Artist Sarah Kim belongs to a poker group of up-and-coming art-world denizens. Part poker group, part art collective, they’re an equal mix of men and women, newbies and grinders, at varying levels of their creative careers.
Painter Sarah Kim realized soon after her move from New York to Los Angeles that learning Texas Hold ’Em would pay off. She’d heard whispers of an ultra-exclusive, high-stakes “art game” involving L.A.’s major artists, dealers and collectors going back decades. Trailing casino chip crumbs at gallery exhibits and artist studios, “It was clear to me that poker was a huge part of the art world in L.A.,” she said.
She tried her first hand at a game artist Isabelle Brourman hosted at Murmurs Gallery and soon fell in with an eclectic poker-playing group of local artists and curators. For Kim, whose landscape motifs tackle the anxiety of belonging, the felt-topped table became her social life raft and dealt her a newfound clarity and confidence.
“Being a woman in the art world, it’s like I’m playing the same game,” said Kim, who said thinking in bets has been one way to combat the volatile and, at times, cutthroat market. “I’m fighting for a literal seat at the table.”
Advertisement
Kim belongs to poker’s latest wave of underdogs pouring out from the creative cultural ferment. They’ve let the air out of the cigar-smoke-filled boys’ club and opened up the tables to a more diverse, inclusive and female-friendly pool of players. The storied L.A. poker scene — an obsession Tinseltown has self-mythologized since the Wild West — these days belongs to the emergent DIY art world. But the new guard has retained the fundamentals: a game as much about networking and camaraderie as card playing.
Poker is one of the few spectator games where the sexes compete on equal levels, yet 96% of professional players are men, according to the World Series of Poker. The series’ main event in Las Vegas last summer shattered the all-time attendance record of roughly 10,000 players. Still, it’s been nearly three decades since a woman made it to the final table.
Top row: Gallerist Eric Kim, left, a poker mentor to dozens of early-career artists; Parker Ito, flanked by two self-portraits; and artist Higinio Martinez, devouring chocolate poker chips. Bottom row: Art collector Jason Roussos, left, “#Girlboss” author-turned-venture capitalist Sophia Amoruso and Lauren Studebaker, who helped organize her poker group’s DIY exhibit “At Home in the Neon.”
“Poker is not necessarily a hobby for the frugal, which is also why I think women haven’t historically played,” said Bita Khorrami of Casinola, which outfits sleek, private poker games for the cultural in-crowd. Her collaborator, Eddie Cruz — who started the streetwear boutique Undefeated — taught her the game on the promise that she’d become a better businesswoman. Khorrami, who cut her teeth in music and sports management, said it was the financial edge she needed. “When I have to counter someone in a negotiation, I’ll take a percentage of the money” from the playing funds, she said, which informs a raise, call or fold. “Whatever you’re gonna do is by percentage,” she said of bankroll management. “And the more you do those things, the more comfortable you are with it.”
Now, she and Cruz are going all in on Casinola as the first-of-its-kind creative collective and lifestyle brand rooted in poker. She joined on one condition: to not be the only woman in the cardroom. “My mission is going to be to bring women to poker,” she recalled telling Cruz. “Poker degenerates want to play with other poker degenerates,” she said. “They don’t want to be taking time necessarily to teach someone.”
Advertisement
They enlisted Jason Roussos, an art collector and pokerhead, to help retain their brand of backroom chic while also selling the idea of empowerment. “When things become too heavy or too reliant on one type of energy,” like the hypermasculine bro kind, he said, “that energy can take over a space.” Having more women brings a dynamic shift to the table, and lowering the barrier for entry often begins with smaller buy-ins with proper setups and dealers. Female-only live games are another incentive, like the time Casinola sponsored a poker night for Girls Only Game Club. “People sometimes use poker as a vice or form of escapism, but we’re using it as more of a socializing tool,” Roussos said.
From left, ceramics artist Grant Levy-Lucero, gallerist Eric Kim and collector Jason Roussos are veterans of the high-stakes L.A. poker scene. These days they have more fun playing with their art-world friends, with Kim’s house as a hub.
Higinio Martinez and Liz Conn-Hollyn were among the 15 artists who contributed to the poker-themed group exhibit “At Home in the Neon,” held at Eric Kim’s house gallery.
A fraction of gallerist Eric Kim’s collection of 40,000 poker chips.
