Molly's Game // 200 // Underground poker

Transcript

The story we’re covering is an infamous poker game that has many layers to it, but it was called Molly’s Game.

SOME of the people ALLEGEDLY INVOLVED are:

Kenny Tran: professional poker player

Cody Leibel: High end developer and brother to Blake Leibel

Alex Rodriguez: A-Rod, a professional baseball player

Jeffrey Katzenberg: CEO of DreamWorks Animation

Bob Safai (Suh-feye)- Real estate mogul and poker player

Guy Laliberte (Ghee La-lee-ber-tay) cirque du soleil creator and poker player

Alec Gores (Gor-ez)-Technology billionaire

Jamie Gold-World series poker champ

Todd Philips-The Hangover director

Nick Cassavetes (Casa-vet-ees)-The Notebook director

Steve Brill-Mighty Ducks director

Joe Francis-Girls Gone Wild video franchise

Dean Factor-Max Factor fortune heir

Mary Kate Olsen made a brief appearance in the story. It’s mentioned that she arrived at the game with other people, but got offended by some crude comments and left

Tobey Maguire – Spider-Man star

Leonardo DiCaprio: Actor known for many films including Titanic

Ben Affleck: Actor best known for Good Will Hunting

These are just some of the names tied to this story and we’re covering this from two separate perspectives. I used the book Molly’s Game by Molly Bloom and Billion Dollar Hollywood Heist by Houston Curtis. We are starting with Molly’s version of events first.

Molly Bloom grew up in Loveland, Colorado. She attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she majored in political science. She was a member of the US Ski Team and ranked third overall in North America in 1998.

The Viper Room is one of the most iconic bars in Los Angeles. It’s a nightclub and live music venue located on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California. The location was a grocery store from 1921 to the 1940s, then it was converted into a nightclub, and it was called the Cotton Club. It went through a series of names including: The Greenwich (Gren-itch) Village Inn, Rue Angel, The Last Call, The Melody Lounge, Filthy McNasty’s, and The Central. It became the Viper Room in 1993, when it was co-owned by Johnny Depp and Sal Jenco. They both starred in 21 Jump Street. Over the years, it’s been known as a hangout spot for the young Hollywood elite, but it’s also known for darker reasons as well. Actor River Phoenix had a fatal drug overdose in 1993, actor Jason Donovan survived a drug-induced seizure in 1995, and singer Courtney Love survived an overdose in 1995 after Johnny Depp gave her CPR. In 1997, singer Michael Hutchence played his last public performance in the Viper Room before ending his life a week later.

The Viper Room may have been well known, but it was also losing a shit ton of money and there were suspicions that one or more employees were stealing. Darin Feinstein was planning to make some changes. He brought in Molly Bloom, and he wanted her to get close to the employees, figure out what was going on, and start firing them. He needed to figure out how to get money flowing again and quickly. He told Molly they would do a poker game at the Viper Room, and she could help run it. It would be super-secret, invite only, and you have to bring ten thousand dollars in cash for the first buy-in. He gave Molly the names and numbers of the some of the most famous and powerful men.

She sent out the invites via text and most of the men responded quickly to say, I’m in. The Poker game was set up for a Tuesday night and the first person to show up was Todd Phillips, the writer and director of Old School and the Hangover franchise. Soon, the room was filled with movie stars, directors, and powerful businessmen. They all paid their $10k buy-in and they were told to tip Molly well if they wanted to be invited back. It was a Tuesday night and Molly walked out of there with $3k. It was a massive success and most of the players wanted to do it again, so it was decided, they would have a poker game every Tuesday night.

For the second game, Tobey Maguire, Spider-man actor, brought in a $17k machine called the Shuffle Master. It’s supposed to deliver a fair shuffle every time and he said he wouldn’t play without it. Tobey also decided that he was going to rent the machine to them each week. The machine he demanded they use because he couldn’t play without it, was going to be rented to them for the Poker game for $200. He also said that he would need a list of poker players every week and needed to know in advance if someone new was joining.

