On a Saturday in February, almost 100 card gamers arrived at a nondescript occasion house in Hollywood for a poker event with a $500 buy-in. At first look, it regarded like your run-of-the-mill upscale playing tour, with outfitted sellers on the dozen tables, a full bar, burgers from Trophies, and pizza from Pizzana. However anybody who’s hung out perusing galleries in Chelsea or flying to Miami for Artwork Basel would acknowledge the majority of the gamers. The truth that it was happening on the Saturday of Frieze Los Angeles was no coincidence. This wasn’t the World Collection of Poker however the third version of the World Collection of Artwork Poker, organized by the megawatt LA artist Jonas Wooden. Because the sport began in 2021, it’s the primary and solely poker tourney the place artists outnumber Maintain’em execs and artwork sellers outnumber bankers.
Because the event barreled towards the ultimate desk, Jack Black was nonetheless within the sport, and Tobey Maguire had simply been eradicated, ending seventeenth, and was cheering on the artwork supplier Jeff Poe and Christie’s senior government Alex Marshall, who had managed to stay out the sport for hours. There have been established mid-career artists equivalent to Matt Johnson, Grant Levy-Lucero, and JPW3, and, after all, Wooden, who bought knocked out after hours of play. Parker Ito is a fiercely aggressive poker participant, as is the younger artist Adam Alessi, who’s been taking part in in video games for the final three years. Among the many sellers, the cofounders of tri-coastal artwork concern Amanita (Casa Malaparte proprietor Tommaso Rositani Suckert, former Gagosian director Jacob Hyman, and Cy Twombly grandson Caio Twombly) all stayed within the sport late. However one youthful supplier advised me he spent his commissions made at Frieze on three buy-ins, solely to lose all $1,500.
For all of the star energy within the constructing, there was just one individual whose entrance made the room cease: the world-famous artist Richard Prince, who has one thing of a popularity as Salinger-esque upstate recluse.
“Richard rolled up and he walked round, checked it out. He advised me he was coming and I used to be like, ‘That is unbelievable,’” Wooden advised me a couple of days after the event ended. “I used to be like, ‘Oh, he’s not going to play.’ After which he frolicked for quarter-hour and he was like, ‘Yo, I’m going to play.’ After which he jumped within the event.”
Prince sat down subsequent to Avant Arte cofounder Christian Luiten, who advised him reverentially that he had simply made a pilgrimage to the distant Louisiana Museum of Trendy Artwork in Denmark simply to see its Prince retrospective. By the tip of the sport, Prince and Luiten have been discussing how Prince might collaborate with Avant Arte on an version. The remainder of the room craned their necks to get a take a look at Prince’s card abilities. Few knew that Prince had lengthy been taking part in in far more hush-hush poker video games organized by Wooden. Earlier than the World Collection of Artwork Poker, the Los Angeles artwork world had been clandestinely coming collectively for a sequence of card video games going again many years. Because the mid-aughts, Wooden has been internet hosting gaming nights at his studio, the tequila flowing and the scent of recent paint wafting by the room, so his artist buddies and his gallerists and his buddies’ gallerists might gamble whereas gossiping commerce secrets and techniques and making backroom offers.
Then phrase bought out, and the celebrities wished in.
“After which Leo sees on his Instagram that we’re taking part in and he needs to return play with Richard Prince,” Wooden mentioned.
“Leo,” on this context and maybe any outdoors of the Excessive Renaissance, is Leonardo DiCaprio. Certain sufficient, he got here by and shared a desk with Prince.
“It’s type of nutty,” Wooden mentioned.
Together with DiCaprio, Black, and Maguire, Ellen DeGeneres was an everyday participant, Wooden mentioned, and billionaire collectors equivalent to Peter Brant and Stavros and Theo Niarchos would get dealt in once they handed by city. Bruno Mars as soon as dropped right into a sport with Wooden and his spouse, the artist Shio Kusaka, a critical participant herself. Over time, the artwork sport began to imitate the artwork world as a complete, and went from being an insular, insiders-only bubble to at least one that’s in frequent collaboration with the titans of different industries.
