On a winning streak, Mike earns $7,200 in three days, but still needs to double it in forty-eight hours. Mike decides to help Worm win the money by playing in several games in and around the city. Worm responds by insulting Grama and as the two nearly come to blows, Mike defuses the situation by agreeing to vouch for Worm and an angry Grama gives them five days to pay the remaining $15,000. Mike proposes to Grama that Worm pay weekly installments Grama considers the offer but also mocks Worm for his inability to pay him. In Atlantic City, Worm tells Mike about his debt to Grama but withholds that he is working for KGB. Mike learns from Petra at the Chesterfield that Worm has now racked up a $7,000 debt in Mike's name. As Mike returns to his poker lifestyle and friends, Jo ends their relationship.

Grama takes Worm's $10,000 he left the Chesterfield with, threatening him to pay the rest. Worm runs into Grama, a dangerous pimp, who reveals that he has bought Worm's debt – Worm now owes $25,000 directly to Grama, who is working for KGB. After being loaned $2,000, Worm gets up to $10,000 and cashes out for the full amount which starts a tab in Mike's name. Mike allows Worm to play on his credit at the Chesterfield Club. To help Worm pay off a debt, Mike sets him up with games across town and reluctantly sits in on a game, interfering with his studies and his relationship with Jo. While Mike is an honest player, Worm is a hustler and unapologetic cheat. Several months pass and Mike stays true to his promise until his childhood friend Lester 'Worm' Murphy is released from prison. His mentor Joey Knish offers to stake him to rebuild his bankroll but Mike declines, and instead accepts a part-time job to make ends meet. Shaken, he promises his girlfriend and fellow student Jo he has quit poker, and concentrates on law school. At an underground Texas hold 'em game run by Russian mobster Teddy 'KGB', an overconfident Mike loses his entire $30,000 bankroll in a single hand. New York City law student and gifted poker player Mike McDermott dreams of winning the World Series of Poker. Following the poker boom in the early 2000s, the film became a cult hit.

Rounders opened to mixed reviews and was moderately successful at the box office. The term rounder refers to a person traveling around from city to city seeking high-stakes card games.

The story follows two friends who need to win at high-stakes poker to quickly pay off a large debt. Rounders is a 1998 American drama film about the underground world of high-stakes poker, directed by John Dahl and starring Matt Damon and Edward Norton.

Meaning of rounders in poker