Molly Bloom quotes from Molly's Game (2017)

Molly Bloom

Now two things you need to know before the second trick. which’ll be a 720. The first is that when visibility is bad the way it is now, race officials jam pine boughs in the snow at the edge of the jump so the skiers have some foreground depth reference. The second is that the tightness of your bindings is determined by what’s called a DIN setting. If you’re a beginner your DIN setting is probably 2 or 3. If you’re an experienced weekend skier it’s probably 7 or 8. Mine’s 15. My boots are basically welded to my skis. Right...so how does this happen? [her ski comes off in the air] It happened because I hit a pine bough and I hit it so precisely that it simply snapped the release on my bindings. Right in that moment I didn’t have time to calculate the odds of that happening because I was about to land pretty hard on my digitally remastered spinal cord which is being held together by spare parts from an Erector Set. None of this has anything to do with poker. I’m only mentioning it because I wanted to say to whoever answered that the worst thing that could happen in sports was 4th place at the Olympics - seriously, **** you.

Molly Bloom

Poker was my Trojan horse into the highest levels of finance, technology, politics, art, entertainment - all I had to do was listen.

Molly Bloom

People have asked me what my goal was at that point, what was my endgame. Back then I would have laughed at that question. I was raised to be a champion, my goal was to win. At what and against whom? Those were just details.

Molly Bloom

There was a track star from Pasadena in the 1930s named [[w:Mack Robinson (athlete)|Matthew Robinson. Matthew Robinson shattered the Olympic record in the two-hundred at the Berlin Games in 1936. Absolutely shattered the Olympic record...and came in second. The man who came in first was Jesse Owens. Owens went on to be a legend. Matthew Robinson went on to be a janitor at a whites-only school in Pasadena. The difference was two-hundreths of a second. As if that wasn’t enough, Matthew Robinson had a little brother who was also an athlete. His name was Jack but everyone called him Jackie. I have two younger brothers who were also overachievers. While I was ranked 3rd in North America, my brother Jeremy was Number 1 in the world. And while I was placing into A.P. Chemistry as a junior, my brother Jordan was doing it when he was 12-years-old or something, I don’t know. I was a hotshot student and a hotshot skier everywhere but my own house. And that’s where we live. As I got older I began to bait my father into fights without really knowing why I was doing it.

Molly Bloom

My game had a tricky ecosystem. It was built around escapism and exclusivity. These guys could buy their way into anything and anyone but here in this room you couldn’t buy your win. You couldn’t buy me, you couldn’t buy the girls and you couldn’t buy a seat at the table. There’s nothing as sweet as a win you have to work for and the wins and losses were compelling and they were real. Of course it helped that the players were gambling addicts.

Molly Bloom

When I lost the LA game I told myself it was no big deal. It was just supposed to be an adventure and a way to meet influential people. And I’d saved over two hundred thousand dollars. But that was just a weak firewall I’d hastily built to keep out the humiliation and depression I knew was coming. It had to end sometime, I just thought it would be on my time. I didn’t think it was gonna be taken away from me. And for such a stomach-turning reason.

Molly Bloom

Because it's all I have left! Because it's my name... and I'll never have another.

Molly Bloom

By midnight, Harlan had tripled his original fifty-thousand dollar buy-in. But everything came off the rails with one hand. And that’s how it happens, that’s how you go full tilt. Harlan, the best player at the table, the best player at most tables, was about to get bluffed off the win by, of all people...Bad Brad. How? Because Harlan had never played with Brad before, and didn't know yet that Brad was bad.

Molly Bloom

By 5 a.m., Harlan was down half a million. He'd abandoned everything he knew about poker and was playing like a frat kid, swinging for a home run on every hand.

Molly Bloom

Why did you leave the prosecutor’s office and become a defense attorney?

Charlie Jaffey

My daughter.

Molly Bloom

You needed to make money.

Charlie Jaffey

That and I was usually one of the few people who knew where witnesses were being hidden.

Molly Bloom

It was dangerous.

Charlie Jaffey

Mm-hm.

Molly Bloom

So you didn’t leave the prosecutor’s office because you wanted to stand up for the innocent and believe everyone’s entitled to the best defense?

Charlie Jaffey

Not really.