“Once we began taking part in with a number of the celebrities, it was enjoyable as a result of there began to be some crossover,” mentioned artist Mark Grotjahn, who has performed within the sport since day one. “That’s what New York had over LA: Writers and actors and style folks and thinkers and dancers, all collectively. However that by no means actually existed within the LA artwork world, the place nobody is strolling. In New York, one good friend meets one other good friend meets one other good friend and also you’re all going again to an condo. So with the sport, we bought a little bit little bit of that right here.”
Perhaps we’ve collectively forgotten, however poker was actually massive within the late ’90s. Between the interval that Matt Damon starred in Rounders in 1998 and Ocean’s Eleven in 2001, poker emerged from the dank underbelly of the on line casino way of life and entered the American residence as a approach to go time within the suburbs. It additionally grew to become an aspirational fantasy for aimless kids struggling to enter the workforce. This fantasy was embodied by a person named—and that is his actual identify—Chris Moneymaker. In 2003, Moneymaker, then 20-something working as an accountant close to Nashville, entered a web based poker event with $86 and emerged because the champion of the World Collection of Poker, with a $2.5 million pot. Texas Maintain’em tournaments have been immediately the stuff of late-night ESPN blocks and Bravo aired 5 seasons of Celeb Poker Showdown shortly earlier than going full Housewives.
“That was type of a second when poker actually began to change into well-liked, as a result of folks have been like, ‘Oh, you can also make some huge cash from not quite a bit,’” mentioned aforementioned LA artist Matt Johnson, who went to highschool with Wooden in Boston and employed him as an assistant when Wooden and Kusaka first moved to LA. “And Moneymaker was just a few accountant. So [Wood]Jonas and I simply kind of bought into it and we have been simply taking part in on our personal with pocket change simply to learn to play.”
By the point the 2 of them bought to city, a sport had been occurring for years led by Blum & Poe cofounder Jeff Poe, who advised me he began taking part in poker in his early 20s whereas out and in of punk rock bands and dealing for the artist Chris Burden. By the late ’90s, Blum & Poe was going robust, and there was a sport taking place with fellow Santa Monica gallerists equivalent to Robert Berman, Marc Richards, and the artist Angus Chamberlain, son of John Chamberlain. There was additionally a just-graduated artist new to the Blum & Poe program named Mark Grotjahn, who had paid for his BFA at UC Berkeley by taking part in blackjack in Reno. (He additionally was a profitable ice cream salesman whose principal conveyance was a tricycle.)
“I had my second present at Blum & Poe the place I solely bought one work for $3,500, and I bought $1,750 for 2 years of labor,” mentioned Grotjahn, who has since seen a portray of his promote at public sale for greater than $16 million. “For the subsequent 10 months, I type of stopped making artwork and I went to the Commerce On line casino in East LA, the largest card membership within the nation. I used to be taking part in restrict, the place the percentages aren’t stacked towards you, you simply must beat the home’s take.”
He made extra money doing that than promoting artwork, and then after stopping, he went again to the non-public video games, the place he might take cash off his sellers slightly than the on line casino homeowners.
“I imply, on the very starting, within the early days, it was at all times Grotjahn,” Poe mentioned. “He was by far one of the best participant as a result of he was taking part in quite a bit on the casinos and he was simply…each time, he gained.”
Within the early 2000s, Blum & Poe began displaying Johnson, who bought invited to the video games out in Santa Monica, earlier than the gallery moved to La Cienega in Culver Metropolis and the sport moved with it. Johnson would invite his highschool buddy Jonas Wooden to return play, however the others had no thought Wooden was an artist. One time Grotjahn and Johnson walked into Chinatown gallery Black Dragon Society, and Grotjahn realized he actually preferred these work of landscapes and interiors and sports activities heroes.
