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With the headlines recently being dominated by depressing stories of high-profile Hollywood executives succumbing to their personal demons and sacrificing their jobs, Page Six decides to zig where others have zagged, noting that a long-brewing LAT investigation involving Universal's Ron Meyer's love of high-stakes poker seems (at least for now) to be a scandal non-starter:

RON Meyer, the longtime head of Universal Studios, was an avid gambler who lost substantial sums playing high-stakes poker, sources say.

But a 10-month investigation into Meyer's wagering by Los Angeles Times reporter Kim Christensen has evidently hit a dead end.

"Christensen has interviewed dozens of people, and been to Las Vegas and back many times, but the paper hasn't printed one word," said one insider. [...]

"Ron used to be a card player," publicist Allan] Mayer told Page Six. "He never gambled beyond his means. He never gambled illegally. And he hasn't gambled in years."

Meyer is said to have won and lost millions of dollars over the years, dating back to when he was a partner at the CAA talent agency...Meyer, who did not compete in that or any other tourney, supposedly stopped playing a few years ago. "I think he outgrew it," said one source, who added that, "The Los Angeles Times was hoping they would find something on him, but there was nothing to find. He didn't do anything wrong. He doesn't owe anybody money."

We suppose we'll have to wait and see if the Times reporting ultimately turns up anything truly scandalous (remember, as Tony Soprano has recently taught us, gambling is only a problem if you don't have enough cash on hand to cover your unlucky runs), but in the meantime, we'll just have to assume that Stacey Snider really left Universal for DreamWorks because of career ambitions, and not because Meyer lost her in a poker game when Steven Spielberg cracked his pocket aces.