Molly's Game Uncensored: The Truth Behind the World's Most Infamous Poker Game

**Jason** (0:00)
Hey, everybody, the besties are taking Thanksgiving off, but hey, we didn't forget about you. We banked a couple of great content segments while we were in Vegas. First, here's an interview with Molly Bloom. You know, she ran the legendary High Stakes game in LA in New York. I was invited to the LA one. We'll get into that. And her story was turned into the feature film and book Molly's Game. We have a great conversation, tons of insider stories who imploded in her LA game. The best celebrity poker players getting shaken down by the mob, how she got an Aaron Sorkin meeting and much, much more. Big thank you to our friends at Oracle for partnering with us on this amazing VIP lunch we did in Vegas at the Venetian. What a great hotel. Also, make sure you head over to our YouTube channel, a YouTube exclusive for the first ever Bestie Poker Freezeout Game. Who's going to win? Chamath, Friedberg, me, or some of the world's greatest poker players, Alan Keating and Jason Kuhn. Also Phil Hellmuth. He wound up there as well somehow. So happy Thanksgiving. We love you. And be safe. And we'll see you all next week for a regular episode.

**Chamath** (1:14)
Listen, we have a guest.

**Jason** (1:15)
We do have a guest.

**Chamath** (1:16)
She's an entrepreneur, bestselling author, one of Fortune Magazine's most powerful women. I didn't know that. Oh, very. Molly Bloom ran the world's most exclusive poker game. You probably know her from the movie Molly's Game, which we'll hear a little bit about today. But Molly's also, I think, got an amazing sense of what made her successful and the journey she's been through, I think, is a really interesting one to learn from. So please join me in welcoming Molly.

**Friedberg** (1:44)
Thank you. All right.

**Jason** (1:46)
Nice to see you, Molly. Molly, what was the origin of the game? We know some of our friends played in it.

**Chamath** (1:55)
Hold on a second. Jason, you claimed on our show, let me just read the notes. The notes? Yeah, there are notes here.

**Jason** (2:01)
What did I say now?

**Chamath** (2:02)
Apparently, where is the thing that Jason said? We were on the show and Jason said he played in the game all the time. No, no, no, no. What did you say?

**Jason** (2:10)
He said I was invited to the game.

**Chamath** (2:11)
No, you did not say that. He said, Lisa, please pull the tape and when you're ready, just raise your hand and let me know exactly what Jason said. Then Molly responded on Twitter that you did not play in my f*****g game.
Okay. Let's be clear.

**Jason** (2:26)
Molly, did you invite me to the game?

**Molly Bloom** (2:29)
I don't remember inviting you to the game. But here's the deal. There were two versions of the game. There was the version where I was working for someone who would send me a list.

**Jason** (2:39)
Got it.

**Molly Bloom** (2:39)
And I'm sure that you were probably on that list. I was the fifth at the time.

**Chamath** (2:41)
It was Jeffrey Epstein's list, right? He was.

**Jason** (2:44)
Absolutely. Okay.

**Molly Bloom** (2:47)
But when it was my game, you know.

**Jason** (2:49)
I just remember the Four Seasons.

**Molly Bloom** (2:51)
Yeah.

**Jason** (2:52)
Was that your game? It was. Okay. So it was the Four Seasons. I remember you invited me and you said, Toby's going to be there, Leo's going to be there, whatever. And they'd love to see you. And I said, they would love to see me lose $50,000. There's no way I'm going to this game because I was playing in a 5-10 game. But you were working for somebody at the Viper Room, the game started, you then took it over, and it very quickly became a big game. Famously, Toby McGuire, a friend of ours, we play poker with sometimes, was part of this. And then you decided to move it to New York. Just let everybody know how this all got started for you and when you took over the game.

**Molly Bloom** (3:28)
Okay. So I was in college, this game for the US. Ski Team. Had an accident and retired and kind of didn't know who I was because sports were my identity. Went to LA simply because I wanted to be warm. I've been cold since I was two years old. And ended up working for this guy. He had a real estate development company and he said, tomorrow night I need to serve drinks at my poker, my poker game. And so I show up to this poker game and it's A-list celebrities like you've mentioned, but also the head of one of the biggest investment banks, a politician who was a household name, somebody from the tech world. And I get to be a fly on the wall in this incredibly compelling room. And also I'm 23 years old. This is access to information, to capital, to power. And then at the end of the night, they were tipping me in chips. And someone counted out $4,000 in cash. And I was like, okay, I don't know what's up with this chip token economy, but I think I might want in. And over the next eight months, I started to learn to speak the language of poker. But really what I was focused on is how do I forge alliances? Because I knew that I would say about three months in, I knew I didn't want to just serve drinks. I knew I wanted to have my own games. This was an incredible opportunity. I mean, it really was a Trojan horse. You could use it to infiltrate any subset of society. And I was learning about the world from some of the people who were actively involved in shaping culture. So it was a fascinating, interesting time, and it was also very lucrative. And so I decided to start my own games, and I had eight months of notes of what I would do differently. And I think because I wasn't a poker player, there was an advantage, because I was able to zoom out and see, this isn't just about poker, this is about community, it's about storytelling, it's about belonging to something, and it's about escapism and fantasy. And so I really started to build on those topics, and those, you know, I wanted everyone to come into this room, and from the second they walked into this room, feel like they were in Monaco or in a James Bond movie.