Celebrity Poker Player: Lacey Jones

Lacey Jones is a multi-talented actress, model, commentator and a great poker player! Not according to the hordes of poker enthusiasts who follow her every move. To them, she is the poker goddess.


Lacey Jones started playing poker as a kid while on family vacations to South Carolina. The whole family, otherwise known as The Jones Clan, would spend evenings at their beach house playing poker games all night long.




She first made it into the mainstream poker while playing in a tournament on ESPN, originally been hired as a model for the tournament, but due to her play she was contacted by Absolute Poker to represent them in many events.



When she is not at the poker tables, Lacey spends a lot of her time modeling or doing film work.

Outside of poker, Jones has also appeared on hits like HBO’s “Entourage,” “Las Vegas,” and Fox’s “The O.C.”




Lacey Jones has been in the poker limelight before, but this is the first time she is getting attention because of a room sponsorship.



Online poker rooms sponsor high profile poker players as a way of marketing their brand, and that is just the case with Absolute Poker, which recently signed up the poker player as a sponsored pro.

Lacey Jones will be representing the online poker room at live events and online, wearing their gear at big TV events like the World Series of Poker, and generally serving as an advocate for Absolute Poker.




LACEY JONES TALKS ABOUT POKER


In Poker News Daily, Lacey Jones talks about her signing up with Absolute Poker as well as a poker player:

PND: Do you play online poker now?

Lacey Jones : I was living in Los Angeles and modeling. I was playing in a lot of home games with directors and producers, which was good networking. I was doing it for fun and my agent called to say that she had an opportunity for me. It was to play in an ESPN Mike and Mike in the Morning charity event for cystic fibrosis, which my uncle died from. I did well in the tournament and a week later, Absolute Poker called my agent and wanted to book me. I met with Mark Serif in Las Vegas and he asked me if I would go pro if they gave me the right tools.


PND: You were voted the Hottest Girl in Poker by Wicked Chops in 2008. Is that flattering or disturbing?

Lacey Jones: It’s totally flattering and it’s cool that they said I won by a landslide. I’m so honored to have great fans and friends. When I first started, it was a weird reception. Then, people started seeing how I play. It’s been a long uphill battle.




PND: Do men still treat women differently at the poker tables?

Lacey Jones: It’s starting to change, but you still get guys who don’t want to lose a pot to a girl. They will make hero calls or do things they wouldn’t normally do. Other guys will say things like, “Honey, you missed a bet on the turn.” If I know someone will pay me off or raise me, I’ll bait them.



PND: To what degree has reporting on poker improved your own game?

Lacey Jones: The best thing about being a reporter is that I’m also asking questions that I want to know the answers to. I am a student because I’m watching from the sidelines. I’m doing my own research to figure out how a person won, what their style is, and how it suits them. Then, I make that part of my game. A lot of people just want to copy one style and that’s not the right way to go.

Lacey Jones has a taste for enjoying life to the fullest. And she was recently nicknamed "The Poker Barbie”.




Photo courtesy of http://www.bluffmagazine.com | http://www.totalgambler.com | http://images.google.com



Interview courtesy of: http://www.pokernewsdaily.com



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Celebrity Poker Player : Tobey Maguire

Tired of watching your favorite celebrities in action in front of your television? How about following the entertainment news for their latest success or in some cases, their latest downfall? Then, this is the perfect place to watch and follow your favorite celebrities in playing poker and competing with each other in a round of cards. Celebrity poker tournament has gained in popularity.



People want to see their favorite celebrity in poker rooms, sitting around the poker table with their stacks of poker chips, and sweating it out the same as they do when they play poker. Celebrity like Tobey Maguire not only hits the big screen but also the poker tables.



Proving that he can score at the poker tables just as well as the box office, spiderman actor Tobey Maguire 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 1st place. The 13-hour tournament event was held on October 27, 2004 as part of the casino's 8th Annual National Championship of Poker Tournament.




Tobey Maguire is a really strong poker player, and he is a legitimate danger to go deep in any poker tournament that he plays. His money makes is in the private poker games that are held in his Hollywood Hills mansion.


The game is referred to as "Tobey's Game", and involves some of the heaviest hitters in Hollywood. One actor once remarked "I looked around the table and everyone had a net worth of $50 million except for me."




Tobey steal the show within his game, it was reported that he won a $10 million dollars in poker at the World Series Of Poker. He outlasted a field of 123 players, with a prize pool of $246,000, including Danny Masterson of That '70s Show. Other players that placed in the tournament include Reza Payvar, Marcel Sabag, Glenn Cozen, George Yutuc, Alex Papachatzakis, Lang Lee, Lance Allred and Stan Goldstein.