The poker game quickly took off and gained the reputation as the best game in Los Angeles. The game was played in a very private room, invitation only, and the people that showed up were either celebrities or very important people. Molly had to turn people down every week and soon, they decided to host games twice a week. If you didn’t get invited, you didn’t know where the game was held. If you did know, you weren’t supposed to talk about it. It was very mysterious, but that just made it more alluring.

There were a core group of guys that basically ran the game each week and they would recruit “fish” or bad poker players that were supposed to lose. Obviously, it didn’t always work out that way, but that was the goal. According to Molly, her boss, Darin Feinstein, was the one that put the whole thing together. She claimed that his temper was off the charts disgusting and he ended up firing Molly Bloom because she visited her family for Christmas and wasn’t at his every beck and call. She was so upset about being pushed out after everything she had done to get that job. Molly decided to call one of the poker players, Phillip Whitford.

She told him what had happened, and he didn’t agree with the way she was being treated. Phillip said that they should move the game to his house and invite all the players except Darin Feinstein. He could talk to the guys and try to convince them that Molly should officially take over the game. This ended up working. The guys all decided that it was hers. It was Molly’s game. When Darin found out, he called Molly and demanded that she meet up with him immediately. She was prepared. She knew he would yell at her and make her feel like shit for taking the game he had started, but instead, he said he was proud of her, and she deserved it. She had finally earned his respect. Molly went from a young woman, struggling to make it, barely getting by on tips, and getting screamed at by her boss, to a situation where she was suddenly thrust into the high life. Wearing designer clothes, flying first class, yachting, and hanging out with celebrities and she would do whatever it took to make sure that wasn’t taken from her.

Her brain was flooded with ideas. She wanted to truly make the poker game special. Make it something that everyone wanted to be a part of. Molly set up appointments at three luxurious hotels in Los Angeles. She had the staff give her tours and she told them she would be hosting industry networking events and lots of celebrities would be attending. She said she would need to use their best rooms on a weekly basis, and they would need a poker table delivered. With three new locations available anytime she called, the game could be more mysterious, and it could keep outsiders guessing.

Molly got a lawyer involved to make sure everything was on the up and up. She brought in a top criminal attorney, Wendall Winklestein. She built relationships with the players and attempted to say yes to everything they wanted, unless it was illegal, of course. She attempted to have everything at the games that would be requested the most. Caviar, champagne, scotch, phone chargers, etc. On top of that, Molly began providing additional services to all the players. She could book them hotel rooms, make travel arrangements, call in acupuncturists, hell, if someone needed a new designer purse purchased, Molly would deduct it from their wins and make it happen. She was making so much money from tips that she was able to take over the lease on her old boss Darin’s S-Class Mercedes. It turned into a situation where the players began calling Molly anytime they needed something, and she always had to be available. This would have been fine, but the game was secret. Even Molly couldn’t tell anyone about it, so she always had to make up lame excuses about why she was rushing off to take calls.

The person who called the most, was Tobey Maguire. He was the one who originally insisted that they use his Shuffle Master in the games, and pay him to use it. Now, he had other ideas. He wanted to add new people to the group and increase the stakes. Molly’s game had been operating with a $10k buy-in, but Tobey wanted to increase this to $50k. They would definitely lose some of their players if they did this, so they would need to have replacements set up.

If the buy-in was higher, the tips would be higher. It sounded crazy, but Molly was enjoying the power that she was getting from running this game and she was ready to increase the stakes. They began looking for new people to join that could pay the $50k in cash. The only rule, no pros allowed. When Molly was working for Darin, she walked away with $3k on her first night. When she ran the game with a $50k buy-in, she walked away with close to $50k in tips and the game was running twice a week.

Running a poker business is really a grey area. There are technically ways to run this while keeping things legal, but that doesn’t mean that everyone’s OK with walking that fine line. One day, Molly went into her bank to deposit more cash and they told her they found out about her poker business, and she needed to close her account and empty her safety deposit box, effective immediately. Molly’s attorney wasn’t concerned about this incident, but she was. She had just been blacklisted from a bank, but she couldn’t spend too much time worrying about this. She was taking her poker players to Vegas for the weekend. It was in sin city that Tobey Maguire made a deal with another player named Houston Curtis. Tobey gave him money to cover his losses and he said that for the next year, Tobey would take 50% of Houston’s wins, none of his losses.

