Molly's Game

by Molly Bloom

  Julia was gorgeous, Asian, and a math genius. Caroline’s father was a diplomat, and she was a socialite who spoke five languages. Kendall was an all-American, corn-fed, blond, blue-eyed, girl-next-door type who was also a professional masseuse. Rider had a real knack for detective work, useful for when I needed help gathering intelligence to vet potential players. Tiffany came with me from L.A. She was my playmate friend—a master seductress. Last, there was “Little,” who was a five-foot-ten, blond, willowy model who excelled in organization and all things domestic; she was my personal assistant.

  It was quite the crew, and I felt ready to take over the Big Apple. I moved and got a chic, modern apartment in Manhattan, with floor to ceiling windows, a great view, and plenty of room for the girls to crash.

  I reached out to club promoters, bottle-service girls, “gallerinas” (beautiful girls hired by art galleries), and Atlantic City casino hosts, and offered them all cash incentives to send me players.

  Quickly we became well-known around town. Mystique and allure followed us, whispers trailed behind us. Within a month, we were running the big game, which I rotated between the Four Seasons and the Plaza, and two smaller games that I ran out of my apartment. Luckily, my only neighbors on the floor were an NBA basketball player who was frequently gone and a semi-famous screenwriter who ironically loved poker and joined the game. The doormen, however, were very confused at first. Twice a week, nine to ten men and a crew of beautiful girls came over at 7 P.M. and didn’t leave until the early morning hours.

  Eventually, when I had given those doormen enough in tips to pay their rent, I told them what was going on. We had a good laugh about it.

  THERE WAS, THOUGH, STILL TROUBLE BREWING in the form of Eddie Ting. Word traveled fast in the New York poker scene, and my games were quickly becoming infamous. Eddie had been displeased when I was thinking about setting up shop in New York . . . but now that I was here and had multiple games with many players, I was hearing more about him, and his feelings toward me, from lots of different people.

  Eddie had approached Illya and asked him to stop me from running the big game; lucky for me, his influence was not as great as he wished. Of course, Eddie was upset. He had been shut out of the L.A. games and now his town was being overrun by a girl who didn’t even play poker.

  One evening, I got a tip that Arthur Grossman was in town. I had spies and informants all over the city, from club promoters to the aforementioned bottle-service girls to concierges at hotels. I was, by now, firmly grafted to NYC and I was making double, if not triple, what I made in L.A. I ran the games and everybody knew it; no one would dare disrespect me, or demand that I bark for tips. But I still had unfinished business. I wanted Arthur to look me in the eyes and tell me why he had cut me out. I had a feeling there was more to the story.

  So, I sent him a text.

  Hey Arthur, heard you’re in town. I’m going out with the girls, would love to meet up.

  He responded instantly. People respond so much more readily when you make an offer as opposed to a request.

  We arranged to meet at Butter, a club down the street from my apartment and a notorious celeb hotspot. I called my friend, the owner of the club, and reserved the best table. As we all got ready, we drank champagne, laughed, did each other’s makeup, and tried on different outfits. It was a typical girls’-night-out primping session . . . that is, until our runner, Little, arrived and laid stacks of cash out on the bed. She had been running around town doing collections from the big game.

  We paused in our preparations to go through the stacks and check the math.

  “Two-fifty,” said Tiffany, presenting her stack.

  “Three-forty,” announced Kendall. We all looked at her. Math wasn’t her strong suit.

  “I counted it three times,” she insisted.

  “Two-eighty,” said Julia, grabbing Kendall’s stack to double-check.

  “I’ve got four hundred thousand here,” I said.

  “Nice work, Little,” I said, handing her a couple hundreds and a glass of champagne. “Catch up.” I winked.

  I put the money in the safe and put the finishing touches on my makeup.

  GLIDING PAST THE LINE, we air-kissed the host and were escorted to our table, where Arthur was already waiting with his entourage. His eyes darted around quickly, taking in the bevy of beautiful girls.

