The New York Times has published an in-depth profile of Thomas Goldstein and it’s worth a read for anyone who is interested in the world of high stakes poker.

It’s a wild story of a man who was at the top of his game as a lawyer who had a successful practice arguing cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He basically had it all. But then he got involved in the world of poker and found that his aggressive courtroom style translated to the game of poker. He could play without even looking at his cards, as he would go overboard bullying and bluffing other players.

Goldstein went deeper and deeper, to the point that he was winning and losing tens of millions of dollars. The numbers here are just crazy. Of course he loved the lifestyle as well, as he indulged in having multiple sugar babies while concealing everything from his wife.

Now he’s been indicted for tax fraud and mortgage fraud. Of course he’s fighting it, but the case has exposed his scret life, and the secret world of high stakes poker.

Check it out!

Cheating is the last thing you should have to worry about at a high stakes private poker game. Perhaps that’s naive, but the minute anyone suspects a game may be rigged, then there’s a chance that poker game withers and falls apart.

Recent news however suggests that cheating may be a real issue, particularly with some games run by the mob.

If you’ve followed the NBA this season, you’ve probably heard the name Chauncey Billups—not for his coaching the Portland Trail Blazers to a surprise playoff push, but for the bombshell federal indictments that dropped on October 23, 2025, tying him to a sprawling gambling conspiracy.

While the betting angle has rocked the NBA, with accusations of leaked injury reports and lineups for prop bets, the poker side is where things get truly cinematic, exposing how elite private games, often glamorized as playgrounds for celebrities and tycoons, are ripe for sophisticated scams.

At its core, the allegations paint Billups as a key player (pun intended) in luring high-rollers to illegal, invite-only poker nights in luxury spots like New York lofts and Las Vegas suites. These weren’t your casual home games; stakes ran into the hundreds of thousands per hand, drawing in Wall Street execs, tech moguls, and fellow athletes who trusted the “NBA family” vibe Billups brought. But according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, it was all a setup orchestrated by organized crime associates who used sophisticated methods of cheating.

The cheating methods? Straight out of a spy thriller. Indictments detail:

• X-ray vision tables: Custom poker tables embedded with hidden cameras and X-ray tech to scan players’ hole cards from below, feeding real-time intel to colluding “house players” (shills posing as amateurs).
• Rigged shufflers and marked decks: Automatic card machines programmed to deal favorable hands, plus decks with invisible ink readable only by accomplices’ special lenses.
• Collusion via signals and apps: Subtle hand gestures, coded texts, or encrypted apps to tip off partners about bets and folds, ensuring the house always won big—allegedly fleecing victims of over $10 million since 2022.

Many pros suspected these games were rigged, as losers were beating professional poker players. Most others, like high rollers who loved access to professional athletes and celebrities, had no idea.

These revelations show how low some of the mob operations have sunk. They will also likely have a big impact on private games in the future, with players being much more cognizant of how to avoid being cheated.

Be careful out there!

Yesterday we explained how legal sports betting continues to gain popularity, but even with these trends, there are tons of illegal gambling websites out there. The problem with these sites is that you really have no idea which ones are legitimate, and you have little recourse when things go wrong.

This article by Richard N. Velotta in the Las Vegas Review-Journal shines a light on the problem. Velotta explains how the American Gaming Association has made it a priority to encourage the public to bet responsibly with licensed operators and avoid illegal offshore websites. Despite this, illegal gambling websites continue to operate and can be difficult to track down and shut down. He describes the case of a Canadian gambler who has been unable to collect his winnings on a $225,000 jackpot he won playing blackjack on BetOnLine.ag, an internet domain in Antigua. Read the story and you’ll see the details.

Why do betters still use illegal gambling websites?

There are plenty of reasons why these sites are still in business.

Firstly, you have to consider that betting hasn’t been legalized everywhere, so many betters are still shut out of the legal betting market depending on their state of residence or jurisdiction.

