Jeremy Strong and I after a poker coaching session at my place.
Every so often I’ve had the privilege of poker coaching Hollywood actors, or famous sports athletes. It’s random when these opportunities arise, but they’re always fun and interesting. I got that opportunity once again to work with actor Jeremy Strong on the upcoming Aaron Sorkin poker movie, Molly’s Game. Jeremy has been in a number of great movies, including recently “The Big Short”, “Lincoln”, “Zero Dark Thirty”, and “Selma”, just to name a few.
Molly’s Game is an upcoming movie (currently in post production), that is based on the book and true story of Molly Bloom, former Olympic skier turned high stakes poker host to the hollywood elite, the mob, and billionaires. It’s an interesting tail of connections, high stakes poker, the mob, and the FBI. Aaron Sorkin who is best known for writing and producing some amazing TV shows and movies such as, “The West Wing”, “Moneyball”, “The Social Network”, and “A Few Good Men”, will make his directorial debut on Molly’s Game.
When I got an e-mail from Jeremy Strong to do some coaching, and help him prep for his new roll as the owner of the Viper Room in Molly’s Game, I was stoked of course. Jeremy and I did a few lessons at my house, and he also hosted a home game at his house with some of his Hollywood friends so we could get some practice looking and acting like an actual poker player. Actors are great because they are very observant to small details, and Jeremy picked up on everything we spoke about very quickly. In a very short period, he actually looked like a high stakes player, even if the actual skills weren’t quite there yet, we got the facade correct at least! 🙂
Jeremy also threw himself out into the Vegas poker scene for a few days, and rounded out his approach, appearance, and believability at the poker table. He had a short turn around as he was also filming a pilot for a new HBO series (which ended up getting picked up), and went off the Vancouver to shoot Molly’s Game for roughly a month. Molly’s Game is now in post production.
But for all of those poker fans out there, this has all of the potential to be the next “Rounders”. I’ve been told Aaron Sorkin went to great detail to get the scene and the poker life as realistic as possible. I can’t speak in great detail about specifics on the scenes because of NDA agreements, but I can tell you the actual poker scene should be very realistic and on point.
It will be interesting to see the final product of course. But it was a fun experience as always, and I’ve been promised some photo’s when they are allowed to be released, so I will update this blog when I get some new photos. Let’s hope there’s no bad beat on the way and Molly’s Game crushes in the box office, as it will only be +EV for the poker market!
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What we’re all about at Ace Poker Solutions: We offer the highest EV poker software, and training tools available on the net, recommended and used by today’s top poker players are the world. We’ve been doing this since 2009 with the emphasis on offer unique and creative poker software that will help any level of poker player be a more thoughtful and successful player at the table. We’d invite you to check these titles out:
Leak Buster Software – Leak Buster is poker software that interfaces with your Holdem Manager or Poker Tracker database, and extracts key statistics about your play in order to find your largest poker leaks. It’s unique scoring algorithm weighs the impact of your leak against average win-rates, and suggests ways to correct those leaks through the use of videos (over 50) and written modules.
DriveHUD – DriveHUD is a poker database and HUD for your online poker play. It will overlay a HUD on your online poker tables, and display vital stats about each of the opponents on your table. It will track and record all of the hands you play online, allow to you to review, re-play, filter, graph and analyze all of the hands you’ve played so you can improve your poker game.
Ace Poker Drills – Ace Poker Drills is a poker training software that gives you a “flash card” style training for Odds and Outs, Equity, and Pre- Flop play. The Pre-Flop trainer will help you to easily recognize which hands to play in different positions. Odds and Outs trainer will get you to quickly calculate your odds and outs in various situations. Equity Trainer will quiz you on equity calculations for different hands, so that knowing your equity in a given scenario will be second nature.
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