  I was charming, sweet, like nothing had ever happened. We drank and we danced, and I waited for my moment. Just then one of his assistants grabbed my arm, visibly drunk.

  “I am so sorry about what happened in L.A.,” she whispered into my ear. Her breath was hot and boozy on my cheek, and I wanted to pull away, but this was what I’d come for.

  “You must be so upset. Why did he want you out so bad?” she slurred.

  I looked at her.

  “I didn’t know that Arthur hated me so much,” I said.

  “No, not Arthur,” she said. “Not Arthur. Tobey. It was all Tobey. I heard them talking. Arthur was worried about you.”

  I sat back in my seat, reeling. I had known that Tobey couldn’t stand the money I was making, but I hadn’t realized how deep the vein of his resentment went. If what Arthur’s assistant told me was true, he used his celebrity to bait Arthur, and Arthur’s money to bait the rest of the players, and then he pretended to be my friend so that he could deliver the parting blow.

  I felt bitter, but I also marveled at how smart he was. I should have known.

  I didn’t say a word about the game to Arthur, just drank my scotch slowly and pretended to have fun.

  At the end of the evening, Arthur took my arm.

  “Come out to L.A.,” he said. “Run a game at my house.”

  And just like that, I realized I could have L.A. back. Did I want it? I sure as hell wanted to look Tobey in the face, and I wanted it to be on my terms. So I agreed.

  “Thanks, Arthur, I would love that,” I said.

  I HAD FANTASIZED ABOUT THIS MOMENT so many times since I lost my game . . . how they would come crawling back to me and beg me to return. It wasn’t quite that dramatic, but it was enough to make me feel better—I would have been lying if I said I wasn’t eager to see the look on Tobey’s face when I showed up at the game from which he had engineered my ousting.

  But before I could return to L.A., I had a little problem to deal with. One of the new players I had recruited, a guy named Will Fester, still hadn’t paid the game, and he owed half a million. It had been three weeks and things weren’t looking good.

  I had only dealt with one stiff before, a professional athlete who, after the fact, I learned had some serious gang associations.

  Back then, one of my players, a hip-hop producer, had offered to take care of the problem for me. He pulled me aside after the game.

  “Yo, Molly, I could get you the dough from that scumbag.”

  “Really? How?”

  “You don’t want to ask that question.”

  I politely rejected the offer.

  Covering the $40,000 that time was annoying, but it was a lot better than being involved in extortion or violence.

  This time, finally, a mutual friend offered to reach out to my New York stiff. This friend was a very powerful man, worth several billion from his family’s business. Will was in the same business, and I hoped that a call from our friend would be effective, since my voice mails had not been.

  A day later, I finally got a call from Will.

  “Hi, doll,” he said.

  “Hi, Will,” I said, maintaining a friendly demeanor. It’s too easy for guys not to pay if they become offended or angry.

  “Sorry for the delay,” he said. “It’s been a crazy couple months. Can you meet me in Miami? I have cash down there and I don’t want my wife to see this amount going out of my account.”

  “Sure.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Just tell me where and when,” I said. I held my breath until I heard back from him. I needed this guy to pay. The future of my NYC
game depended on it.

  Thankfully he texted me a place to meet and then I hung up and logged online to book a flight. I was about to click on purchase when it hit me: there was no way I could safely carry half a million in cash through Miami International Airport, the epicenter of drug trafficking. They kept closer watch there than at any airport in America.

  I would have to charter a plane on the way home.

  EUGENE OFFERED TO COME ALONG with me to make the pickup, so I booked a hotel room so that we could make it into a weekend. Eugene and I had quickly become involved. Our relationship evolved fast and furious, a heady experience and a very different kind of love affair from the one I’d had with Drew. Eugene knew my world. He had grown up in it. I never had to apologize for being stuck at work, or hide parts of what I did from him. Our love was open and honest, and for a time, it felt perfect.

