The story begins with Venkat Subhramaniam [Amitabh Bachchan], a professor of mathematics and a genius, teaching maths in his village to kids when a postman comes with a letter. The letter is from Perci Trachtenberg [Ben Kingsley], widely regarded as the worlds greatest living mathematician, who invites Venkat to a high rolling casino in London. Venkat tells Perci about an equation that could not only change the dialogue on mathematics forever, but one that has already left an indelible impression of guilt - for many painful reasons - on Venkats life. It is shown in the past that the reclusive genius Venkat has cracked a theory that could redefine the principles of probability and randomness. Venkat tries to use this experiment in a game called Teen Patti, [a poker game] which he plays on the internet. According to this experiment if a player playing Teen Patti knows all the 3 cards with one of the players [except him] he/she can guess the other cards with the rest of the players and therefore can guess who is going to win with the theory of probability. Venkat succeeds on his theory and submits his report to the institute where he teaches but they reject his report. But Venkat is sure about his theory and wants to try out in reality with real players. So he talks with a younger professor Shantanu [R. Madhavan] about his theory and tells him to get three students to try out this experiment. Shantanu arranges three students- Sid [Siddharth Kher]- the college rockstar, Aparna or Apu [Shraddha Kapoor]- the studious geek who has a crush on Sid and Vikram or Vikku [Dhruv Ganesh]- the boy next door. They come together and start playing the game and Venkats theory like the last time proves to be successful. Venkat tells that after a few more games hell be sure to crack his equation and even be able to study it better. Shantanu tells him that he should try using his theory in the real world, where there are people who actually gamble and play Teen Patti i.e. in underground dens or addas. Although Venkat has no interest in the money that could come from practicing his equation to crack Teen Patti, he eventually succumbs to Shantanus charismatic persuasion. Soon, with the help of his new students, they explore the addas [underground gambling dens] of wild Bombay. Later another student from the institute, Abbas [Vaibhav Talwar]- the rich spoiled brat joins the gang and arranges for them parties in casinos, private clubs etc. But what starts out as an experiment between a charismatic young professor and an eccentric older one soon descends into a game neither of them can control. The money they earn gets stolen; someone is blackmailing them; they get greedy about money and in the course of time they change into different people and even start betraying each other. The story tells that money is nothing but hunger; it leads to greed, deception, betrayals which have disastrous consequences in the end.

Production

The film is shot in India except for a few parts that in England, for which production designer Ayesha Punvani, created gambling dens [adda] in places like abandoned train yards, dockyards, abandoned factories, mills that have been shut down and an ice factory, and in all 80 sets were created

Box office and critical reception

Teen Patti had a poor opening, being beaten out by My Name Is Khan in the first place and Karthik Calling Karthik in the second place. Even Amitabh Bachchans appearance could not help the film to go on. The movie was rated as a Box office disaster in its first week. The critical reception was extremely poor as well, receiving almost universally bad reviews. Well known film critic and author Anupama Chopra called it "a train wreck of a movie".