Psychological Effects of Wrongful Indictments
Molly’s Game
Molly’s Game is the fascinating and true book to movie adaptation of Molly Bloom, former professional freestyle skier and poker game runner. In her youth, her father, a profession phycologist himself, pushed her and her two older brothers to achieve incredibly high academic and athletic goals. While Molly was only ever number three in North American women’s freestyle before she suffered a career ending accident, her brothers were winning gold at the olympics and maintaining their competition for first in the world. While originally planning to attend law school after skiing, her accident prompted her to take a break in Los Angeles for a year. There she crashed on friend’s couches, despite her father’s ability to help financially, due to his disagreement with her gap year. Molly, ever the over-achiever, and armed with nothing but her wit, picked up a waitress-like gig at a high end nightclub. Her job was to make the customers spend as much as possible, which she had no problems completing. During her stay there, she met an unnamed business tycoon who offered her a job as his 24/7 secretary. All other characters besides Molly are renamed, to protect anonymity. The man who offered her the job wastes no time bringing Molly into his world of underground poker games, which featured A-listers such as Leonardo Dicaprio, Ben Affleck, Tobey Maguire, etc. (confirmed outside the film). She was constantly surrounded by rappers, hedge fund managers, actors, and the like. The game continued in every week, until her and her boss had a fallout when he became jealous of the tips she was making and stopped paying her, which is when Molly took over the game by inviting all the old players to a new location. For years she orchestrated the game, invited the players, catered the food and drinks, all legally. She didn’t take a rake, she didn’t allow bets, it was just the straight poker.
One of the players, who she calls ‘Player X’ throughout the film, also notices how much tip money Molly is making. He confronts her and challenges her reign of the game, claiming that the real reason players came was to play with him. After suggesting that they cap Molly’s tips, much to her disgust, they part ways, but Molly knew she lost. It wasn’t until exactly a week later, once she was already on the way to the hosting plaza, that she received the call from Player X, telling her that the game had been moved and there was no reason for her to longer be involved. Despite the game only ever being a side project, and her acknowledgement that it had consumed her life for the better part of two years, delaying law school, she was devastated. Determined not to let it get the better of her, she packed her bags and flew to New York, where, within ten weeks, she had a new game up and running. This time, instead of movie stars, there were metropolitan trust fund billionaires, art gallery owners and baseb...