So, Tobey found a way to get paid for his shuffle master at every game, he was ultimately picking the poker players at the games, he was making money off Houston when he won, and Tobey himself won most of the time at the games. According to Molly, Tobey was the worst tipper, the biggest winner, and the worst loser, because he would complain and make everyone miserable when he was down. After a game, he handed Molly a $1k chip and said it could be hers, but she had to do something for him. He wanted her to get up on a desk and bark like a seal. According to Molly, he held the chip above her head and loudly announced that she needed to bark like a seal, but she refused. She was so embarrassed and all the guys were staring at her.

She had always said yes to all the players’ demands, but this is where she had to draw the line. Besides, she didn’t need a thousand dollars anymore. At this point, Molly drove a Bentely, split the cost of private jets, paid for tables at the club, hired a personal assistant, and a chef, she was living the high life. It was everything she had worked her ass off for, but she also noticed that she was acting colder and using the phrase, it’s just business. Maybe she was losing herself.

One day, Molly received a call from a woman that said one of the players, Arthur, wanted to host the poker game at his house. Molly agreed and asked what time she should be there. She was told that this was a paid vacation for her, she wouldn’t be needed that night. Isn’t that exactly how they had pushed Darin Feinstein out so Molly could take over? Arthur was going to use Molly’s table, poker players, dealer, and staff, but not her. This was bad, but what could she do? At 2 AM her phone rang, and Tobey Maguire said, you’re fucked. He told Molly that Arthur decided he would have the game at his house every week. Some of the poker players called and apologized to Molly, but they explained that Arthur was a big fish. He had tons of money, and she couldn’t compete with that.

Each week after that, Molly would send out her poker invites and received nothing but no’s because everyone was going to Arthur’s. She tried to contact him, but he wouldn’t return any of her calls, emails, or texts. So, Molly decided she needed to quit feeling sorry for herself and get back out there. She called up a player who was involved in playing poker games in New York and he said it was a huge pain to organize, so they didn’t play as often as they would like. This was her moment. Molly said she could organize everything. She met with the new group of guys, and they agreed to give her a trial run.

From that point, Molly began flying to New York every Tuesday morning to host the game, stay up all night, and head to the airport the next day to fly back to LA where she was also running a smaller game once a week. While she had been devastated to be pushed out of her game in LA, she was now making double to triple the amount in New York. During a night out on the town, Molly realized that Arthur was never the one that took over her game and pushed her out. No, someone else set that up. Molly ran into Arthur’s assistant, and she explained that she overheard a conversation, and it was actually Tobey Maguire that wanted to kick Molly out and he used Arthur to do it.

She was determined to make sure no one stole her game from her again, but greed lurked around every corner. She began dating one of the poker players who was a trader on Wall Street named Glen. At first, he liked that Molly was so ambitious, but on one of his bad nights, he was down $200k and Molly had to leave the game to go check on another game she was running that same night. This wasn’t a good look. His girlfriend was leaving him when he was down, and she wasn’t there at the end of the game to get everyone paid. It made him look bad in front of his friends.

That night, Molly learned that her other game was in trouble because the books were off, more than once. It was beginning to look like someone was cheating and stealing from her. Then, when she got home to Glen, he announced that since Molly left the game, he was keeping all of the tips and he wanted to be figured in retroactively to all the games they had done at his house. The first thing on her list was to figure out how someone was stealing from her, so she installed cameras and watched close at the next game. A player named Willy was down, yet he somehow ended up with a win and asked to be paid. When Molly watched the tapes, she saw that he was sneaking chips from his pocket at the table. She showed him the tapes and said if he paid his debts, he could get the tape, so that’s exactly what he did.