Advertisement
Eric Kim, who co-runs artist spaces Human Resources and Bel Ami, estimated “poker and art went gangbusters” when online gaming swelled early in the pandemic. After stay-at-home orders lifted, however, he noticed a low-grade culture shock among his friends at crowded openings and art parties. “I think a lot of people enjoyed the contained structure of socializing at a poker game,” he said.
He’s opened his doors to the arts community in the last couple of years, doling out free one-on-one coaching and hosting weekly Hold ’Em nights as a kind of league mentor. The home games draw from his years at casinos and underground venues around L.A. His collection of 40,000 poker chips helps too.
His Silver Lake setup is an equal mix of men and women, newbies and grinders, at varying levels of their careers. Turns out his learning pod had the makings of an artists collective. Kim and Lauren Studebaker, an associate director at Matthew Brown Gallery, staged a poker-themed group show last month. They exhibited work from 15 poker-playing artists around the domestic gallery and called it “At Home in the Neon,” a crib from art critic Dave Hickey’s love letter to Las Vegas.
Julianne Lee, a perfumer, infused plaster chips with a rare scent derived from whale vomit and called it “Who’s the whale” (a reference to a very rich but very bad poker player). Adam Alessi’s good-luck shrine had a rendering of Vanessa Rousso, nicknamed “the lady maverick of poker,” inside. Jake Fagundo’s “Bad Beat” depicted a couple in a warm embrace after a tough loss. “A lot of it was inside jokes for ourselves,” said Studebaker, who paraphrased a wry quote from “The Gambler” by Fyodor Dostoevsky: “You gamble with your friends because you like to see them humiliated.” The group has embraced how the game puts everyone on equal footing. “Losing in front of these people is a fast track to bonding,” she said. “I think the losing has been almost better for me than the winning.”
Advertisement
A stray Alexander Calder lithograph of three card players.
Artist Ava McDonough, another contributor to the poker-themed group show, hugs the pot.
The crowd in the kitchen, including collector Khoi Nguyen and actor Emile Hirsch, at gallerist Eric Kim’s poker game, held at his home. Artwork by Adam Alessi, left, Parker Ito and Grant Levy-Lucero surrounds the table.
Advertisement
The scene’s marquee event today is the annual World Series of Art Poker (WSOAP), a highly guarded, 12-hour Hold ’Em marathon during so-called Frieze Week, when blue-chip galleries and high-rolling collectors jet into town for art fairs and their ensuing parties. “I look forward to it all year,” said artist Parker Ito, who at last year’s heads-up showdown lost to Jason Koon, arguably the best pro poker player today.
At the fourth WSOAP in March, Jonas Wood, “the reigning prince of contemporary painting,” screamed the ceremonial, “Shuffle up and deal.” His Warholian grasp on the art world was on full display as he glad-handed arrivistes from New York and Europe, clad in a sweatsuit made of cash (taken from Warhol’s silkscreen “192 One Dollar Bills,1962”). “This is my conceptual art project,” Wood said of his stylized homage to the early-aughts poker boom, when he came of age in the glow of the 1998 gambling movie “Rounders” and ESPN’s breathless tourney coverage.
Inside, Benny Blanco had his barber give him a lineup at the table. Tobey Maguire busted early but stayed to sweat the last hand of his friend Leonardo DiCaprio. Beyond the $500 buy-in, entry into the stacked poker den has become its own kind of currency, where talk of bad beats and mucked hands replaces the usual industry chatter. The last player standing wins $30,000 and a holy-grail 18-karat gold bracelet modeled after one awarded to the winner of the World Series of Poker.
Artist Nihura Montiel has a sly poker face after winning.
The biggest bluff of the night: chocolate poker chips.
Advertisement
Sophia Amoruso made it to the final 25 out of 130 entrants. “Poker has taught me more patience than anything,” said the Nasty Gal founder and “Girlboss” author, now in venture capital. She’d recently started her own home game after playing after-hours at tech conferences and in VC circles. “To be at the table with the guy who founded Hustler Casino Live, that’s priceless,” she said. “Next week, he’s coming to my house, and I get to learn from him.”
