Molly Bloom

I lived across from a cornfield when I was growing up.

Look at the things you've done and ask for forgiveness. After clearing out that wreckage from the past, you can move forward, in a way, to keep your finger on the pulse.

I believe that to get what you want as a woman is to use your brain, to have a job, and to not need someone or have to make decisions based on that.

I believed that writing my story was my best shot to be able to pay my mom and my attorneys back and pull myself out of this massive crisis that I had put myself in.

I logged into my bank accounts, and they were all seized, all frozen. So that was a pretty clear indication that I was in big trouble.

Ideally, I would like to not be in the public eye.

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.

I moved to Los Angeles. My parents were not on board with that, and so I had to get a lot of different jobs. One of them was working for a man in Hollywood who had a weekly poker game.

I kept these games pretty intimate. You know, with this much money on the table, with this much risk, you wanted to make people feel safe. They don't want to feel like they're part of a spectator's sport - well, the winners do, but the losers do not.

I think, before I had money, I believed that money would solve my problems, that it would give me power and I wouldn't have financial stress anymore, and it would completely change my life. And then, when I had money, it changed a lot of things, but it didn't change the way I felt inside at all.

When I was making the most money at the top of my game, driving Bentleys and all that, I felt so existentially empty.

You can tell a lot about a man's character by watching him win or lose money.