Molly's Folly or The Bloom Room

A bit over ten years ago, Texas Hold 'Em was all the rage.  I went to a regular Wednesday tournament.  The buy-in was $40, and you could re-buy as many times as you wanted for the first hour.  By the end of the night, first place could be worth about $600, second-place $300 and third-place $100.

There were stories about higher stakes games in town, though none of us had any idea how to get in (even if we could have afforded it).  Several years later there was some sort of bankruptcy investigation where the biggest Los Angeles game and many of its players were uncovered in the press as the government tried to claw back the money.  It turned out a young woman ran the game, and her name, oddly enough, was Molly Bloom.

She got into further trouble related to New York gambling activities and in the middle of that wrote a book about her life, Molly's Game.  It was published in 2014 and made into a movie by Aaron Sorkin, starring Jessica Chastain, in 2017.  I saw the movie when it came out, and have now read the book. (The movie follows the basic story, and brings us up to date on events that happened after publication, but there's quite a bit more about how she ran the game in the book).

Bloom starts with a two-page prologue where she notifies us the FBI will eventually come knocking, but otherwise the tale is told chronologically.  She was raised in Colorado, where Molly and her two brothers, pushed by their father, were overachievers.  She never felt she was as accomplished as her siblings, though, and after considering law school, instead left for Los Angeles to find her fortune.

She slept on a friend's couch and took the first job she could find, working as a waitress in Beverly Hills.  The guy who ran the restaurant was in business with two trust-fund babies and took Molly on as an assistant for their many dealings. The group took over ownership of the infamous Viper Room on the Sunset Strip and he decided to start a high-stakes poker game there, which Molly would run.

She had no experience at it--didn't even know poker--but was a fast learner.  With her boss's connections, it soon became the hot game in town, featuring big Hollywood names--most notably Tobey Maguire, who took poker quite seriously--as well as rich businessmen and others, but no professional players.

There was a $10,000 buy-in, and everyone begged to get in.  Molly was not paid for her services, but received tips, which added up to more money than she'd ever seen.  She and her boss had a falling out and Molly, showing her competitive spirit, managed to wrest the game away from him.  She moved it out of the dank Viper Room basement and into fancy hotel suites.  She made sure her guests had all the amenities.  Good food and drink, not to mention beautiful young women to serve them.  She also upped the buy-in to $50,000.

She didn't seem to be breaking the law.  The game had no rake--the house taking a percentage of the pot--which would have made it illegal. Bloom was essentially an event planner who got huge tips.  She checked with her lawyer, who said a line so great that Aaron Sorkin put it in his film: "Don't break the law when you're breaking the law." In other words, what she was doing was a legal gray area, so don't do something at the game that's clearly illegal, such as bring in prostitutes or cocaine.

She did such a good job at maintaining the game--recruiting new players, figuring out the right mix at the table, making the playing as enjoyable as possible, collecting from the losers and paying off the winners--that she was netting more money than ever.  She never gives a direct number, but it would seem to be five figures a week.  And then the game was taken away from her (according to the book) through the machinations of Tobey Maguire.  Maguire and Bloom had clashed over various issues and perhaps he was punishing her.

So Bloom moved to New York and started an even richer game. After all, New York is the financial center of the world--movie stars live in Los Angeles, but the people who sign their checks live in New York.  Using her skill set, it wasn't long before she was hosting games with a $250,000 buy-in and making even more money. Further, she was running more than one game, though this meant she was working with other people and had less control.  This also meant some games had a rake, which made them illegal--this is what the FBI arrested her for, though she had believed it was at worst a state law misdemeanor. (It's not entirely clear why Bloom allowed the rake.  Was it loss of control? Was it the need to have more money on hand since she had to pay off players and it wasn't always easy to collect from the losers?  Was it that she now had a drug habit and was making bad decisions?)

But even before the arrest, she sometimes wondered (she claims) if she wasn't losing too much in other ways.  She was in her early thirties, and already her youthful earnestness and dreams seemed to have been left behind.  It certainly cost her in the love department.  She had some serious relationships, but the world of poker would always end up getting in the way.

Anyway, the roof eventually caved in.  Some mob guys wanted to partner with her and she refused.  They broke into her apartment, stole her money, beat her up, threatened her life and warned her that she better cooperate. (Soon after, there was a mass arrest of organized crime figures, so that problem actually went away on its own.) Then there were the legal troubles noted above.  First the problem from the L.A. game, then the arrest of Bloom along with many of her New York players (who were apparently committing serious crimes outside the game).  Bloom did not cooperate with the authorities, protecting the secrecy of her clients (the book mixes real names with invented ones).  She ultimately decided to plead out on a lesser charge for no jail time.  I get this from the internet, since the book actually ends before she's sentenced--I guess the publisher figured better strike while the iron is hot. (The movie says she could have made a lot more for the book if she was willing to name all the names, and shovel more dirt.)

Bloom resurfaced a bit when the movie came out, but I'm not sure what she's doing now. I believe she lives in Los Angeles.  If I could get her contact information, maybe we could start having those Wednesday tournaments again.