In one of the top masterpieces of Soviet satire a brilliant con artist, to win a bit of money, convinces a local small-town chess club that he is a traveling maestro and organizes a tournament. He first gathers the fees from the awe-struck yokel-enthusiasts and then plays “twelve identical matches” without understanding much of what he is actually doing, this being the second chess game of his lifetime, but placing the figures more or less correctly, with the terrified locals reading too much into his banal moves. Very soon, however, he good-naturedly utterly loses all twelve simultaneous games, to the amazement of the town. Buy then, however, he has gained the time he needed and escapes with the money. He is not a good player, but he is a winning one.
The novel is The Twelve Chairs of which there are both English translations and film adaptation DVDs actually available from Amazon.com. The first film adaptation of the book was actually a Mel Brooks comedy, which is a loose adaptation, recommended only for Brooks fans. The best Russian adaptation is the 1976 mini-series by Mark Zaharov, one of the greatest Russian directors of all time, though he may not sound as familiar as Tarkovsky.
At the crux of the matter, a good player is defined, whether in poker or some other area of life, by his purpose. The chess conman was a good player because he effectively used his wiles to achieve his goal of making a fast buck. An important side story though is that he knew his skills well enough that he could not endure much scrutiny and had a plan for a hasty escape route.
Now, a surprisingly large amount of poker players are reluctant to admit their less than average abilities. Ego is often central with poker players, it seems, perhaps because of the peculiar aura around the game. How they fail to realize that poker is a complex game one spends a lifetime learning is something of a marvel, but these pros-in-denial are exactly what makes poker a profitable game for the serious and talented players.
Then there are those who play by rote, repeating a learned set of rules and strategies with no cognitive activity to gum up the works. No point in improving because they win more than half of the time and are therefore good players - they have met their goal.
For those players to whom poker is an art, the above types are not true poker players, not really bad, just not real. They are in the clubs but are not the stars. The good player is looking for growth and more and more insight to improve his already good game. He or she understands that the game is a complicated mix of skill, theater, and perception. They know their weaknesses and work hard on improving their good points while lessening their bad ones.