"Before the tournament, Tobey told me that he would love for this to be his first tournament win. I am very proud of the way he played the game last night. He showed tremendous focus and determination. I predict that he will become one of the better poker stars. This kid could be a legitimate pro. " said Phil Hellmuth, who has played with Tobey Maguire before.













Tobey played in the 2007 World Series of Poker. He survived days 1a, 2a and 3 but was eliminated in 292nd place on the fourth day, taking $39,445 in prize money. He actually ended up sitting next to another celebrity, Sully Erna, the singer of Godsmack.




So, turn the channel to any high-stakes poker event, and chances are high that you’ll see at least one Hollywood celebrity in the thick of the action.


With flexible schedules and larger-than-average bankrolls, celebrities have both the time and inclination to hone their poker playing skills in tournaments around the world. Some, of course, never rise above the rank of amateur, but others go on to become familiar faces in the world of poker.






Photo courtesy of http://www.jamd.com | http://images.google.com | http://www.miwim.fr | http://www.parade.com

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All-In For All Good Celebrity Poker Tournament

Who wouldn't believe that this actor, stand-up comedian made a big splash at the 2009 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, defeating the poker instructor and poker icon Annie Duke in the first round while entertaining the audience with his table-talk and antics.





Brad Garrett, also played at the World Series of Poker, where he joined in the main event and the Ante Up for Africa charity poker tournament. Brad Garrett is now the host of his very own charity poker event, the All-In For All Good Celebrity Poker Tournament at Commerce Casino last Saturday, May 30. The $350 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em Tournament will benefit the Maximum Hope Foundation and the Dream Foundation.























Brad Garrett with his group of the comedy actors and actresses merged for the benefit of Dream Foundation and Maximum Hope Foundation's All-In For All Good Celebrity Poker Tournament. Jason Alexander, Ray Romano, Kevin Nealon, Teri Hatcher, Mimi Rogers, Joely Fisher are among the few who brought the humor and a heart on the poker tables.

























Other celebrities like: Cheryl Hines, Michael Chiklis, Hank Azaria,Christopher Cross, Robert Dav, Nicole Sullivan come up and join the fun.


















































The charity event will also feature a silent and live auction, and tournament prizes include $10,000 in final-table prize money, along with electronic prizes, and travel prizes provided by event sponsor American Airlines.
The Charity tournament began at 1 in the afternoon, and also feature a silent live auction. The Celebrity Poker Tournament prizes are the following:


• 1st Place: $7,000 cash

• 2^nd Place: $ 2,500 cash

• 3^rd Place: $5,000 cash plus a seat at World Poker Tournament

• 4^th to 10^th Place: Prizes courtesy of SONY and Apple
Prizes order to be determined in SONY and Apple:
• DVD Home Theater System from SONY

• LCD Flat Screen TV from SONY

• Cybershot Digital Camera from SONY

• Blue-ray Disc Player from SONY

• Location Free Base Station from SONY

• Handycam Camcorder from SONY

• And Blue iPod with $100 iTunes certificate from APPLE
In the interview of the cardplayer staff Ryan Luchessi to Brad Garrett talked about using his love of poker to help others:





Card Player Ryan Luchessi: First thing’s first, tell me about your upcoming charity tournament. What can you tell players and fans out there who would be interested in playing?


Brad Garrett: Four years ago I started my own charity, it’s called the Maximum Hope Foundation…It’s been very successful, it’s a grassroots, small foundation, all non-profit. We have one employee, and everyone else is on a volunteer basis. We help many families during the year that are just trying to meet daily expenses, from rent to food to bills to gas.

A lot of these families that have to contribute to their health insurance costs when they are terminally ill, even at 20 percent, they are literally wiped out. In this economy, with people not working, we have just become overwhelmed with people who need help. So, we’ve teamed up with the Dream Foundation, which is another foundation that I’ve worked with for years that is almost like a sister foundation of ours as far as the fact that they help families that have terminally ill members that are 18 years and older. We decided to team up in an effort to raise as much money as we can for these families.




Card Player Ryan Luchessi: What direct help will the families benefiting from your foundation receive from the charity donations the tournament will raise?
Brad Garrett: There are so many people who need basic things right now, so we help them out with gas money to get to the hospital and the money they need for rent. One family didn’t have a washer and dryer with four kids. These are things that are truly priorities for these people. What is really great about it is that whatever is donated that week goes directly to help these families with gas cards, or electrical bills, or clothing. You can see what your contribution does immediately, and we let people know where they’re helping. It makes it very personal, and it makes it immediate, as these kinds of needs are.

