In the movie Rounders, Edward Norton, playing the unsavory Worm, let loose with one of the gambling classic’s memorable lines after Matt Damon’s Mike McDermott bemoaned his girlfriend splitting on him.
“In the poker game of life, women are the rake,” Worm said with characteristic bluster, having already blown-up Mike’s reputation and finances.
Judging by the recent arrest of former NBA star Gilbert Arenas, and five others, it looks like poker-game rakes might actually be the rake of life. The group has been arrested for alleged involvement in an illegal gambling ring.
More Rake Is Illegal
Arenas is not the first notable name to go down under allegations surrounding a seemingly high-stakes home game (which is completely legal in the United States so long as no organizers profit) with a rake to benefit the people putting it on. Taking a rake makes an unlicensed game illegal.
Molly Bloom, who wrote the book Molly’s Game and was played by Jessica Chastain in the movie that spun off from it, found herself in a similar spot.
Considering that the Los Angeles area is teeming with illegal home games – “There are five super high-stakes games happening there on any given night,” an insider who knows that world told me – it’s easy to wonder why games being held in a home attached to Arenas would have gotten busted.
Hollywood Home Games
I asked the insider, and he replied, “A rumor is going around that the people putting on another private game ratted those guys out to shut them down. I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t bet against it. There’s a lot of money at stake in those games.”
The insider has a credible opinion. He had spent years around the West Coast poker scene, and not as a sucker. He recalled one illicit game in LA where “an actor was the draw for players and a former professional athlete [not Arenas] was the mark. He was known to dust off $100,000 in the course of a night.”
While the illegal games thrive, in part, because it is more appealing to play in an LA mansion with a chef in the kitchen than it might be to play in the legal poker clubs around town, that does not mean that everything is always above board. The insider witnessed games “where they hit the rake really hard” – meaning that the house had dealers dragging more from the pots than would have been the agreed upon sums.
There is no evidence that this was going on in the games held in Arenas’ home, however.
Appetite For Action
A player who is known for participating in games that stream online told me about an illegal home game that opened up in LA as COVID was still in full swing. He recalled the stakes as $5-$5 no limit, but, as one of the only games in town, it attracted a crowd that normally played much higher.
“There were people from all walks of life,” the player said. “There were drugs, a cop in the game, and the leader of an LA gang. This frigging cop makes a bet, takes a bump of coke and says to me, ‘Are you going to call?’ I was in La La Land. I couldn’t believe it. The environment was crazy, and the stakes were so small that I couldn’t win anything because I didn’t care about the money.”
One thing that the insider does question is the allegation from law enforcement that the massage girls “offered companionship to players for tips.”
“It’s a bold claim,” he said. “Nobody wants players away from the table. The only time I saw that going down was in a game run by a guy who owned a porn studio. Multiple tables were set up in the studio. These women who were porn stars or hookers would grab guys and take them into another room for 30 minutes of getting banged or whatever. Everyone got sick of waiting for the donkeys to finish so that we could get their money.”
Arenas filed a not-guilty plea and was released on $50,000 bail. His lawyer emphasized that he is innocent until proven guilty.
As to whether or not this recent situation will have a chilling effect on illicit poker operations in LA, the insider expressed doubts.
“The players don’t care,” he said, pointing out that they tend to walk away unscathed from busts. “LA has so many suckers, out-of-their-mind dreamers, and people who drip money. The games are always going and they’re always soft.”
Michael Kaplan is a journalist based in New York City. He is the author of six books including The Advantage Players, and has worked for publications that include Wired, GQ and the New York Post. He has written extensively on technology, gambling, and business — with a particular interest in spots where all three intersect. His article on Kelly “Baccarat Machine” Sun and Phil Ivey is currently in development as a feature film.
