Quote:
Originally Posted by Fore
Only seen her play on the tube so can’t comment on her non-televised play. Base only on what I have seen I can’t imagine she is +EV in those games. But her other income allows her to donk off as much as she wants. But I have never seen an actual pro playing her be fearful or get outplayed.
TLDR imo she is neither a pro nor have I seen she is “more skilled than the vast majority” she plays with.
I think her biggest stength is that she is hyper-aware of who she is and her place at a given poker table.
She is in a bit of a strange place. In many of the games she plays in it is a mix of celebrities, whales, and poker pros. She is worse than the poker pros, but better than the average celebrity and whale. In that sense she is both a celebrity and a poker pro (she makes more than enough money playing poker that she could sustain herself off of her winnings better than a vast majority of Americans).
What I mean by being hyper-aware of who she is and her place at a poker table is that given the lineups of the games she is in, she will never ever be among the best two or three players at her table, but she will never be among the worst two or three either. She us aware of who the pros are and who the players are that she is better than.
She also knows how to use her status as a "celebrity" to her advantage. People (especially males) think she is worse than she really is. I know for a fact that she has played a fairly decent amount of poker with Kevin Hart. Kevin Hart isn't really good at poker. He isn't the worst, but I doubt he could beat a typical $1/$3 game. Yet I would bet a lot of money that if you asked Kevin Hart, he would say that he is a better player than Jennifer, even though he isn't (and the results bear this out).
Furthermore, Jennifer has an innate ability to navigate a poker table. She knows she is worse than pros, so she just avoids getting in big hands with them without getting taken advantage of too much. She is a lot like Phil Hellmuth in that she finds ways of getting involved with worse players and taking advantage of them, all while not losing too bad to the pros.
Don't get me wrong, if Jennifer Tilly was in a game where she had to play tens of thousands of hands against pro players such as Phil Galfond and Andrew Robles, she would absolutely get crushed. No doubt.
But she doesn't have to do that. She can play against much worse celebrities and whales while expertly avoiding big confrontations with the pros.
This might be a controversial take, but I would put her on a similar level to JRB. Definitely not a pro who would be competitive in the toughest games, but able to beat the games he is in simply because the competition is unique in those games.
