Real Celebrity Poker

[john1981cr]

By Phil Contrino
WagerWeb.com Contributing Writer

There is this scene midway through Fight Club where the two main characters (or should I say the one main character) discuss which celebrity they would fight if given the opportunity.

Watching the scene, I couldn’t help but think about which celebrities would be interesting to go heads up against at a card table. Granted, thanks to the huge popularity of poker, we’ve seen the likes of Ben Affleck, Norm MacDonald, Tobey McGuire and Jennifer Tilly try to parlay their celebrity status into a successful poker career. Yet there are tons of other celebrities that would make for an interesting presence at a table.

First off, let me say that I wouldn’t go near either Clint Eastwood or Bob Dylan if a deck of cards was involved. Both of these guys hold a God-like status in my eyes, and I’d be too busy pinching myself to actually focus on what I was holding. And forget about getting a read on them; watch Unforgiven or footage of Dylan receiving the Kennedy Center Honor to see how these two define the word stoic.

I’d also avoid annoying celebrities like Carrot Top, Pauly Shore and Kathy Griffin. Listening to Shore talk about his glory days on Encino Man and drunkenly hitting on women would be more than I could handle. I like to enjoy my experience at a poker table.

I wouldn’t mind having a nice home game with the likes of Jack Nicholson, Charlie Sheen, Bill Murray and Al Pacino. Although that would be more about the party after than it would be about the game itself.

Sitting around a table with Martin Scorsese and his regular collaborators like Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci would also be a good time. Every guy with blood pumping through his veins has at one point imagined what it would be like to live the GoodFellas life. Sitting at a card table with the people behind the movie, with some good spaghetti and some expensive wine, would be the safer alternative.

Opening the concept to celebrities no longer with us makes it even more interesting. Imagine the conversations that would take place at a table with Frank Sinatra, Hunter S. Thompson, Rodney Dangerfield, John Belushi and Jim Morrison.

If I were looking to make money I’d go after someone like director Michael Bay. The guy has already stolen so much cash from the public with crappy summer blockbusters like Armageddon that taking some huge pots from him would be almost cathartic. Woody Allen also wouldn’t be bad to play. I love the man’s films, but he has little self-confidence and is about as pessimistic as they come. It would be easy to talk him out of his game, and even easier to forcefully bet him out of mediocre hands.

It would also be fun to take money from celebrities whose work I just flat out don’t enjoy. Martin Lawrence and Rob Schneider immediately come to mind, and so does the Napoleon Dynamite guy. I’d also love to win a nice, drawn out heads up match against Peter Jackson to make up for all the hours the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong painfully took from my life.

The key to successfully playing celebrities would be to act timid. Make them feel that you’re afraid of them, and then take their money when they start to think they can just push you around. Maybe compliment one of their less well-received movies, and make them feel even better about themselves than they already do. Or in the case of Shore, make a joke about his life and put him on tilt.

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