Celebrity friends, a designer wardrobe and millions in the bank but then it all came crashing down: Confessions of a Hollywood 'poker princess'

• Molly Bloom, 36, made up to $4million a year hosting poker games
• Clients included Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck and Tobey Maguire
• Maguire was at first friendly but soon became rude and aggressive
• Left and began running poker games for bankers in New York
• Was charged with profiting from illegal poker games in 2013
• Has written a memoir called Molly's Game about her experiences

By Ruth Styles

Published: 07:59 EST, 14 August 2014 | Updated: 10:01 EST, 14 August 2014

She was the Hollywood poker princess who hobnobbed with celebrities and raked in up to $4million a year before an encounter with the Mafia and an FBI sting brought her world crashing down around her.

Glamorous: Molly Bloom, now 36, enjoyed a lavish lifestyle funded by hosting high stakes poker games

But despite her losses, Molly Bloom, now 36, says she learned a lot from the experience and hopes to one day mentor young female entrepreneurs.

Petite and pretty with dark glossy hair and a slender figure, Bloom looks more Hollywood star than convicted criminal.

Perhaps it was that that made her a favourite with A-list clients such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck, although as Bloom explains, others had a dark side.

'When Leonardo Dicaprio walked in the first time, all I saw was Jack Dawson from Titanic and my voice caught in my throat,' she remembers.

'He smiled graciously and handed me a stack of cash that totalled $10,000. Each player did the same.

'Each player was legendary in his own right. Tobey Maguire was also there. He was at the pinnacle of his career and was starring in Spiderman. It was completely surreal.'

The games, which took place in a back room at the infamous Viper Room bar on Sunset Strip, regularly saw huge amounts of money won and lost on games.

That first night in 2004, Bloom did nothing more than serve drinks to the players, but racked up $3,000 in tips which she converted into glamorous designer frocks - Hollywood glamour, it seems, isn't only required on the red carpet.

Later, after Bloom was given control of the games by her boss, who she names only as 'Reardon' in her new memoir, play moved to private homes and luxury LA hotels such as the Peninsula where huge stakes of up to a quarter of a million dollars were wagered on a single hand.

This, says Bloom, left her feeling increasingly uneasy. 'The size of the game in terms of how much money was at stake, the wins and losses was absolutely insane,' she says.

Poker face: Tobey Maguire was allegedly a great player but a bad loser who tried to humiliate Bloom

'It definitely made me uncomfortable.  I didn’t see how these guys could lose this much and still want to play. 

'I also couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt. This was recreation to them but the sums could have changed lives of those less fortunate. But I was right there with them, profiting from the egregious wins and losses.'

And the rewards were great, both personally and financially. 'In the beginning I made sure to save just in case it all went belly up,' she explains. 'But when I started spending, it was like a drug.

'Growing up, my parents made sure we had what we needed but it was always discount basics. All of a sudden I had cash, I had an American Express card and I could buy myself whatever I wanted.

'I shopped on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, 5th Avenue in Manhattan. I bought a Bentley, I chartered private planes, I had a staff, a driver and I rented 100k homes for summers in the Hamptons and in Malibu.

'It was shallow, but it was fun. A lot of my friends were afforded these things by their boyfriends but I loved that I did it all by myself.'

Lavish: The £245-a-night Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles was the scene of many a high stakes poker game

The nicest man in Hollywood: Bloom has fond memories of Ben Affleck and says he is the 'guy you root for'

She counted some of Hollywood's starriest names among her friends, not least Ben Affleck. 'Ben was very nice, polite, smart, and funny,' she reveals. 'He’s someone you root for. He’s nice to everyone.'

Maguire, by contrast, was not. Then 32, the actor, although initially friendly, soon began to humiliate Bloom, asking her to 'bark like a seal' for chips and reacting angrily when she refused.

'I'm not kidding,' he allegedly said to her. 'What's wrong? You’re too rich now? You won’t bark for a thousand dollars?'