Next, she broke up with her boyfriend Glen. The next day, she emailed a poker player about the next game, and he said it had already been set up somewhere else. One of Glen’s good friends and Molly’s biggest competition, swooped in and stole her players for one night each week and Molly’s ex-boyfriend, Glen, was now running games out of his house on a different day of the week. She would need to find a clever way to get the New York game back, or pick a new spot and start over again. After she lost everything, two men showed up to speak with her. They basically wanted to be hired to make sure the poker players paid their debts on time, but she wasn’t interested in running things that way. She had a few days to think things over because it was the holiday season.

Molly flew home and while she was unpacking, there was a knock. She opened her apartment door, and a man forced his way inside, pointed a gun at her, and slammed her against the wall. The man forced her into the bedroom, and she told him she had money in her safe. He grabbed her by the hair and smashed her head into the wall, demanding to know where the safe was. Molly told him the safe was in her closet and suddenly, she realized the guy wasn’t wearing a mask. He was going to kill her. With a gun to her head, she opened the safe where there was $10k in cash and some jewelry.

He put everything in one of Molly’s bags, then whispered in her ear, “You still think you can call the shots, you little fucking cunt?” She was confused and asked what he meant. The man said, “This is your fault. If you weren’t such a bitch to my friends, I wouldn’t have to do what I have to do.” The man repeatedly punched her in the face, blood was gushing, and Molly was choking on her blood.

She knew that this had something to do with the two men that wanted her to hire them. She scrambled into the closet, trying to hide, but the man pulled her back out. She begged him to stop. She said she had family and she asked him not to kill her. He told her that it didn’t have to be this way, they could have a good relationship and he said, “just don’t disrespect us ever again.” He warned Molly that she couldn’t go to the police because they knew where her mom lived. He punched her again and she blacked out.

She couldn’t go to anyone. She was alone and this was the beginning of the downward spiral. Molly received a subpoena in the mail. One of the poker players, Brad Ruderman, had been indicted by the federal government. Allegedly his fund had been a Ponzi scheme. Most of the investors in his fund were family and friends and he wasn’t registered with the SEC. At the time of his arrest, he only had $60k in his fund, which was extremely different from the $45 million had had been reporting to his investors. Brad had talked about the poker game, so the prosecutor wanted Molly’s deposition.

Brad was claiming that Molly lured him into the games, and he developed a gambling addiction, which led him to lose sight of his morals, and take money from people for this fund. It was uncomfortable, but she danced around every question and didn’t give specific facts about the game. Once that was done, she jumped right back into the scene and rebuilt her game, better than ever. She allegedly had some of the biggest gamblers in the world coming to her next game. As she was getting ready in her hotel, the phone rang, and it was a blocked number. A muffled voice on the other end told her not to do the game. She asked who was calling and the line went dead.

Since her attack, Molly began changing the location of her games regularly and she hired security guards. She brushed off the warning. It was probably just a competitor that was trying to rattle her. As she headed to the poker room, she received a text from one of the players. “The FBI is here!! 20 or so. They are looking for you.” She quickly booked it out of there and left the state. She went home to her family and finally told them everything she had been holding in for the past few years. Molly’s attorney said he could help, but there was an extra fee. She logged into her bank account, and it had a negative balance. She called her bank, and they awkwardly told her there was a note on her account to contact the United States District Attorney’s Office. Her assets had been seized by the government. Her lawyer said the government wanted her to come talk to them about organized crime, but she said no.

Instead, she went home, sold her poker table, gave up her apartment and paid movers to pack everything up and store it in Queens. She moved home to Colorado with her family and focused on a more peaceful life. Six months after the feds raided Molly’s game, there were players who were arrested for allegedly running a huge scam. They had defrauded the insurance companies out of $600 million and that’s most likely why the feds got involved.

She couldn’t try to rebuild the game any longer because it was no longer secret. Due to Brad Ruderman’s indictment, the word had spread around the poker community. There had been a subsequent lawsuit where every player who took a check from Brad in the poker game was getting sued and this exposed the game, the players, and of course, the woman who ran the whole operation. They began calling Molly the “Poker Princess” and the “Madam of Poker”. Paparazzi showed up at Molly’s parent’s house and her high school, and they called her friends.