  When we landed in Miami, I texted Will. No response. I waited for an hour or two on pins and needles.

  Would he really have me fly down here and be a no-show?

  I was on the hook not only for his debt, but now for the plane I had chartered. I paced around nervously.

  “Zil, it’s gonna be okay,” Eugene said. “Zilla” was his pet name for me. It was so nice to be with someone who understood everything I was going through. I had never experienced that since poker became my life.

  Will finally showed up.

  “I’m really sorry, Molly, it’s been a tough couple months, the market and all.”

  I nodded sympathetically even though I knew from my casino sources that Will was regularly in Atlantic City and Vegas gambling huge numbers, despite the “market.”

  He tossed me a bag of cash, casino chips, and a gold bar. I counted the contents. He was still $100,000 short.

  “I’ll take care of the rest when I’m back in New York,” he said, with an “I’ll do better” face on.

  I felt like yelling at him and telling him exactly what I thought of his degenerate ways but I needed to keep it amicable, at least until I collected the last $100,000.

  He left and I turned to Eugene.

  “Zil, if someone is going to stiff, they don’t pay most of it, they stiff for the whole amount.”

  It made sense, it was logical. Eugene knew so much more about this world than I ever would. He had grown up around gamblers—it was almost part of his DNA. I had been spoiled in L.A., where no one stiffed because of the social consequences of the game. It was basically the same players in every game, and no one wanted to be blacklisted. I had a whole new roster in New York, and clearly a whole new set of rules to learn.

  I had booked a room at the Setai, my favorite hotel on South Beach. I was excited to go to nice dinners with Eugene, lie on the sand, and relax with him. But Eugene was my little vampire, and he was in a heated, heads-up poker match online, so we ordered room service instead. He stayed up playing all night and didn’t come to bed until around seven in the morning.

  “I hate the sun anyway, Zil,” he said, with sleep in his voice, as I got up to spend the day at the beach.

  The second night, I staked Eugene in a local game. Supposedly, this was the biggest game in Miami and it was full of fish. He returned an hour before our 8 A.M. flight with a stack of cash and some valuable contacts.

  It was a far cry from any trip I had been on with past boyfriends, but when we boarded our G-5 with a half a million in cash and gold bars, it felt pretty damn sexy, kind of like Bonnie and Clyde without the bloodshed.

  Eugene stared at me with his black eyes as we buckled up.

  “I love you so much,” he said.

  And I loved him too. More intensely than anyone I had ever been with. We used our love and our obsession with gambling to fill the voids of our lives, to insulate us from the reality we were both trying so hard to escape.

  VEGAS WAS CALLING AGAIN. Illya had been on an extended stay and I needed him back in New York for the big game. He was notoriously afraid of flying, famous for “getting stuck” in places for months on end because he was too scared to get back on a plane. So I decided to multitask. I would orchestrate a Vegas trip, scoop Illya up, and bring the New York guys to L.A. to play in the game I was planning for Arthur.

  I extended the invitations, chartered the jets, booked the hotels in Vegas and L.A., and planned an active social schedule. I brought Eugene along, of course. To everyone else he was just my employee. We did an immaculate job of hiding our relationship. Somehow it all came together and we boarded the jet in New York for Vegas. True to form, there wasn’t a second between takeoff and landing when the guys weren’t gambling on something. The plane ride consisted of a monster game of backgammon, Chinese poker, and a $500,000 freeze-out game between Russian Igor and the “Great Boudini,” John Hanson, a mentor and business associate of Illya’s. John, who had been one of the youngest chess masters in history, was like a human computer. He and Illya were always engaged in some heated discussion about stats and odds, Chinese poker, Hold’em, and stud.

  Before we made ground in Vegas, there were already million-dollar figures in play.

