Molly’s Game: The True Story of the 26-Year-Old Woman Behind the Most Exclusive, High-Stakes Underground Poker Game in the World

I originally and unknowingly read an excerpt from Molly’s Game: The True Story of the 26-Year-Old Woman Behind the Most Exclusive, High-Stakes Underground Poker Game in the World when I read Vanity Fair’s “Inside the Viper Room: Hollywood’s Most Exclusive Poker Game,” now titled “Her House of Cards” if you click the old link. I only became interested in reading the book after I saw the movie soon after its premiere on January 5, 2018 because I wanted to compare and contrast reality from fiction. I had to wait almost a month to get it from the library.
Molly’s Game: The True Story of the 26-Year-Old Woman Behind the Most Exclusive, High-Stakes Underground Poker Game in the World is a quick read, but completely different in tone from the movie. The author is far less cocky than her onscreen counterpart, more in awe of the men around her and seduced by the world that she inhabits. She is far less accomplished than the woman that we see on screen, which explains why she clings to the adventure of her first big win. She is someone who derives her value from other men’s approval, but does not have the same solitary, pugnacious quality of the cinematic creation. Thankfully the Freudian BS is wisely missing from her narrative and her family seems more normal than expected.
Her downfall isn’t drugs, but men. She gets high on her own supply by getting emotionally entangled with her colleagues and customers, which ultimately leads to her downfall. More than the movie, the book shows that inappropriate, bad boy behavior by rich men is better than a workaholic girlfriend, which is hardly a surprise, but still disappointing considering that her love interests met her through the game. As much as she may roll her eyes at the juvenile, party vibe of her surroundings, she loves the wealth and spectacle and was not above it. If she could have found a more conventional way to enter that world, she would have happily embraced her significant other’s value of the proper girlfriend, which maybe is the real tragedy of the book. If she was born rich or connected, she could have found love and be happy. She just wants to belong to the cool kids club.
Instead she gets an internship on how to become one of them, which is probably the most unintentionally educational aspect of the book. Her boss and mentor makes her stop doing charitable work and forces her to betray him to see if she has what it takes. He cultivates venal qualities in her so she can become successful, which provides an eye-opening perspective on why we live in a dystopian world of excess, eager cruelty and incompetence. He is proud of her for being ruthless and going behind his back. When it all ends in criminal convictions and corruption with negative actual value/profit, it still probably does not change the roadmap of what he considers a success.
Molly’s Game: The True Story of the 26-Year-Old Woman Behind the Most Exclusive, High-Stakes Underground Poker Game in the World has plenty of dishy gossip about celebrities, sports figures and wealthy men. If they were not related to the movie business, I did not know whom she was referring to and easily got confused between Phillip and Phillips so a lot of it was wasted on me. I inwardly cackled when Tobey Maguire was shut out of the games after he pushed her out. I hope karma keeps hanging out with him.
I would recommend Molly’s Game: The True Story of the 26-Year-Old Woman Behind the Most Exclusive, High-Stakes Underground Poker Game in the World if you saw the movie or are interested in high level shenanigans.