One day, Molly’s phone rang at 5 AM. The caller was Jeremy Wesson from the FBI and he said they were outside of her apartment, and she had 20 seconds to come out or they would break down the door. She raced out the door and sure enough, there were about 20 agents outside screaming at her. She was cuffed and placed in a dark SUV. Molly asked where they were going, and all the FBI agents would say was “downtown.” They pulled into a dark basement parking garage and one of the men said into the radio, “Are you ready for the prisoner?” The reply back was, yes.

They took Molly’s photo and fingerprints. Then she was told to stand and face the wall and they placed a large chain belt around her waist, and she was handcuffed to the chain belt and led into a cell. Molly’s lawyer showed up and handed her the indictment, which detailed the alleged criminal conspiracy. There were 34 defendants and some of them had been players in Molly’s game. Vor, a Russian organized crime boss who was one of the ten most wanted fugitives in the world, Helly the wealthy playboy, John Hansen the Chess master, Pete the Plumber who gambled away part of his plumbing business, and Eugene, his brother, and their father, who were allegedly running a $100 million dollar bookmaking operation out of the Trump Tower apartment where Molly had spent many nights. Bookmaking is betting on sports or events.

She was eventually released on $100k bail and ordered to appear in New York City before the federal judge of the southern district of the city to enter a plea. She was facing five to ten years and she pleaded not guilty. She chose not to fight the indictment because it would have cost millions of dollars. She also declined to work with the government. On December 12th, 2013, Molly Bloom accepted the charges and became a convicted felon.

Molly has been asked if she had to do it all over again, would she choose the same path? She said yes. She had a great adventure, learned to believe in herself, and she was brave. Like I said earlier, the story was also told by another person that was involved. One of the poker players, Houston Curtis, wrote a book from his point of view. He explained that a lot of people play cards at home and that’s not illegal. What made things different in this situation, was the fact that they had Molly Bloom, and she was performing a function that wasn’t typical for a home poker game. There were people that declined invitations to play in the game specifically because of the role Molly played in the game, they had concerns about the legalities.

Things turned bad in 2009 when the FBI investigation into the world of the A-list gambling club began. Brad Ruderman had confessed to bilking investors out of $25 million in a Ponzi scheme and using $5.2 million of that money to settle his poker debts. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail for two counts of wire fraud and two counts of investment adviser fraud and ordered to repay his investors, but he wasn’t able to do that. Investors in his hedge fund whose money Brad Ruderman had used to pay his poker debts, realized that if the games were unlicensed and illegal, that meant that any transaction from the game was void.

The interesting thing here is for the longest time, the poker players used Brad Ruderman. They buried him every week and took millions from him, but in the end, he was their biggest downfall. When the lid was blown off this story, all the players settled, except for Houston Curtis. He lost his $3 million dollar home after a $750k lien was put on it due to the scandal. The 22 people who sued to get their money back that had been used in the scandal to pay gambling debts, received more than $1.75 million.

According to Houston Curtis, Molly’s version of the story wasn’t quite correct, and he certainly didn’t believe she should be portrayed as the mastermind behind the poker game. Houston says that he and Tobey Maguire were really the ones who orchestrated everything, and it was a hustle from the beginning. The game didn’t even start at The Viper Room, which is where Molly’s book claims it all began, but Houston says it really began when he and Tobey Maguire played high-stakes Hold’em in January of 2004. This was the night they first met each other, and they really hit it off. The two of them decided to start a poker game at Tobey’s home.

The game was held in Tobey’s kitchen each week and his chef would cook vegan food for them because Tobey was vegan. If the others ordered pizzas with non-vegan ingredients, he would just make faces at them and was clearly upset. One evening when someone brought meat into his house, he said he was sick of all the scumbag poker players. This was one of the main reasons the game was eventually moved to The Viper Room. According to the book, he has an issue with germs. Tobey made all the players take their shoes off when they got to the house, and they had to slip on a pair of Crocs. He’s also sober and is fine with others drinking, but sometimes, it can change the vibe when the host doesn’t drink and everyone else wants to. They couldn’t eat meat, track germs into the house, or drink too much.