Molly Bloom

It would have been helpful if you were Spencer Tracy or... I didn’t know who the Russians were. [pause] I can get you the two-hundred and fifty-thousand, I left ten times that on the street, it’ll just take some time.

Charlie Jaffey

We do pro bono work - we regularly lend out our best litigators like me to the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, veterans groups - but I don’t think I can convince my partners to take a flyer on the Poker Princess.

Molly Bloom

I didn’t name myself the Poker Princess.

Charlie Jaffey

“Molly Bloom, the self-proclaimed Poker Princess...”

Molly Bloom

That’s Us Weekly? I agree it would be unusual for them to print something that wasn’t true but it’s not true and if you think a princess could do what I did you’re incorrect. I’m getting that you don’t think much of me but what if every one of your ill informed, unsophisticated opinions about me were wrong?

Charlie Jaffey

I’d be amazed.

Molly Bloom

Yeah you know what, bud? You would.

Charlie Jaffey

You don’t need me, you need a publicist.

Molly Bloom

No, I need a ****in’ lawyer!

Molly Bloom

I’d overheard stories about games that folded after one bad night and I needed this one to keep going and I needed to bring value to it. I knew if I wanted to cement my place there was one guy I needed to team up with and that was this man. The game had regulars and the game had guests and four of the regulars were famous actors and I’m going to call one of them Player X. Player X subscribed to the belief that money won was twice as good as money earned. He lived to beat people and take their money. Here’s Player X talking one of the guests into folding the winning hand.

Player X

I swear on my--look at me--I swear on my mother’s life--I have you.

Molly Bloom

Player X was the best player at the table and tonight this guy was the worst. He’s staring at his cards - even a reasonably good amateur would know it was mathematically the best hand, which in poker is called the nuts. There was forty seven thousand dollars in the pot and the guest was holding the nuts but he was starting to get confused because a movie star was talking to him.

Player X

My mother’s life man, I’m not messing with you.

Guest

Why would you be telling me?

Player X

Either I am messing with you or you’re new to the game, you’ve had bad cards all night, you should’ve folded after the flop and I don’t want to win more of your money this way. I’ve got queens under here. Take your time.

Guest

Fold.

Player X

**** you!

Molly Bloom

A fish is a particular kind of player. A fish has money. A fish plays loose and doesn’t fold a lot. A fish is good but not too good. The Viper Room may have belonged to Reardon but the game belonged to Player X. People wanted to say they played with him the same way they wanted to say they rode on Air Force One. My job security was gonna depend on bringing him his fish. But where would I find people with a lot of money who didn’t know how to spend it and liked to be around celebrities?

Player X

You know, I don't like playing poker.

Molly Bloom

Why do you play?

Player X

I like destroying lives.

Molly Bloom

The game had given me an identity, respect, and a defined place in a world that was inaccessible and in one irrational heartbeat it was taken away. I was irrelevant and forgotten overnight. It’d been two weeks since I lost the game and I made an appointment to see someone because now the humiliation and depression had given way to a blinding anger at my powerlessness over the unfair whims of men who had leverage over me and I wanted to talk it out with someone. That was it, that’s what was making me angry. It was that there weren’t any rules. These power moves weren’t framed by right and wrong, just ego and vanity. Selfish whims with no regard to consequence. No fairness, no justice. And that giggling, cackling call from Player X...

Molly Bloom

I couldn’t lose to that greenscreened little shit and I didn’t want a therapist to make me feel okay about it. You know what makes you feel okay about losing? Winning.

Harrison Wellstone

Were the women who worked for you call girls?

Molly Bloom

No sir.

Brennan

They never exchanged sex for money?

Molly Bloom

No.

Harrison Wellstone

Have you ever exchanged sex for money?

Charlie Jaffey

No!

Molly Bloom

I think he was talking to me.

Harrison Wellstone

In Mike Davidoff's phone, intercepts alone, just Davidoff, your name comes up 19 times! "We need Molly..." "Get Molly..." "Bring Molly." It strongly suggests you were important to his business, so it's hard for me to believe that someone with your savvy and obvious intellect...

Molly Bloom

They're talking about the drug. "Get molly" "Bring molly" "We need molly" It's... they're talking about the drug 'ecstasy'.

