Houston Curtis teaches card sharping online. His website will teach you to base deal, blind riffle, and what kind of hand cream is best for keeping your hands supple while you bilk your pals. “Learn important tools, tips, and techniques towards becoming a proper card manipulator.”
Though if the size of the ad on his website is anything to go by, his main goal at the moment is selling his book about how Molly Bloom didn’t run Molly’s game, he did.
In his latest blog post for Cardplayer promoting his book, he revealed the five best poker players who had graced Molly’s hotel room baize.
Curtis eliminated Tobey Maguire and Jennifer Tilly from the lineup up front. They are after all practically poker pros in their own right. After that he boiled his list down to five names.
The list
James Woods came in at number five, topped out by Todd Phillips at four (the angry white man’s angry white director of Joker).
Ben Affleck took third place and as a player was, in Curtis’s words, “not afraid to make the big call or the big bluff and from what I’ve seen, he’s been more right than wrong when lots of money was on the line. Ben was definitely a winner in our game.”
Nick Cassavettes will come as no surprise at number two. His run on High Stakes Poker is a classic. For those who don’t quite remember, he’s the guy that Antonio Esfandiari could not get over had written Blow.
At the top of the list is Rick Salomon. The star and director of One Night In Paris. He is described by Curtis as “famous for being a bad boy, but known by the Hollywood A-listers and elites for being a man of his word.” Though Curtis seems more wowed by Salomon’s sexual conquests than his poker prowess, listing rather breathlessly the names of Salomon’s wives.
Who’s the “best” A-Lister in Molly's Game?
Houston Curtis gave an exclusive interview, and the chance to write the intro to his book, to Dylan Howard. Howard is best known for being the guy who dug dirt up on Rose McGowan for Harvey Weinstein.
Given Curtis's track record, it is perhaps unsurprising that his list has a rather grubby feel to it.
Ben Affleck seems just about tolerable as a person. And Nick Cassvettes is a remarkable filmmaker, even if he did star in Entourage.
But there's Rick Salomon, who made his name selling someone else's body. And Todd Phillips, who felt comedy had been killed by "woke culture". And then there is James Woods.
I’m not sure that we learned much about Molly’s Game in all this. But a picture begins to form of Houston Curtis.