A woman was the dealer at these games and that’s where Tobey Maguire came up with the idea that everyone had to tip Jen if they wanted to be invited back. Things were going well until one of the players lost too much money. Tobey knew that he didn’t actually have the money to cover the losses each week, so they decided to stop inviting him to the game and he ended his life. This was the moment that the poker players realized they needed to be more detached, they probably shouldn’t have the game at their homes because they could be more liable. Tobey was the one that suggested they should move the game to The Viper Room where their good friend Darin Feinstein was now in charge.

In Molly’s book, she said that her boss Darin was the one that came up with the idea of the poker game, but it sounds like the idea had been brought to him. So, In Molly’s book, she thought she was the mastermind behind the game, but in Houston’s book, he and Tobey were the masterminds. Curtis and Tobey strategized to make sure the game would be successful at The Viper Room. They would invite players with deep pockets and make sure celebrities were there to lure people in. They needed Molly to be brought in to send the invitations each week, then she would send the confirmation to Tobey, which she discussed in her book.

The whole goal was never to JUST play poker. The goal was for Curtis and Tobey to win each week and empty people’s pockets. Tobey wanted Leonardo DiCaprio to play, but he said the only way he would be involved is if they stake him, meaning they had to cover the cost. You might be shocked because Leo obviously has the money to cover himself, but clearly, he knew what they were up to. If they were going to use him to lure others in, the least they could do was cover the cost. If Leonardo lost, Tobey and Houston covered it, if he won, he got to keep 50%.

They ran the game at The Viper Room, until a friend, Andy Bellin asked if they could have the game at his house. Andy let them know that Molly felt like her boss was trying to push her out, she was getting worried. That’s when Tobey realized he could use that fear to his advantage to control her more. Tobey told Molly that she needed to step up and take more responsibility of the game. He wanted her to take charge of the bank, find a variety of 5-star hotels to host the games, find new fish, and raise the buy-in to $50k.

Molly’s book never mentioned Cody Leibel, but Houston’s book did. Houston said that Cody was eccentric, and he disappeared for about 30 minutes during a game and when he came back, he said he had been banging two women while snorting blow of their boobs. Allegedly, Molly Bloom was the one that arranged the suite, the sex workers, and the drugs.

Houston does agree with Molly’s version of events that Tobey Maguire asked her to bark like a seal one night, which he admits was crossing a line, but he said that he did give her a thousand bucks, even after she refused to do it. At that point, Molly was taking home $30k a night and Tobey was over it. He was fed up with the way things were going and wanted to force Molly to find bigger fish for them, or start capping her tips. Houston and Tobey had been running things, but now, they were finding out that Molly had been doing things behind their backs that they hadn’t authorized. Instead of capping her tips, Houston claims that Molly took money from the masseuse and the dealer. Houston said he was pissed about this information, but once he found Molly doing drugs, and getting involved in some pretty dark things, he felt that they needed to cut her loose because they had a reputation to protect.

There was a power struggle between Tobey and Molly that was changing the vibe of the game, week after week, but no one was ready to do anything about it yet. On Houston’s wife’s birthday, instead of celebrating the day with her, he played poker and lost a million dollars. He knew he was in deep this time, so he offered Tobey Maguire a deal. If Tobey loaned him the million to pay off the debt, he would pay him back 50% of his wins until it was paid off, and then free roll him on 10% of his wins for another year and no exposure on his losses.

Tobey declined and said he would give him $600k, Houston had to pay back 50% of his wins until it was paid off, then he wanted 50% of his wins for another year, no exposure on his losses. Houston was desperate and needed to get the the million paid off, so he had to take the deal. It’s amazing that Tobey was willing to loan him that kind of money, but those terms suck. He’s getting back WAY more than the $600k. It only took Houston 3 weeks to win the money he needed to pay Tobey back, but that meant that he was on the hook for the rest of the year to pay him 50% of his wins.