Card Player Ryan Luchessi: Tell me a little bit about the atmosphere you expect for the night of charity event?
Brad Garrett: It’s going to be around-the-clock food and drinks, fun, and entertainment. There are going to be live bands, and a jazz trio. It’s going to be fun; it’s going to be loose. I mean, anybody can walk away with that $7,500 for first place. Not only that, but how many times are you going to have an opportunity to play next to Ray Romano and Michael Chiklis, or Kevin Nealon and Hank Azaria? We’re looking at a field of 200 people; we’re getting some great response, and I think it’s going to be a fun day. There’s going to be music, it’s going to be crazy, I know Ray’s going to be talking at me and dissing on me, and we just have a lot of fun. It’s a lot like our home game.


We’re all serious and average players who just like to have a good time…I mean, $350 for registration, how may times do you go to a casino and blow that in an hour? It goes to a great cause, and it’s totally tax-deductible…Fox, the network that my show is on has been great, Sony pictures and television has been incredibly generous. It’s cool, because at the end of the day, this is what it’s all about.



Card Player Ryan Luchessi: How has your prior involvement in poker with the WSOP and NBC Heads-Up event opened up opportunities for you to play poker and help charities at the same time?
Brad Garrett: Ray and I have a monthly home game that we have played in for years, and we’ve done golf tournaments before, but we wanted do something that we all love for charity, so we decided to do a poker tournament. Commerce Casino has been incredibly helpful in helping us get this together. I would love to do whatever I can for charity via poker. I’m like one of those guys that throws around the football on Sunday and dreams of playing, except for me it’s poker. I’ve always loved it, I’ve played for 20 years and I’m still pretty darn bad. The bottom line is I just love the game, and it’s one of the few things I can do that makes me forget the other things I’m dealing with. It’s my kind of sport, I don’t have to sweat and I can have a hot dog, so any sport like that is a fun thing.
Like stand up, the reason I love poker is because every night is different. I have no right beating Annie Duke, but if you get the right cards, even a neophyte like me can have some fun. I just love the game; this is something I would like to do as far as helping charities and it is something I would like to get better at. My heroes are the Gus Hansens, the Hellmuths, and the Annie Dukes, these people who I think are wonderful at what they do, and I just love watching it. It’s my sport of choice.


Maximum Hope is aiming to help the families with incurable ill children, and the Dream Foundation is the only organization that handouts wishes for incurable ill adults.
What better course of action to raise money than with poker and a whole lot of laughs with these celebrity comedian actors and actresses!





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Annie Duke's “Sucking Out On The Rivers” Charity Poker Tournament

If you didn’t like the outcome of this year’s Celebrity Apprentice Season 2, then this is your chance to join in a little good natured revenge with proceeds going to Refugees International.




The World Series Of Poker Academy was a proud sponsor of the “Sucking Out On The Rivers” charity tournament hosted by resident WSOP Academy poker instructor, poker icon and a Celebrity Apprentice finalist Annie Duke.



The Sucking Out On The Rivers Charity Poker Tournament held at the Hard Rock Casino's Poker Room in Las Vegas.



Duke is out to bear out Joan Rivers wrong with the “Sucking Out On The Rivers” charity tournament last May 27.

The superbly titled “Sucking out on the Rivers” charity poker tournament will see Duke settling down to do battle with conspicuous Joan Rivers' impersonator Frank Marino alongside a host of other impersonators from around the world.

Now Duke is giving poker players a chance to get with a vengeance on Joan Rivers and prove her statements about poker players wrong -with the “Sucking Out On The Rivers” charity tournament with co-host Joan Rivers' impersonator, Frank Marino.



Annie Duke and Frank Marino emerged on this charity poker tournament. The buy-in is $200 with re-buys and add-ons will be available through the first hour of the tournament to boost the prize pool, half of which will go to Refugees International. Expected poker professionals to come out and join the fun. There are also 20 other Joan Rivers impersonators playing along, each one with a bounty on their head for the lucky player who knocks them out.


“I think that after this poker tournament, the real Joan Rivers will quickly realize that poker players are good-natured people, professional people with respected occupations and families who really want to change the lives of those less fortunate. As poker players, we’re all banding together, not just to prove a point to Joan, but to actually change the world.” Annie Duke said.


There's also a red carpet ceremony that held at 5 p.m. on the day of the tournament, with cards got in the air at 6 p.m.


As Joan Rivers told Annie Duke that all poker players were “white trash” and that none of them had last names, evoking that those who love poker are automatically linked to a crime.



“People that didn’t know anything about poker realized it was great and cool,” said Duke.