The gambling goddess said that she refused to stoop to the level of barking, and that in return: 'He gave me an icy look, dropped the chip on the table and tried to laugh it off but he was visibly angry.'

'In the beginning he was very nice to me,' she continues. 'I felt like he respected me and wanted to help me.

'I guess at that time he saw we had a mutual interest: more games, more players, bigger stakes, more frequency and so on. We were both profiting in a big way.

'As I started learning how things work, playing to the needs of the entire game as opposed to just his, and making more and more money, his attitude and the way he treated me changed.

High stakes: Molly Bloom's lavish lifestyle ended in a conviction, a year on probation and a $125,000 fine

'I guess it was then that I realised the game wasn’t recreation for rich guys, it was big business and most people weren’t friends with each other.

'They showed up to take each other’s money. I can’t say my feelings weren’t hurt, but I tried hard to not take it personally and to see it for what it was.'

But Maguire's enmity cost her more than her dignity. It also resulted in the end of her Hollywood poker career, with Molly eventually conceding the field and moving to New York.

Already raking in up to $50,000 a night, the poker business had become too lucrative to give up and so, the games continued with a new group of super-rich clients in the Big Apple.

There, the stakes were even higher with hands of up to $4million played by the wealthy bankers, financiers and traders who flocked to her games.

And Molly needed the money. Spending had become 'like a drug' to her with lavish shopping sprees, private planes and $100,000 holidays all part of her poker-funded lifestyle.

But the end of Molly's lavish existence was in sight. Visits from the Mafia, who wanted a slice of her lucrative trade, and the trial of a disgraced former player who had been running a Ponzi scheme, put her on the FBI's radar.

Titanic wins: Leonardo DiCaprio was a regular player in Bloom's circle, which had a buy-in of up to $100,000

Memoir: Molly has now written a memoir lifting the lid on the shady side of Hollywood

In March 2011, 20 FBI agents invaded a game although Bloom, then visiting family in Colorado, wasn't there.

Instead, they seized her assets, with Bloom horrified to find her bank account suddenly $9,99999 in the red.

'It was terrible, terrifying and one of those moments when you realise nothing will ever be the same,' she says. 'I realised it was about to get really tough.'

The FBI had wanted to talk to her about her involvement with organised crime but soon let her go after her lawyer successfully argued her innocence.

But just two years later, in April 2013, Bloom was arrested and charged with profiting from hosting illegal poker games.

'It always felt I was operating in a grey area but I did my best for the majority of the time to stay above board,' she admits. 'But I did cross the line.

'During the first seven years they were completely legal. After I moved to New York, I was doing many more games and it was harder to control.

'I was getting stiffed by people who weren’t paying their debts so I started taking a rake [a small percentage of each pot] as an insurance policy.

'I made a decision to go ahead with the rake, and I regret it everyday.'

Although she initially pleaded not guilty, Bloom changed her plea in December 2013 and was fined $125,000 and sentenced to a year's probation in May.

She has, she says, learned her lesson and is now concentrating on moving forward, with her memoir, Molly's Game: High Stakes, Hollywood's Elite, Hotshot Bankers, My Life in the World of Underground Poker, the first step.

'I learned a lot of lessons both good and bad,' she says. 'I learned how to be an entrepreneur, and build a business. I learned how to make it in a man’s world. I feel it’s a hard world for girls.'

Next up, she says, is finding a way to get involved with coaching female would-be entrepreneurs, encouraging them to stop taking selfies and use their brains.

'I would also like to raise a fund and build a board of advisors to get behind female entrepreneurs,' she adds.  'And, I definitely want to have a family.'

From high stakes poker to stay-at-home mother? Stranger things have happened in the mad world of Molly Bloom.

Molly's Game: High Stakes, Hollywood's Elite, Hotshot Bankers, My Life in the World of Underground Poker, £12.59, is published by It Books and is out now

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