Tobey Maguire usually won every night because he picked the players and set things up in his favor. Now, he would get 50% of Houston’s winning every night and he was finally ready to get rid of Molly Bloom. You might think that Houston Curtis should have stopped playing the game for a year, that way, he wouldn’t have to give Tobey anymore money. At least that’s what I initially thought, but he explained in the book that if he stopped playing the game, he would never be invited to come back. Someone else would get his spot and he couldn’t let that happen.

In Molly’s version of events, Tobey just cut her loose from the game, but Houston said that he actually recommended her to someone else. That way, she would leave their game, and they could get rid of her without making it look like that’s what they were doing. So, they arranged for her to go to New York and she accepted the job. In Molly’s book, she painted a picture of a very cutthroat industry where everyone kept stealing the game from her and pushing her out.

It was nearing the end for everyone involved when Brad Ruderman got himself in deep and he had been arrested. The Feds raided his office and found out that his $50 million hedge fund had about $500k left. Everyone that had ever received a check from Brad was being looked at. Molly Bloom said that Brad Ruderman was the one that blew up the game and confirmed the names of everyone involved, but Houston Curtis blames Molly. He said that Brad wouldn’t have known all of the people that he owed money to because he would have given the checks to Molly, and she would have settled his debts.

Houston Curtis had received many checks from Brad Ruderman, so he was on the hook in a big way. The Feds took almost everything, his water and power were shut off, and he started receiving foreclosure notices. Then, he woke up drenched in sweat one night and when he went to the hospital, the doctors said he had an enlarged heart. They found a few spots that needed to be checked, so they took him in for a biopsy and he woke up in the ICU. During the biopsy, he went into cardiac arrest due to heart failure. He was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy.

Houston could see what this was doing to his wife and children, and he realized he needed to get his life straightened out. He had hit rock bottom. Or, so he thought. After he got out of the hospital, his mother-in law died and he needed money to get to Boston for her funeral, so he had to reach out to an old poker friend to borrow some money. His friend Nick said he would give him money to get to the funeral and enough to get his power back on, but in return, he wanted to rent his house out to vacationers while he was in Boston. Houston agreed to Nick’s deal.

After the funeral, Houston decided it would be best if his wife stayed in Boston longer so she could take care of her father and their kids were going to stay there too. Houston flew back to California. One day while he was on his balcony, someone shouted his name and a gun was pointed at him. It was a detective with the LAPD and they had him surrounded. They had a warrant for his arrest, but it was for a dispute that happened at a casino in Vegas. He had slowly been paying it off, but the casino turned it over to the DA and they issued a warrant. He had once been on top of the world, living the high life. Now, he was on his way to the LA County jail. He hadn’t taken his heart medication and during his first day in jail, he passed out and woke up in the hospital. Once he finally spoke to his attorney, he was told that Nevada wanted $80k just to release him, otherwise they were shipping him to Vegas in a month.

Unfortunately, Houston was in a bad situation in the prison he was in and he didn’t think he would be alive in a month if he stayed. He started calling up his old loan shark buddies and cut a deal. He was released two weeks later and Nevada still had a warrant for his arrest, but it was no longer nationwide. He no longer had a house to go home to, everything had been repossessed to cover debts or to be sold for attorney fees. The IRS got in on the action as well. They audited Houston for his 2006 tax return and they decided to disallow all of his losses as a professional gambler, but they accepted all of his wins. Then, he was sued by three different companies.

He couldn’t fight any of it and he couldn’t afford to file for bankruptcy. He ends the book with the big question everyone has. Would he change anything? Before I launch into his answer, I want to give you the definition of a card sharp. This can also be a card shark, but a card sharp is a person who uses skills or deception to win poker or other card games. It’s someone who cheats at cards to win money. So, was it worth it, Houston? He says that he lost his house, his cars, he was audited by the IRS, he went broke, got sued by multiple people, lost a million dollars in one single night, got rat fucked by Brad Ruderman, went to jail, died on the table and had to be revived, and lost everything he owned. But was it worth it? He ends the book by saying, “For as long as I can remember, I knew I wanted to be a card sharp. What do you think?”

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