your display picture. To get straight to the point it should be called a 'bet'. Put simply, in order for a raise to be possible, there must have been an initial bet, i.e a raise can not exist without a bet. So the next time your friend opens the pot and declares a 'raise' just call him a facebook fish.
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Just type tl;dr and that would be greatly appreciated.