How I Manipulated The World's Richest Men: “They Lost $100 Million In One Night!” - Molly Bloom (Molly's Game)

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

FlightStory

Society & Culture, Business, Education

4.6 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2023

⏱️ 94 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Molly Bloom, nicknamed the ‘Poker Princess’, is a former Olympic skier, and at 21 years old was ranked No. 3 in North America in moguls. After an accident, she left skiing and took a years sabbatical from the University of Colorado - Boulder to move to LA in 2004. Initially bartending, she began to run poker games in The Viper Room. These games attracted A-list celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, and Ben Affleck, playing for millions of dollars. In 2013, she was arrested for taking part in underground poker games and faced 10 years in prison, but was eventually sentenced to 1 year of probation. In 2014, she released her memoir ‘Molly’s Game’ which was made into an award winning film of the same name in 2017.

In this conversation Molly and Steven discuss topics, such as:

How her upbringing was based around competition and achievement
Why she was obsessed with achieving glory from a young age
Moving to LA and finding her way into running poker games
How she started running illegal poker games and made them different from others
The psychological lessons she learned from watching poker games
How she made herself indispensable to the game and its players
What it took to run the world's most exclusive poker nights
Having her poker game and income taken from her
Learning to pivot quickly from failure to success
Seeing someone lose $100 million in one night
Kicking Dan Bilzerian out of her poker game
How she was making $4-6 million a year from tips
The mafia showing up at her door
What she was able to learn from listening to the elite players of her game
How she had access to the world’s most powerful people
Becoming addicted to drinking and drugs
Her legal troubles with the FBI and facing 10 years in prison
Why she refused to snitch to the authorities for millions of dollars
The lessons she has learned coming out of the world of poker
Being comfortable with risk and the necessity of taking risks in life
How she was able to sell her story into a Hollywood movie

You can purchase Molly’s memoir, ‘Molly’s Game’, here: https://bit.ly/3OvOLxq

Follow Molly:

Instagram: https://bit.ly/3KKe0Lk

Twitter: https://bit.ly/45tjBOe

Watch the episodes on Youtube - ⁠https://g2ul0.app.link/3kxINCANKsb⁠

My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' pre order link: ⁠https://smarturl.it/DOACbook⁠

Follow me:

Instagram: ⁠http://bit.ly/3nIkGAZ⁠

Twitter: ⁠http://bit.ly/3ztHuHm⁠

Linkedin: ⁠https://bit.ly/41Fl95Q⁠

Telegram: ⁠http://bit.ly/3nJYxST⁠

Sponsors:

Huel:⁠ ⁠⁠https://g2ul0.app.link/G4RjcdKNKsb⁠

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I put a gun in my mouth, beat the hell out of me, and if he said, if you tell anyone about this, I know where your family lives.
0:07.0	For the first time in my life, I knew finally it was game over.
0:11.0	I'm Molly Bloom.
0:12.0	Doug, the poker princess, the former waitress who took a small poker game run out of a dingy nightclub.
0:18.0	So the biggest underground poker game in the world.
0:21.0	For Hollywood celebrities to millionaires, they literally made a Hollywood movie about it.
0:25.0	The game turned from legal to illegal.
0:28.0	I had become the biggest game runner in New York City.
0:31.0	Leo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, Toby McGuire.
0:34.0	Politicians was making $4 to $6 million a year.
0:36.0	It was unbelievable.
0:37.0	$250,000 buy-in.
0:39.0	So I couldn't sit down unless I brought $250,000 to lose.
0:42.0	That's right.
0:43.0	And you saw someone lose $100 million in a night.
0:45.0	Yes.
0:46.0	This is where the science of how you make people feel became a really big tool.
0:50.0	And I would memorize people's lives.
0:52.0	The names of their kids, what they cared about, they were food-ordered, drink-order.
0:55.0	These things can absolutely be used for good.
0:58.0	But I just became obsessed.
1:00.0	What had been about trying to be an entrepreneur and be gutsy started to be exclusively about the money and the power.
	...

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