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 . . .

Las Vegas is still having some issues following the economic crisis of 2008. Things have changed a lot in the city, and as a result we saw a collapse in the local real estate market. While visitor numbers are creeping up, gambling receipts are still a problem as Macau attracts so many of the world’s high rollers.

You wouldn’t be able to guess, however, if you pay attention to the shows and the nightclubs. Celine Dion just signed a $100 million extension with Caesars. and now there is speculation that Britney Spears could easily top that figure if she completes a deal as well.

Meanwhile, the biggest, newest casinos are killing it. Places like Aria and the Cosmopolitan are packed with the beautiful people, while the hottest clubs are packing them in again.

So Las Vegas continues to evolve. It still attracts the big time poker players, so it’s a mecca for that sport. As more people play online, it just creates more and more players who want to test their skills in person against the best in Las Vegas. If the feds ever get their act together and set up a federal regulatory system for online poker, the popularity will probably explode even more, and that’s very good for Vegas.

The key, of course, is dealing with all the distractions when you get there. Of course we all want to live like a high roller, but living that life has its costs. The booze, the women and the all-night parties make it a lot harder to be effective at the poker table for long stretches of time.

So the real key is discipline. Are you serious about being a winning poker player, or are you more concerned with bringing a hot babe to the Britney Spears concert? These are the choices you have to make. Win first, and then enjoy the festivities.

We all know that poker is a game of skill. Now others are starting to take note, as a federal judge ruled in a recent decision.

Poker is a game of skill that is not covered under the federal Illegal Gambling Business Act, Eastern District Judge Jack Weinstein ruled yesterday.

Weinstein (See Profile) reversed the jury conviction of Lawrence Dicristina and found that, as a matter of law, Congress did not clearly intend to criminalize poker when it passed the act. Part of the judge’s reasoning was that poker games, in this case Texas Hold’em, are not purely games of chance.

“Bluffing, raising and folding require honed skills to maximize the value of the cards dealt by Lady Luck,” Weinstein said in United States v. Dicristina, 11-CR-414.

In a 120-page decision, Weinstein noted that New York courts have long considered that poker contains a sufficient element of chance to constitute gambling under state laws, N.Y. Penal Law §225.00(2). But the federal law is ambiguous as to whether it federalizes state gambling offenses, he said.

Even the attractive lady above can use her “assets” to help distract players. There are so many factors that go into winning money at poker. It’s nice to see some feds finally agree.

Here’s an interesting video that discusses this history and some of the specific cheating scams. It also discusses strategies to help you establish or hide your poker face.

Here’s an interesting development:

3G Studios, a video game developer in Reno, is betting on online gambling.

The private company, with 47 U.S. employees, has hired almost 80 contractors in India and China and expects to have 200 dedicated solely to making gambling games by the end of the year. 3G is one of a handful of game makers jockeying for gambling business, expecting states, hungry for new tax revenue, to open the floodgates for Internet casinos.

Nevada is accepting applications for online gambling licenses, and in June, Delaware became the first state to approve online casino gambling for state residents, starting next year. Other states, including California and New Jersey, are considering loosening the rules for wagering on the Web after the Department of Justice reversed a longtime ban on many types of Internet betting in December.

Word is out that Zynga is also pushing their poker game for the same reasons.

There will be huge competition for poker players if we see national regulation, and the gamer companies will be battling the traditional casino companies.

The photo above captures the logo on the floor leading up to the poker room at the new Horseshoe Casino in downtown Cleveland. The new casino opened several weeks ago, and the poker room has been very busy.

Cleveland is a poker town. And this place is proof.

The Horseshoe’s 24-hour-a-day poker room has ranked among the busiest in the country since the casino opened May 14, according to Bravo Poker Live, a software application that tracks tables in use, the kinds of games available and the size of waiting lists at casinos nationwide.

Information for the Horseshoe poker room, found through the app, has received more than 85,000 hits, according to the software’s provider, Genesis Gaming.

A check of Bravo Poker Live at midafternoon Wednesday showed that the Horseshoe had 16 tables going, eighth among 100 that supplied data; early afternoon Thursday, the number was down to 11, but that was still good for a four-way tie for ninth out of 90 venues.

It’s been so busy that they haven’t been hosting tournaments since the cash games are more profitable for the casino.