He's
Got Game
By
Barbara Feiner
Actor
Kevin Weisman of “Alias” is one of the more
skilled celebrity poker players in
Hollywood
.
On
the hit ABC drama “Alias,”
Marshall J. Flinkman is the CIA’s dedicated
techno-wizard/gadget geek—the secret agent who can
transform star Jennifer Garner’s lipstick into a
weapon of mass destruction. Put him at a poker table,
and the mathematics whiz would calculate pot odds in a
nanosecond—and probably invent see-through playing
cards to eliminate his opponents post-haste.
Kevin
Weisman, the actor who plays
Marshall
, considers himself computer literate, but Flinkman
he’s not. Conversely, it’s difficult to picture
Marshall
as the hardcore drummer in the band Trainwreck,
in which Kevin plays the group’s self-described
“chicken-fried rock” alongside Tenacious D
guitarist Kyle Gass.
Poker
fans may recognize Weisman as one of the more
proficient celebrity players. He has appeared on both Bravo’s
“Celebrity Poker Showdown” and the
World Poker Tour’s “Hollywood Home Game.” Many
of us, in fact, expected him to trounce the
competition both times, but bad beats led to his
demise.
The
34-year-old
Los Angeles
native has been playing poker since childhood.
“In
junior high, my cousin and friends would get together
and play for nickel, dime, quarter,” he tells
ThePokerSource.com. “We didn’t really play
Hold’em. We played more of the fun kids’ games
like Black Mariah and 727.”
His
passion for Hold’em developed a few years ago,
“definitely before the craze started,” he notes.
He now plays in a weekly Tuesday-evening game at
Gass’s house, with a $100–$300 buy-in and blinds
averaging $5/$10. (Sometimes they forget to raise them
as the game progresses, he admits.)
Kevin
opts to participate in televised tournaments because
he’s actively involved in charity
endeavors—particularly muscular dystrophy.
“I
hadn’t had that much experience in heads-up poker
because I hadn’t played that many tournaments,” he
says, describing his debut performance on “Hollywood
Home Game” last year, where he seemed cool and
collected beneath oversized sunglasses. “I’ve
played no-limit for most of my poker career. I feel
like I should have won, but when I was heads-up, I
made a couple of mistakes.”
He
still laughs when he recalls how WPT commentators Mike
Sexton and Vince Van Patten ribbed him for committing
one of the most obvious tells: acting weak when he had
a strong hand.
“They
were saying I deserved an Emmy for the performance,”
Kevin says with a chuckle. “I thought I was really
selling it! When you’re in the middle of it,
you’re not really thinking about it. I was sighing
heavily and representing that I had a horrible
hand—but of course I had the nuts.”
Kevin
has come a long way since then, taking the time to
read poker books like “Doyle
Brunson’s Super System” and Phil
Gordon’s “Poker:
The Real Deal” to improve his game.
“I’ve
learned that a lot of stuff is an easy tell,” he
says. “I think it’s better not to act at
all—just to keep a straight face.”
So,
does he have any tells at this stage of his game?
“I’m
sure I do, maybe some I don’t know about—which is
why they’re still tells,” he says. “If I did
know about them, I’d probably stop doing them! But I
really love playing, and I want to get better as a
player. One of the ways to do that is to eliminate any
sort of tells.
“I
think one of my tells, for a while, was just
over-betting the pot on weaker hands and under-betting
on my stronger hands, trying to draw out players,”
he continues. “My tells were more centered around
how much I was betting. What I’ve learned is to keep
it consistent and keep people off guard, because
players were starting to figure out what I had based
on how much I was raising—and that’s never
good.”
While
Kevin is used to being recognized by his “Alias”
fans, he’s developed a new following among poker
viewers.
“I’ve
definitely had people come up to me and say, ‘I like
the way you played that hand’ or ‘You were
robbed!’ ” he
says. “People have talked to me about it, which is
great. I’m glad that people are watching the shows
for the exposure to the charities. It’s also great
that poker has really taken off.”
You
can catch Kevin on “Alias” each Wednesday on ABC
(9 p.m. EST/PST, 8 p.m. CST).
__________________
About
Barbara Feiner:
Barbara Feiner is a Los Angeles-based journalist who
covers the poker world.