Secondly, illegal gambling websites often offer better odds and higher payouts than their legal counterparts. This can be attractive to bettors looking to maximize their winnings, even if it means breaking the law. This also applies to local bookies.

Thirdly, illegal gambling websites are often more accessible and convenient than legal options. While legal sports betting may be limited to certain states or require in-person registration, illegal websites can be accessed from anywhere and may only require a few clicks to place a bet. Without the shackles of regulation they make it easier for everyone to play.

Lastly, some individuals may simply prefer to use illegal gambling websites out of habit or loyalty. They may have been using these websites for years and may be hesitant to switch to a legal option.

Enforcement is difficult

The reality is that illegal gambling websites can be difficult to track and shut down. These websites can operate offshore or use various tactics to hide their location and ownership, making it challenging for law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute them. This problem also stems from the silly and ineffective laws intended to stop gambling in places like the United States. We now have more rational regulatory policies, but it will take a while for this to have a broad effect on the market.

Stay away

While legal sports betting has expanded across the United States, illegal gambling websites remain a problem due to the benefits and accessibility they offer. If you live in a jurisdiction where legal gambling is permitted, you’re foolish to stick with an illegal website. It is crucial for every person who plays online to know exactly with whom they are playing and to stay away from those operating illegally. Otherwise, you’ll have little recourse when you get screwed over.

If you love poker, you probably enjoy the characters you meet along the way as well. Also, all the different setting from back room games with friends to upscale private settings. It’s part of the fun. Unless you’re one of those players who can’t control him or herself. High stakes poker, like any form of high takes gambling, can crush souls and ruin lives. The key is to enjoy the thrill of this intoxicating game without letting it destroy you.

In “Molly’s Game” we get a glimpse into the world of private, high-stakes poker games in Los Angeles and New York. It’s a world filled with celebrities, athletes, beautiful women and plenty of booze and drugs. It’s a target-rich environment if you’re a smart and disciplined player. But for many others it’s a seductive trap that can often lead to a spectacular crash.

Warning: spoilers will follow.

The film is based on the true story of Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain), a young and beautiful Olympic-class skier who ran the world’s most exclusive high-stakes poker game for a decade before being arrested by the FBI. When she got started in LA, her games had a buy-in of $10,000. In New York the buy-ins ballooned up to $250,000. For years she made her money on tips for her and the lovely hostesses she hired, keeping the game legal. By the end she was hooked on drugs to keep her awake and she started taking a rake, which made her game illegal. She got sloppy, and in the end it cost her. She eventually found herself being woken up one morning by FBI agents holding automatic weapons.

She wrote a book about her experience which was adapted into a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin. Naturally, Sorkin added quite a few dramatic scenes and composite characters to the story along with the crisp and witty dialogue we’ve come to expect from him. But the film is true to many of the details from the book. The players who attended her poker games in LA included huge stars like Tobey Maguire, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

The celebrity angle is key. Molly used this to recruit new players. Poker players love a challenge, and the allure of playing with big stars helped Molly build a hugely successful game. In the film, Sorkin uses a composite character called Player X (Michael Cera) as the famous actor. Player X loves to destroy lives, and relishes humiliating other players using his skills. And this is a key lesson – if you’re going to be star-struck, you don’t belong in these games.

The film is loaded with lessons for high rollers and lower-stakes players as well. One character loses it after a bad beat. He’s a disciplined poker player, always playing tight and winning consistently over time. But then he goes “full tilt” after the bad beat, losing over $1.2 million in the process. Never let yourself lose control like that. If you let your emotions get the best of you, you’ll end up losing your money eventually.

Also, these high stakes games are loaded with degenerates. Molly loses her Los Angeles game when Player X gets angry with her. Molly discovers he’s staking other players, and he refuses to stop. He doesn’t like her rules, so he takes away all her players. He calls her on her cell phone, cackling with laughter as he tells her how f#cked she is. Apparently, in real life it was Toby Maguire who made that call, though he wasn’t the celebrity who took away her game.