Charlie Jaffey

Shit. My office was next to yours for two years and I saw you make some bone-headed moves but I’ve never seen any prosecutor step in it the way you just did. You should thank all of the gods that there’s no physical record of that exchange.

Judge Foxman

Based on all available information, this court manifestly disagrees with the government’s sentencing recommendation. This courthouse is located within spitting distance of Wall Street. I know this from my personal experience trying to spit at it. The men and women who work there will commit more serious crimes by lunchtime today than the defendant has committed in this indictment. I simply don’t see how either the People or the cause of justice are served by locking Molly Bloom in prison.

Molly Bloom

It was as casual as if he was ordering lunch off a menu.

Judge Foxman

Ms. Bloom, this court sentences you to two-hundred hours of community service, one year of supervised probation and drug testing and a one-hundred thousand dollar fine. This case is adjourned.

Molly Bloom

Harlan's got a boat, nines full. Brad's got nothing, but his pre-flop betting made it look, entirely accidentally, like there was a chance he had pocket kings.

Harlan Eustice

Twenty thousand.

Molly Bloom

Which, if true, would give him the better full house. Brad's counting off twenty thousand, which means he's gonna call, and Harlan knows that if Brad's gonna call and not raise, it means he didn't have the boat, and he's betting a high two-pair, probably kings and queens. But then, instead of calling the bet, Brad pushes seventy-two thousand dollars into the pot.

I'm all in.

Molly Bloom

Harlan looks at Brad. Every tell Harlan knows about—carotid artery pumping, stiff hands—Brad’s doing the opposite. Brad's bet had represented a huge hand by calling on the flop, check-raising the turn and bombing the river. Of course Harlan didn’t know that Brad didn’t know what any of that meant. So Harlan, always a good sport, said:

Harlan Eustice

Nice bet. I'm laying this down. [tosses in his cards]

Molly Bloom

As he tossed in what he didn’t realize was the winning hand. Brad tosses in his cards too and one of them flips over and Harlan sees:

Harlan Eustice

You didn't have pocket kings?

I didn't have any kings, except the one in the middle.

Harlan Eustice

You had two-pair?

I had one-pair, the nines in the middle.
[Everyone starts laughing raucously at Harlan and patting Brad on the back, with one bystander exclaiming, "Harlan, what were you thinking?!" Brad laughs joyfully while Harlan is frozen in shock]

Molly Bloom

You're on tilt—everybody knows it. You're playing without the weapons you need to win.

Harlan Eustice

You're right.

Molly Bloom

Alright. Thank you.

Harlan Eustice

Give me five hundred thousand. I just got to get back to even.

Molly Bloom

That should be the second line of every gambler’s obit. “Mr. Feldstein died while trying to get back to even.” [Harlan returns to the table with fresh chips] Harlan never did. And he never got to his wife’s birthday party. She filed for divorce two days later. But there was one last punch coming that would put Harlan on the floor for good. Harlan was heads-up against a guy named Frederick who was Austrian royalty.

Harlan Eustice

Call.

Molly Bloom

Harlan had pocket queens. His Excellency had Ace-King. They were both in 65K pre-flop. The flop's queen-seven-seven. Harlan has a full-house again, queens full of sevens, with three rounds of betting in front of him. The Count has nothing.

All in.

Molly Bloom

And the Count goes all in. He wants Harlan to think he’s got two more sevens under there.

Harlan Eustice

Call.

Molly Bloom

Nope, says Harlan. He’s not falling for this again and he snap calls all in. There’s $750,000 on the table. Diego burns a card and deals the turn. A king. Otto von Bismarck now has two-pair, kings and sevens, but two-pair’s nothing next to a full house. And at this point, the only hand left that can beat a queen full house...[Diego burns another card and deals the last turn: a King of Clubs]...is a king full house.

Alright.

Molly Bloom

Captain von Trapp bluffed two-pair and rivered into kings full.

Harlan Eustice

Mother****er. MOTHER****ER! [grabs some food that’s on a plate and throws it at Diego] **** YOU, YOU **** MECHANIC!

Molly Bloom

Hey!

Harlan Eustice

**** YOU, YOU BOTTOM-DEALIN' PARTY MAGICIAN!

Molly Bloom

Hey, get out onto the terrace. [ushers Harlan away from the table]

Harlan Eustice

You've been pulling this shit on me for two days!