  THE RHYTHM INTRODUCED ON THE PLANE RIDE continued at the hotel. I hadn’t even unpacked my bags in our sprawling and luxurious villa when the guys launched into a million-dollar game of Cee-lo, a dice game. Some were laying bets on sports. Some were reaching for the card decks, placing enormous sums on black or red.

  I was following them around with my clipboard, frantically trying to keep track of everyone’s figures. Every couple hours someone would call out for me, and I would have to calculate their net wins or losses.

  “What’s my number?”

  “What’s my number?”

  It was madness. They played poker for a while, and then Phil Ivey, arguably the Tiger Woods of poker and one of the biggest gamblers in the world, asked me if I was feeling lucky. He wanted to play craps. We left the room and went to the tables, where I watched Ivey lose $3 million in a half hour.

  It was day one, and the damage already exceeded $5 million.

  We went to the clubs that night. A lot of the New York guys, rich as they were, were unaccustomed to this kind of access to the elite social scene I could provide. These were kings of the financial world, but they spent their days in suits, among other suits for the most part. I watched their faces, watched their body language, and the inherent value of decadence was evident. Selling the lifestyle had always been a powerful part of my pitch. No matter who the player was, if they had the money to play and pay, I could provide access to the most exclusive parties, beautiful women, celebrities, and billionaires . . . and the New York guys were much easier to impress than the L.A. ones. Eugene snuck into my room at night and whispered not only sweet words but intel and observations. He made everything okay.

  The next day, there was a game of golf for $100,000 a hole, another million-dollar buy-in poker game, another million-dollar Cee-lo game, and blackjack for $30,000 a hand.

  By the time we left for L.A., the wins and losses were well into eight digits. No one had slept; all the men were completely manic. As we left Vegas and headed to the private airport in Los Angeles, monstrous backgammon and Chinese poker games were going on in full force before the pilots closed the doors. I fought to keep my eyes open but I couldn’t miss recording a win or loss.

  I watched and I couldn’t help but wonder if things were getting dangerously out of control. These guys were mainlining gambling like a drug. Nothing was ever enough. The wins multiplied, but they never covered the losses. This just created more compulsion. These men could afford it, and this was what they chose to do for pleasure. It wasn’t hurting anyone. At least this is what I told myself.

  Chapter 27

  Despite the decimated economy, the resistance from my New York competitors like Eddie Ting, and the perception that I had been forced to leave L.A. to save face after losing everything, the reality was that I had won. And I had won spectacularly. My New York games were bigger, better, and more profitable than the Los Angeles game had
been. I had a much different perspective now, though, with the memory of what I had gone through never far from my mind. I wouldn’t allow myself to become complacent; I never stopped searching for the next whale, the next donkey. Eugene had become an integral part of that. I made him a partner and vogued for him constantly so he could play in games that might garner contacts. My vogue was as good as gold and it enabled him to play in every game in the city. We still kept the romantic part of our relationship under wraps. This arrangement was hugely beneficial to me in a business sense, but I lost him to the night. For the first time in his life, Eugene had carte blanche to gamble anywhere and everywhere and I realized why his father had given Illya, not him, the backpack of cash to infiltrate New York. Eugene was an addict. He would sometimes play for two days straight. He was quickly becoming one of the biggest fish in New York City. And unfortunately, when he stayed at a game too long, he would start to get emotional when he lost and the tilt would start. All of his hard-earned knowledge and strategy would go out the window. As much as he was recruiting valuable players and gathering important intelligence for me, he was also running up quite a debt. I barely saw him anymore.

  MY WEALTHY FRIENDS GAVE ME lots of great leads; one in particular led me to Glen Reynolds. Allegedly, Glen was young, rich, and reckless. A mutual friend connected us and we started communicating by phone and e-mail. I invited him to a few games. He was definitely interested, as evidenced by all of the questions he asked, but he didn’t show up right away. Glen had a habit of calling the day after a game and wanting to know the gossip and the results. I was happy to oblige . . . I was baiting the hook.