The tournament’s brain trust — Jonas Wood, Eddie Cruz and Eric Kim — rounded up their splinter poker groups to join forces in 2020. “The idea was to find out who’s the best,” Wood recalled. They’d piggyback off Wood’s fabled “art game” in the studio he rented from Ed Ruscha between 2007 and 2017, a revolving door for the city’s “art illuminati,” as Kim put it. Gallerists like Jeff Poe and François Ghebaly rubbed elbows with celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and Jack Black, and emerging artists faced off against billionaire collectors with increasing regularity.
This year, with past pros like Erik Seidel and Phil Ivey absent from the usual “pros versus Joes” lineup, Wood livestreamed the final tables on Instagram to his 154,000 followers and saw the chance to make good on his original idea to organize the only tournament of its kind — for artists, by artists. He envisioned a wild-card upset winning the biggest pot of their life. It almost happened.
The final 10 players included artists like up-and-coming painter Ross Caliendo, sculptor Matt Johnson and Wood’s ceramist wife, Shio Kusaka. The crowd roared when she was busted out in eighth place — the last woman and artist standing. Michael Heyward, chief executive of the holding company that owns Genius and Worldstar, went on to win. “I really wanted a broke artist or some unknown person to win $30,000,” Wood said.
The French government confirmed this week that it has granted citizenship to George and Amal Clooney — pictured on a London red carpet in October — and their 7-year-old twins.
Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Advertisement
Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images
One of Hollywood’s most recognizable stars is now officially a French citizen.
A French government bulletin published last weekend confirms that the country has granted citizenship to George Clooney, along with his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, and their 7-year-old twins.
The Clooneys — who hail from Lexington, Ky. and Beirut, Lebanon, respectively — bought an 18th-century estate in Provence, France in 2021. In an Esquire interview this October, the Oscar-winning actor and filmmaker described the French “farm” as their primary residence, a decision he said was made with their kids in mind.
Advertisement
“I was worried about raising our kids in LA, in the culture of Hollywood,” Clooney said. “I felt like they were never going to get a fair shake at life. France — they kind of don’t give a s*** about fame. I don’t want them to be walking around worried about paparazzi. I don’t want them being compared to somebody else’s famous kids.”
In another interview on his recent Jay Kelly press tour, Clooney mentioned that his wife and kids speak perfect French, joking that they use it to insult him to his face while he still struggles to learn the language.
This week, after a French official raised questions of fairness, France’s Foreign Ministry explained that the Clooneys were eligible under a law that permits citizenship for foreign nationals who contribute to the country’s international influence and cultural outreach, The Associated Press reports.
The French government specifically cited the actor’s clout as a global movie star and the lawyer’s work with academic institutions and international organizations in France.
“They maintain strong personal, professional and family ties with our country,” the ministry added, per the AP. “Like many French citizens, we are delighted to welcome Georges and Amal Clooney into the national community.”
Advertisement
They aren’t the only ones celebrating. President Trump, who has a history of trading barbs with Clooney, welcomed the news by taking another dig at the actor.
In a New Year’s Eve Truth Social post, Trump called the couple “two of the worst political prognosticators of all time” and slammed Clooney for throwing his support behind then-Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 election.
“Clooney got more publicity for politics than he did for his very few, and totally mediocre, movies,” wrote Trump, who himself has made cameos in several films over the years. “He wasn’t a movie star at all, he was just an average guy who complained, constantly, about common sense in politics. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Clooney responded the next day via a statement shared with outlets including Deadline and Variety.
“I totally agree with the current president,” Clooney said, before referencing the midterm elections later this year. “We have to make America great again. We’ll start in November.”
Advertisement
Clooney and Trump — once friendly — have long criticized each other
Clooney, a longtime activist and Democratic Party donor, has remained active in U.S. politics despite his overseas move.
In July 2024, he rocked the political establishment by publishing a New York Times op-ed urging then-President Joe Biden — for whom he had prominently fundraised just weeks prior — to drop his reelection bid to make way for another Democrat with better chances of taking the White House. A growing chorus of calls led to Biden’s withdrawal from the race by the end of that month.
In a December interview with NPR’s Fresh Air, Clooney said his decision to speak out on that and other issues generally comes down to “when I feel like no one else is gonna do it.”
“You’ll lose all of your clout if you fight every fight,” he added. “You have to pick the ones that you know well, that you’re well informed on, and that you have some say and you hope that that has at least some effect.”
Clooney has been a vocal critic of Trump throughout both of his terms, most recently on the topic of press freedoms during the actor’s Broadway portrayal of the late journalist Edward R. Murrow last spring.
