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Tenacious: Black is a regular at the Wednesday-night West Hollywood celeb pokerfest of agent Norby Walters.
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The Stars' Home Games
Card-sharking with Sharon Stone, Jack Black, David Schwimmer, Larry Flynt--and the $50-buy-in, ends-at-11, biggest celebrity poker game in town
By Leslie Gornstein
So Larry David, Richard Lewis and David Arquette are sitting around a poker table ...
It sounds like the start of an inside Hollywood joke--or a standup-comedy junkie's raving fantasy. But several times a year, those sought-after jokesters--along with luminaries ranging from Sharon Stone to Dennis Hopper to Jack Black to Jon Favreau to Alec Baldwin to Michael Chiklis to Amy Brenneman, huff, puff--meet at the West Hollywood home of retired agent Norby Walters to play five- or seven-card stud.
The Wednesday-evening game has become the stuff of local legend, thanks to 13 years of heavy chip-swapping. Each week, Walters pulls in six top actor-players out of a rotating waiting list of more than 125. And for a bunch of Malibu-dwellers and millionaires, the stakes can seem laughably low: Buy-in is $50--not even enough for a starlet to get an eyebrow pluck and a bikini wax in Beverly Hills. Walters limits antes to $1, "and the stakes are a dollar and two--always, always," he tells CGTV.
To wit:
- The so-called Gourmet Poker Club, in which Steve Martin, Johnny Carson, Carl Reiner and a klatch of behind-the-camera bigwigs meet one night a month to eat a chi-chi meal and play a few rounds. The "club"--which requires members to wear matching blazers and baseball caps bearing the "official crest" (a king holding a knife and fork)--meets at the L.A. home of either producer David Chasman or Dan Melnick, former head of MGM. Women are banned; not even pioneering studio executive Sherry Lansing has achieved entry.
- David Schwimmer has two (that we know of) regular poker hangouts. First there's a game hosted by directors John Hamburg (Along Came Polly) and Todd Phillips (Old School). Unlike Walters' tame game, in which a $60 loss is considered large, losses at Casa de Phillips can reportedly reach the four figures. Schwimmer also likes to play a few hands on Monday nights with Titanic producer Jon Landau and other heavyweights at Landau's home in Sherman Oaks. In a W interview, Schwimmer simply called that gathering a "nice group of guys."
- Stealth players like legendary producer Robert Evans, who recently revealed that he once lost more than $30,000 in a home game. (Evans himself used to host decadent home games by his pool in the '70s and '80s.)
- On-the-set games enjoyed by younger folks like Sarah Rue and her cast-mates on ABC's Less Than Perfect.
- The ridiculously high stakes played by Hustler Casino owner Larry Flynt. Porn magnate Flynt, who has moved his regular home game to his casino near Los Angeles, has reportedly seen wins and losses of up to $250,000.
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Swinger: "It just gets crazy noisy in here," says Walters of the nights Favreau hits the tables.
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Here's another unlikely fact, given that Walters' game takes place pretty much smack in the middle of Babylon: He serves almost no booze. He may pour "the occasional glass of wine," but Walters prefers "salty pretzels" and a chocolate egg cream recipe from back East, one that he can recite by heart. And forget partying into the wee hours: "We play from 8 to 11, never later."
Walters' impossible-sounding poker night may be one of the best known in the business, but it's hardly the only private game in town. It doesn't take a hotshot ESPN commentator to realize that those Celebrity Poker Showdown card sharks have to be getting their practice somewhere.
Some celebrities still manage to keep the details of their private games under the table. During a recent interview, first-season Celebrity Poker Showdown champ Nicole Sullivan us she'd been practicing off and on with some "writer friends"--but she gracefully changed the subject when pressed for names.
Why have these publicity-addicted stars fallen in love with poker? And why have they kept their weekly meetings so quiet for so long? Do actors use these hush-hush nights to perfect their acting without scrutiny--maybe comparing "poker faces" or bluffing techniques?
Jack Black and Jon Favreau photo by Jeff Vespa/WireImage.com
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