Molly Bloom’s poker book Molly’s Game: From Hollywood’s Elite to Wall Street’s Billion Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventures in the World of Underground Poker, has been given a right roasting by the respected author James McManus in Bloomberg this week.
‘Bloom’s prose has the ring of hype, not truth.’
Those are the words of James McManus, author of Positively Fifth Street and Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, in a book review he penned for Bloomberg View.
He’s not a fan of the Poker Princess.
It’s been a great year for poker books.
James Leighton entertained us all with the fast flowing Alligator Blood, and if I was an egg Dutch Boyd would have cracked me up with his soul-bearing Poker Tilt.
Both of these books are movie scripts in the waiting, and according to PokerNews, Hollywood Director Robert Luketic has already bought the rights to the Alligator Blood script.
So what of Molly’s Game?
It was never going to be made into a movie, but what about its credentials as a piece of literature?
Well according to McManus the book fails to answer any serious questions about the game, and instead prefers to focus on, ‘which wines and cheeses were served, and what she and the masseuses were wearing.’
But how can she get this so wrong?
She had Spiderman, Batman, Jason Bourne and the Wolf of Wall Street sat in her game!
How can you not create a story worth reading out of that line-up?
McManus believes that there are just too many inaccuracies in her text to give her any general credence, and he refers to her mention of the ‘going all-in blind kind of action,’ asserting that two of the games regulars – Rick Salomon and Gabe Kaplan – would never play like that.
There is also reference to Kaplan smoking a cigar and McManus points to the fact that Kaplan is a non-smoker.
Bloom does have some fans on Amazon though.
Of the 65 customer reviews 40 of them have a 5-star rating with comments such as: ‘Refreshingly, Ms. Bloom is very generous with details, names and places. She’s also very candid about her own downfall.’
There were some reviews with the same vibe as McManus, however; with, ‘if you want to read an “auto” about a totally self centered, superficial, manipulative individual, this is the book for you,’ standing out about the rest.
Well if you do, I’m sure you will have no problem getting hold of a copy.