Joan Rivers’ opinion has depleted the fury of people in the poker world. The world’s top poker players and several Hollywood celebrity poker players are slated to play in the charity poker event to show that there’s a lot of good that comes from poker.

Players and fans alike can agree that Rivers has an outdated notion of what it means to be a poker player.


“Poker players are normal people: accountants, doctors, Phd’s. Our President has been known to play poker,” Annie Duke said.



Duke's reason for the charity poker tournament and her appearance on The Celebrity Apprentice Season 2 was not to win over Joan Rivers. She raised $70,000 for Refugees International, over half the total amount of what was raised on the show.

Duke says her only regret was that she didn’t get the $250,000 for her charity.


Since the show ended fans have donated $10,000 to Refugees International, sometimes in increments as small as $10.

Las Vegas comedian and magician Dave Johnson, showed up and dressed like Rivers.

Johnson came to play, because no matter what, the tournament was for a good cause.

Las Vegas resident Wilma Herschberg felt it would do Rivers some good to show up to a poker charity tournament. “I think it would do her some good,” she said.




Herschberg added that she had no idea what Rivers’ rebuttal would be to a group of people raising money in a form she so openly bashed while dressed up as her.


Duke would like all the people who feel she should have beat Rivers to instead educate themselves about the 40 million people in the world who are displaced due to war and upheaval in their countries.


“When people are educated they can put pressure on their representatives to make a change,” Annie Duke said.






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The Hulk And The Poker Champ Hosts Charity Poker Tournament

The Wilhelm and Karl Maybach Foundation and the Sunflower Children Foundation yoked together at Cannes Film Festival to host a celebrity poker night to put up funds for charity. The event took place at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc at 10.30 p.m. last May 17 and the host of the VIP table is the Incredible Hulk himself, screenwriter, and director, Edward Norton with co-host WSOP poker champion Jamie Gold.






The winner of the event will win a seat in the 2009 World Series Of Poker, flights to Las Vegas, and hotel accommodation. They will also receive private coaching from Jamie Gold before and during the event and $10,000 Main Event Buyin!.




In the past years, the Maybach Foundation have had a pleasure of welcoming Dennis Hopper, Quincy Jones, Kirk Douglas, and Naomi Campbell. And now, Edward Norton teams up with Producer Nathan Folks this year to create a successful charitable event similar to what they did last year in Cannes.



The Wilhelm and Karl Maybach Foundation officials hope to inspire as many of the 250 V.I.P. guests as possible to get involved and contribute to one of the Foundations’ projects. At the same time, guests will be able to enjoy the unparalleled atmosphere of one of the most renowned hotels on the Cote d’Azur and savor the breathtaking view from the cigar and liquor lounge on the waterfront terrace.



The Wilhem and Karl Maybach Foundation and the Sunflower Children Foundation are honored to have the professional poker player and World Series Of Poker bracelet winner, Jamie Gold as co-host and emcee for this event. Jamie Gold has participated in numerous charity poker tournaments and events, allowing himself to be auctioned off, making special appearances, or by purchasing buy-ins, Jamie Gold has been involved with a wide array of causes, including “Ante Up For Africa”, Andy Roddick's charity poker tournament. In the last two years Gold’s charitable efforts have helped to put up over $110 Million, which lead to the media dubbing him "The Poker Philanthropist".The event will also feature an auction that includes a wide selection of items, including a day with composer, producer and director, Quincy Jones.

And in last May 18, after the poker tournament, The Wilhem and Karl Maybach Foundation returned to the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc to hold its annual "Private Luncheon at Cannes". Numerous celebrities attended and celebrate with this year’s award winner, who will join the ranks of previous honorees Dennis Hopper and Quincy Jones. Producers Nathan Folks, Lane Carlson and Jutta Aldenhoff combined effort to make this charity event of the year at the top of the tree.

Few of the other celebrities and poker professionals like Phillip Baker joined and donated $1,500 to sit down in an exclusive poker room. Other players take part in a No Limit Texas Hold'em tournament including a $5,000 gold watch and a $15,000 Las Vegas WSOP package courtesy of Everest Poker who was the poker sponsor of this event.




On outside, some renowned guests graced the red carpet as the sun set over the beautiful Cape of Antibes. Paris Hilton with her boyfriend Doug Reinhardt.



Also attending was Willem Dafoe, in town to promote his new film Antichrist. Willem Dafoe spent the evening conversing with the rest of the guests and posing for pictures, including meeting Jamie Gold for the first time.



























Emile Hirsch, star of films such as Milk and Alpha Dog also joined the party, closely followed by Watchmen super-woman Malin Akerman. Other attendees included Sunflower Children president Helena Houdova, actress and model Phoebe Price and actress Hofit Golan.







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