Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Tobey Maguire’s Manhattan Fold Em Poker Ring


Why do people -- men, almost always -- risk so much so stupidly when they already have so much? Biology? Biochemistry? Remember that illegal high stakes poker gambling ring that included Toby McGuire? From NYMag:

"Until this past spring, you couldn’t have picked a more likely prospect to be the next United States ambassador to France than Marc Lasry. The co-founder of the $12.4 billion Avenue Capital Group was supremely wealthy and well connected: He had a net worth of $1.4 billion, counted Bill Clinton as a close personal friend (Chelsea worked for him for a while), and hosted a $40,000-a-head event for Barack Obama in 2012, when much of Wall Street had abandoned him for Mitt Romney. True, Lasry would’ve had to have made some major sacrifices to get the appointment—disclose or divest certain stock holdings, maybe even sell his entire stake in Avenue to his partners—but after conquering Wall Street for decades, he was more than interested. He told the people around him he was ready to move his family overseas.


But Lasry, like other hedge-fund executives, played poker.

It only gets better: a who's who of art, politics and hedge funds as well as poker, bottle service girls, the Russian mob and, of course, money. Fascinating stuff.

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