 A Star Is Born
Hollywood celeb Jennifer Tilly knocks the poker world for a loop
Actress Jennifer Tilly is best known for her roles in films like Bound, Liar Liar and Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway, which earned her an Oscar nomination for her hilarious portrayal of a dimwitted mob moll who aspires to be an actress. Now the sultry-voiced 46-year-old has a claim to fame in the gaming world as well. She recently beat 600 opponents to win the Ladies-Only No-Limit Texas Hold’em event at the World Series of Poker, earning her the stunning distinction of being the first “celebrity player” to win an open WSOP tournament. The ace up her sleeve? Her boyfriend, poker pro Phil “The Unabomber” Laak, whom she credits with helping her to learn the game’s finer points.
CP: What’s the coolest thing about now being considered an elite poker player?
JT: The thing is that these guys—and this is why I love to hang around with poker players—they are all so smart. They’re like ubergeniuses. Before poker a lot of them came from the backgammon world, like my boyfriend Phil, or they were in the dot.com universe. A lot of them made a lot of money in other areas like day trading or whatever. They’re really good at assessing a situation and saying, "How can I turn this around to my advantage, money-wise?"
And now, with poker’s popularity on television, these pros are celebrities in their own right.
There are all these poker shows springing up. Phil and I just did this show on the GSN (Game Show Network). There isn’t a huge pool [of possible guests] to choose from, as far as poker players who also have some measure of celebrity. Especially with the women. It's funny ’cause Phil said he originally wanted a job where he could just be grungy and obnoxious and not have to be nice or worry what people thought. And now all of them are like, "What's my image?" People who used to show up in their pajamas are all of a sudden like, "I'm going to be the dapper poker player!" (Laughs) Everybody is trying to figure out an angle. Phil said about five years ago when you said to a girl that you were a poker player, they’d be like, "Eeeewh! Get away from me!" like you were the janitor or something. Now it's like, "I'm a poker player" and the girls are like (seductively), "Ooooh! Tell me more!" It really has done a shift and I think that it’s because of the glare of the media spotlight.
Did Phil give you any pointers about how to handle this kind of spotlight?
About being on television? Well, he’s at a different place than me because he really understands the nature of fate. Because he’s more of a cash-game player, after he won the celebrity invitational he needed to make another final table to keep up his celebrity quotient. He's actually very good with publicity. That’s why they all write articles. See, when I started dating Phil, and I wanted to be a poker player, I tried to do everything they did. And one of the things that they do is shuffle chips. I finally mastered that. There is a lot of money being a celebrity poker player. It's funny because the whole poker world has changed in that about five years ago, this was sort of an underground culture. Now all the poker players are waking up and realizing that they can make money faster in endorsement deals and other deals on the side than they can actually make sitting and playing poker for 24 hours a day.
 Winning the Ladies No-Limit Texas Hold’em Event at the World Series of Poker wasn’t a fluke; it says you’ve got skills.
Nobody was more surprised than myself. And the other girls were making jokes about it. [Fellow player] Suzy Isaacs was like, "Don't denigrate your win. It's a thing you did. It's insulting to other poker players for you to go, 'It was nothing.’ But everyone knows there is a huge amount of luck involved. Obviously there is skill, since I beat 600 other women, but luck and skill have to work in collusion with each other to make it to that level. Obviously luck was with me at that particular time. I do think there is a mystical element to poker, especially when you're playing in a tournament. I think a lot of people have experienced being hot and being cold. And I have to say the best feeling in the world is when the cards are running your way. And it's funny, because I don't mean to be obnoxious, but I got bored with celebrities playing poker. When I first started watching Celebrity Poker on Bravo, I thought I just wanted to get on those shows. But when you start to become a hardcore poker player, you want to see poker players play poker. I don't want to be a celebrity poker player. I just want to be a poker player. The thing about playing poker, and the thing that’s very appealing to women, is that it’s one sport where you can play on a level playing field with the men. In poker, it’s mostly mind games. It’s capturing the public interest, and I think I contributed to this by winning the WSOP. It’s the illusion that anybody can do it. Anybody can plunk down $5,000 or $10,000 in a tournament and win.
There you go again, making it sound like “anybody” could have won that tournament. . . .
I was a terrible player when I started. Obviously I learned a lot from Phil and from reading a lot of books. I have come a long way, but I was still very shocked. I knew I was good. Everybody thought I was really bad. I did better than anybody thought, but I didn’t know I was that good. My dream was to make it to the final table and to win a World Series bracelet. I thought those dreams were 10 or 20 years down the line, maybe never. I never in a million years thought it would happen that day.
It wasn’t a come-from-behind win, either. You got a huge chip lead, held onto it and pretty much dominated the game.
There was a point right before dinner when I had a really bad beat. I was all in with pocket aces and somebody was all in with pocket jacks and they caught a jack on the river. I lost almost my entire chip stack. I’m not sure of the specifics, but they say you're “short stacked” when you've got less than ten times the big blind. I was less than four times the big blind. That was a really short stack. But after dinner, I just waited for my moment and I doubled or tripled up. After that, all of a sudden, I got all these great hands. At one point, I had so many chips that they had to literally stop the game because there were so many chips at my end of the table. People came running in and stacking all the chips and coloring them down for me. But when you're short stacked, you're fighting a losing battle. When you have a lot of chips at the table, you can go in under the gun three or four suited. And, if you raise, almost all the time, people will fold because they're short stacked. They're waiting for their moment. It's sort of like "the rich get richer.” That's how it is in poker. With the bigger stack, you keep winning because you can afford to play marginal hands that you would have to throw if you were short stacked.
At 4:30 in the morning, we had been playing for 17 hours and they were begging us to stop because they wanted to film it for ESPN the next day. But I had that fear, like they were going to move the horseshoe I was sitting on. Everyone knows it can turn in a heartbeat. Even though I had the most chips, I thought how embarrassing it would be on ESPN if the following day, I donkeyed off all my money. But it turned out the next day that I was very far ahead. I kinda knew that I was going to win. It was a great feeling but a very strange one. I had to totally reshape my concept of myself as “not a very good poker player!”
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