Bruno Mars once dropped into a game with Wood and his wife, the artist Shio Kusaka, a serious player herself. Sure enough, he came through and shared a table with Prince.Īlong with DiCaprio, Black, and Maguire, Ellen DeGeneres was a regular player, Wood said, and billionaire collectors such as Peter Brant and Stavros and Theo Niarchos would get dealt in when they passed through town. “Leo,” in this context and perhaps any outside of the High Renaissance, is Leonardo DiCaprio.

“And then Leo sees on his Instagram that we’re playing and he wants to come play with Richard Prince,” Wood said. But one younger dealer told me he spent his commissions made at Frieze on three buy-ins, only to lose all $1,500.įor all the star power in the building, there was only one person whose entrance made the room stop: the world-famous artist Richard Prince, who has something of a reputation as Salinger-esque upstate recluse. Among the dealers, the cofounders of tri-coastal art concern Amanita (Casa Malaparte proprietor Tommaso Rositani Suckert, former Gagosian director Jacob Hyman, and Cy Twombly grandson Caio Twombly) all stayed in the game late. Parker Ito is a fiercely competitive poker player, as is the young artist Adam Alessi, who’s been playing in games for the last three years. There were established mid-career artists such as Matt Johnson, Grant Levy-Lucero, and JPW3, and, of course, Wood, who got knocked out after hours of play.

Since the game started in 2021, it’s the first and only poker tourney where artists outnumber Hold’em pros and art dealers outnumber bankers.Īs the tournament barreled toward the final table, Jack Black was still in the game, and Tobey Maguire had just been eliminated, finishing 17th, and was cheering on the art dealer Jeff Poe and Christie’s senior executive Alex Marshall, who had managed to stick out the game for hours. This wasn’t the World Series of Poker but the third edition of the World Series of Art Poker, organized by the megawatt LA artist Jonas Wood. The fact that it was going down on the Saturday of Frieze Los Angeles was no coincidence. But anyone who’s spent time perusing galleries in Chelsea or flying to Miami for Art Basel would recognize the bulk of the players. At first glance, it looked like your run-of-the-mill upscale gambling excursion, with outfitted dealers at the dozen tables, a full bar, burgers from Trophies, and pizza from Pizzana. O n a Saturday in February, nearly 100 card players arrived at a nondescript event space in Hollywood for a poker tournament with a $500 buy-in.

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