Casino-Gambling

5 More Poker Playin' Movie Stars: Part II – Whoopi, James Woods, and Friends Tackle Texas Hold 'em By Murphy James

For Part I, see http://ezinearticles.com/?id=78317

Part II begins here:

Lights! Camera! Action! Hold ‘em! Fold ‘em!

If the average American is ga-ga about the Texas Hold ‘em craze, how do you think the movie stars, who can afford to drop r-e-a-l-l-y big bucks at a friendly Saturday night poker game, feel about it?

One indication of their interest is a regular game in toney Bel-Air, California, called the “Billionaire Boys” which attracts the likes of Ben Affleck, Tobey Maguire, Leonardo di Caprio, and (boy?), Mimi Rogers where big bucks change hands at every meeting.

Here are five more poker playin’ stars:

* Tobey Maguire, “Spiderman,” like Ben Affleck, is also the real deal. In October, 2004 Tobey won his first major poker tournament at Phil Hellmuth’s Poker Invitational at the Hollywood Park Casino, a $2,000 buy-in event that netted him $95,480 for his first place finish. He climbed over 122 other players on his way to the top. Hosts high stakes games in his Hollywood Hills home where he has a room set aside just for poker and he recently bought a pad in Vegas to be close to the poker action.

* James Woods. Woods is a bright guy, an MIT grad, who played Sharon Stone’s lover in the classic Vegas movie, “Casino.” He has been nominated for Oscars and Emmys, and has a Golden Globe award on his mantle. He and Vince Van Patten sponsor an online poker site, HollywoodPoker.com. Woods also has a gig on the GSN (Game Show Network) where the “James Woods Gang” takes on the “Unabombers” (Pro Phil Laak is “the Unabomber). Laak’s squeeze is actress Jennifer Tilly who was profiled in Part I of Poker Playin’ Movie Stars.

* Mimi Rogers. Nominated for an Oscar for a 1991 film, “The Rapture,” Mimi is one of Hollywood’s hardest working actresses. A former Playboy model, Mimi was the first wife of Tom Cruise. When not working at her day job, she plays serious poker, journeying to Ireland in the summer of 2005 to open the Gaming Club World Poker Championship. She picked up $5,700 in a northern California tournament in 2004 and often appears on Bravo TV’s “Celebrity Poker Showdown.”

* Leonardo di Caprio. “I won my ticket on the Titanic in a lucky hand at poker,” says Leonardo as Jack Dawson, one of the doomed passengers on the fated ship that sank in 1918. Like Affleck, Maguire, Damon and Edward Norton, he entered the 2005 World Series of Poker. Digitalspy.com reports that he recently attended a poker-themed birthday party for Justin Timberlake.

* Academy Award winner (“Ghost”), Whoopi Goldberg, likes to play poker, according to the Poker Gazette, “to improve her social skills.” Whoopi, whose real name is Caryn Johnson, hosts poker nights in her Vermont home, inviting up to 30 friends and neighbors at a time. She says, “I’m truly an anti-social person and I decided the older I was getting that I really needed to try to develop better people skills.” Her parties started nine or ten years ago and now include her plumber and electrician.

Check out Part I for the first five stars, add these five, and you now have ten poker playin’ movie stars to think about. Next time you see one of their movies, picture them hunched over their cards, and saying “All In.”

One piece of advice. Beware of actors at your table. Because, after all, what is a bluff, but good acting?

© 2005 Murphy James

His most recent interviews have been with poker pros Barry Greenstein ("Ace on the River") and Jen Harman (one of the players in the richest poke