Molly Bloom Witnessed $100 Million Texas Hold’em Loss!

Since the cinematic adaptation of her book hit theatres on Christmas Day, Molly Bloom has been very busy promoting the film which is already attracting a great number of outstanding reviews from critics. Bloom has been visiting a number of talk shows and making lots of interview rounds but her recent chat with Ellen DeGeneres was by far the most interesting. In the interview, she revealed that she witnessed the world’s biggest poker loss first hand:

“I saw someone lose $100 million in a night,” Bloom told Ellen.

“$100 million?” DeGeneres asked in disbelief.

“$100 million,” said Bloom, “and he paid the next day.”

The chat included more revelations that including one about her L.A-run games which were the most expensive and most exclusive – the buy-in was $250,000 which was presumably the minimum. In these exclusive games which would later be run in New York, it was rare for the players to lose their entire buy-ins in the first few hands of the games.

“This game was populated by some of the world’s most famous, wealthiest, and most powerful men,” Molly said in an interview with Business Insider. “My regular game in New York City was a $250,000 buy-in, no limit. So people were burning through that, a lot of times in the first 30 minutes.”

Unfortunately, the $100 million loss was perhaps the beginning of her misfortunes as it raised enough raised flags to put her in the cross-hairs of federal prosecutors in the early noughties. Besides the run-ins with the law, Molly also pointed out that the loss did not bring her any joy as she considered it to be very unhealthy.

“When you watch that, as an owner-operator of a game, you realize that these numbers are incredibly unsustainable, incredibly unhealthy,” Bloom described. “So, I was not happy about this loss. It brought me no joy or adrenaline. I recognized it as really unhealthy and unsustainable.”

Molly’s poker games were graced by the crème-de-la-crème of the world most of whom were celebrities and wealthy businessmen. They included Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Alex Rodriguez, Toby Maguire, Dan Bilzerian, Nick Cassavetes, Andy Beal and Alec Gores. None of the people we have mentioned above were accused of any wrongdoing – well, except for Toby Maguire who was sued in 2011 over some winnings from the game since they were obtained from a businessman Brad Ruderman who was at the time operating a Ponzi scheme.