Jennifer Tilly runs quads into straight flush
Jennifer Tilly may well be one of the most successful movie actors-turned-poker players, but when it comes to the really huge hands, she can’t seem to catch a break.
This week it was a brutal ‘Quads against Straight Flush’ match-up that hit the headlines, the Child’s Play star reliving her poker horror story on Twitter…
Not my day: quads vs. straight flush. pic.twitter.com/CecbWOcjyD
— Jennifer Tilly (@JenniferTilly) February 24, 2020
The 61-year old WSOP bracelet winner has amassed just over $1million in tournament earnings since she took up the game during the noughties at the height of the poker boom.
That’s pretty impressive, but she has become famous also for a couple of huge cash game hands.
The first is a nasty bad beat against Antonio ‘The Magician’ Esfandiari in a Poker After Dark pot worth $273,000.
It’s a hand that Tilly clearly hasn’t forgotten, although if fellow actor Don Cheadle had hit running 10s, the 0.1percenter would have made instant poker folklore…
I remember this well! It’s not every day you lose a $267,000 pot when you’re 73%.
But Antonio might not remember this. To him it’s just another day in the office! 😆
(By the way I believe the buy in for this game was 10k.) https://t.co/2Qi0Rp7Q5V— Jennifer Tilly (@JenniferTilly) February 25, 2020
Her most famous hand by far, however, was a very embarrassing one indeed – a nervous Tilly checking down her full house to the jaw-dropping astonishment of table mates Phil Ivey, Jennifer Harman, Andrew Robl and Antonius himself…
Her comment afterwards: “I thought you had pocket kings”, has become a running joke in the poker world and Jennifer – an otherwise very good player – admits to cringing every time she sees it repeated.
Apart from her acting and poker skills, the California star has also developed quite a following for her looks and, to put it as nicely as possible, her ‘God-given top pair’.
She explained that her low-cut tops and heaving cleavage are an attempt to “look cute” on camera, but reckons that:
“If people are really playing poker, they don’t care. Nothing looks better to them than a pair of aces. They’re not looking at your pair. They’re looking at their pair.”
When it comes to tournament play, Tilly’s biggest-ever cash was her very first one, a $158,335 scoop at the WSOP in the Ladies Only bracelet event in 2005.
Beth Shak, Vanessa Rousso and Kathy Liebert also made the money in that one, the last two of these (sitting 8th and 2nd respectively) ahead of 43rd-placed Tilly in the all-time tournament money-winners list for women.
Tilly’s acting career, dating back to 1983 and still ongoing, has seen her role as the voice and live character of Tiffany Valentine take centre stage among her many fans.
Playing the love interest of murderous doll Chucky in the Child’s Play franchise is, however, only a small part of Tilly’s vast and varied movie and television career.
She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Woody Allen’s Bullets over Broadway in 1994.
Last but not least, we have to mention that Tilly is the partner of Phil ‘Unabomber’ Laak, one of the poker world’s most popular pros…
…and that pairing produced another less-than-stellar hand for Jennifer, with Phil getting the blame for it of course…
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