When you make the big $ in Hollywood, you can afford to blow a little more than the average Joe on pleasure items. Or, if you’re Ben Affleck, you can blow almost $500K on a hand of poker.

It’s emerged Affleck, 35, even hosted his own game — which was referred to in poker circles as “Ben’s Game” — at the Grand Havana Room in Beverly Hills.

“Ben wasn’t the most skillful player,” [an insider said]. “It was almost like he was someone who felt they did not deserve the money they had.”

The actor began gambling with Ron Meyer, president of Universal Studios, [and] their poker games were anything but friendly — the Hollywood honcho’s biggest winning hands came at the expense of the actor, who lost a hand to the tune of $400,000.

“Ben busted big,” one player at the table on the night in question said. “He drummed up a giant tab, and then all of a sudden he disappeared from the game. He wasn’t seen for months.”

It left many in the ring to ask why the star just didn’t pay Meyer. The source said: “He’d had a string of bad movies and didn’t have any big projects on the horizon, and everyone was wondering, ‘Is Ben broke?’

“But we knew that he couldn’t stiff a businessman like Ron Meyer. That would be ‘career over’ in Hollywood. Suicide.”

Turns out he was part of a secret poker ring that landed Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon under federal investigation last month!

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