But there’s more of course. One player who consistently lost big money in Molly’s LA game was simply recruiting clients to his hedge fund, which was actually a Ponzi scheme. He flips later in the story. And then we have the Russian mob once she brings her game to New York. In a scene pulled from her book, Molly gets beaten and robbed in her apartment and has a gun placed in her mouth by a mob enforcer. That’s what happens after you politely decline an offer of protection.

Chastain is brilliant in this film as Molly. She handles Sorkin’s dialogue with impressive skill, working effortlessly opposite Idris Elba and the rest of the impressive cast. Elba plays her lawyer Charlie, a fictional character created by Sorkin to help drive the story. Molly always looks gorgeous, flashing her lovely cleavage even when she’s dressing down, but she and the glamourous hostesses she hired never hook up with the players. It’s a rule that was critical to her success, and this was important to her from a personal perspective as well. She wasn’t a prostitute. But this becomes an issue when Player X resents the lack of personal attention.

In the end, we get to see a lot of the glamour surrounding these high-stakes private games, along with the potential pitfalls. Many of you won’t be able to resist this thrill if you can ever get invited to one of these games. Just be careful . . .

As more and more states rush to get in on legalizing all forms of gambling, we continue to see success stories as state start to see the cash roll in. Detroit has had casinos for years, but Michigan expanded legalized gambling and added sports gambling to the mix, and the results have been very positive:

Internet casinos, poker and sports betting in Michigan generated $1.4 billion in revenue in 2021, the first year online gambling was operational in the state.

Internet casino gaming generated $1.1 billion in revenue while internet sports betting produced $292.2 million, according to numbers released Tuesday by the Michigan Gaming Control Board. Meanwhile, bettors wagered $3.7 billion at online sportsbooks last year.

Michigan became the third state in U.S. history to generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue from online casino games and poker, and the first to do so in its first year.

At some point states will start to cannibalize each other’s revenues, but with sports gambling most players are state residents. So each state is just adding to the overall pool of players. Let’s see how this trend plays out . . . Ohio will be joining the party in 2022!

Confidence is a state of mind that isn’t easily attained and when you play poker, confidence matters. You might think being confident (or not) is fairly trivial and it’s all about luck and skill but it can help carry you to the end or it can cause you to crash out early. There are two types of confidence in poker and whilst both have their benefits in certain situations, there is a clear winner between the two.

Blind Confidence

Some critics argue that confidence has no relevance to poker but they are the same people who say that someone who is over confident in a game that is being operated above their ability will quickly lose their bankroll. This is because the level of confidence they have isn’t based on any tangible apart from what’s happening in their own head. The main sources of blind confidence are ignorance and results.

The likeliest offender of ignorance is a fairly successful person with a substantial financial backing. They feel as though they have succeeded in most other areas of their life and that this “poker thing should be a piece of cake”.

Moving over to the results side, this would usually be somebody who believes they are on a hot streak, they’ve managed to string together a few good hands purely by chance and are on the up. They think it must be destiny and of course, since they’ve won a few games or hands, they just must be destined to win again. Short-term results aren’t an accurate representation of skill level and eventually this player will get found out.

Earned Confidence

There are a few steps you must take to ensure you become a successful player over the long term and becoming a successful player creates earned confidence. Earned confidence is where you develop a confidence in you playing ability from consistently performing well. This is gained by studying the game of poker to the full, whether that be playing lots and lots of hands of poker to gain experience in every single situation that you could be faced with and ensuring you are always fully focussed on the game at hand and know exactly what is going on.

Being a confident poker player is all about the process of improvement, and of course not your results over the short-term. Losses are a big part of the game, and the very best players accept this while maintaining their ability to find areas where they can grow.

Focusing on the formula of Skill + Awareness = Confidence removes all of the uncertainty of whether you’re a good player or not, and the more skill you get in your strategic and mental games the higher your confidence can grow.