Advertisement
And Trump has been similarly outspoken in his dislike of Clooney, including in an insult-laden Truth Social post — calling him a “fake movie actor” — after the publication of his New York Times op-ed.
In December, just days before this latest dust-up, Clooney shared in a Variety interview that he and Trump had been on good terms during the president’s reality television days. He said Trump used to call him often and once tried to help him get into a hospital to see a back surgeon.
“He’s a big goofball. Well, he was,” Clooney added. “That all changed.”
In the same Variety interview, Clooney — the son of longtime television anchor Nick Clooney — slammed CBS and ABC for abandoning their journalistic duty by paying to settle lawsuits with the Trump administration. He expressed concern about the current media landscape, particularly the direction of CBS News under its controversial new editor in chief, Bari Weiss.
Weiss responded by inviting Clooney to visit the CBS Broadcast Center to learn more about their work, in a written statement published in the New York Post on Tuesday. It began with “Bonjour, Mr. Clooney,” in a nod to the actor’s new milestone.
Advertisement
Clooney told NPR last month that he will continue to stand up for what he believes in, even if it means people who disagree with him decide not to see his movies.
“I don’t give up my right to freedom of speech because I have a Screen Actors Guild card,” he added. “The minute that I’m asked to just straight-up lie, then I’ve lost.”
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Kentucky health officials are warning the public of possible measles exposures in northern Kentucky earlier this week.
A post on the Kentucky Department for Public Health’s Facebook page said it “identified potential measles exposures in Grant County.” According to the post, the exposure was traced to “an unvaccinated, out-of-state traveler” who stayed at the Holiday Inn & Suites in Dry Ridge from Dec. 28-30.” That person also visited the Ark Encounter on Dec. 29.
Measles, a highly contagious respiratory virus, can cause serious health problems, especially in young children, according to the CDC’s website. The virus spreads through the air after someone infected coughs or sneezes. It can then linger for up to two hours after the infected person leaves.
The virus can also be spread if someone touches surfaces that an infected person has touched. Symptoms include a cough, runny nose and red eyes, followed by white spots that appear on the face and down the body. Two doses of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine is the best protection against measles, according to health officials.
Advertisement
Contact your healthcare provider if you think you or someone in your family may have been exposed.
More Local News:
Here’s a look at who’s running and what’s at stake in Kentucky’s 2026 elections
Woman critical after shooting at American Legion post in Parkland early Thursday
Woman dies after shooting outside fast food restaurant in downtown Louisville near NuLu
Advertisement
Contract details reveal when Kentucky could seek repayment from BlueOval SK
Federal judge dismisses consent decree meant to spark police reform in Louisville
Dozens of vacancies raise safety concerns at Louisville Metro Corrections
Louisville doctors urge prevention as flu cases surge after the holidays
LMPD detective shared login to Flock camera system with DEA agent conducting immigration search
Every year around this time I present a “new names in the news” quiz. I’m going to give you some names that you’d probably never heard before 2025 but that were prominent in the news during the past 12 months. You tell me who or what they are.
1. Zohran Mamdani
2. Karoline Leavitt
3. Mark Carney
Advertisement
4. Robert Francis Prevost (hint: Chicago)
5. Jeffrey Goldberg (hint: The Atlantic)
6. Sanae Takaichi
7. Nameless raccoon, Hanover County, Virginia
Last week’s challenge
Last week’s challenge came from Joseph Young, of St. Cloud, Minn. Think of a two-syllable word in four letters. Add two letters in front and one letter behind to make a one-syllable word in seven letters. What words are these?
Advertisement
Challenge answer
Ague –> Plagued / Plagues / Leagues
Winner
Calvin Siemer of Henderson, Nev.
This week’s challenge
This week’s challenge is a numerical one from Ed Pegg Jr., who runs the website mathpuzzle.com. Take the nine digits — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. You can group some of them and add arithmetic operations to get 2011 like this: 1 + 23 ÷ 4 x 5 x 67 – 8 + 9. If you do these operations in order from left to right, you get 2011. Well, 2011 was 15 years ago. Can you group some of the digits and add arithmetic symbols in a different way to make 2026? The digits from 1 to 9 need to stay in that order. I know of two different solutions, but you need to find only one of them.
If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Thursday, January 8 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.
