– General Information –
Jennifer Ellen Chan, better known by her stage name Jennifer Tilly, is an American actress and recreational poker player. Tilly is her mother’s maiden name. She was born on September 16th, 1958.
Tilly is the long time partner of famous professional poker player Phil Laak. The couple has been together since 2004. The two met at a World Poker Tour event.
Although Tilly’s been always fond of poker, she started taking the game very seriously after getting together with her poker pro boyfriend. Since 2005, she’s been playing mid to high buy-in tournaments; as well as appearing on such poker shows as Poker After Dark or Poker Night in America.
She has a WSOP gold bracelet from the $1,000 NLHE Ladies Event in 2005.
As an actress, Tilly has appeared in a number of movies, including the 1997 smash hit Liar Liar starring Jim Carrey and the 1998 horror-comedy Bride of Chucky.
– Key Career Dates –
- 1984: She gets her first role in the movie No Small Affair.
- 2004: She meets poker player Phil Laak at a WPT event in Los Angeles. They’ve been dating ever since.
- 2005: She wins her first WSOP gold bracelet in the $1,000 NLHE Ladies Event for $158,335. That is the biggest single live tournament cash of her career to date.
- 2007: She starts appearing on Poker After Dark, the classic poker show airing on NBC.
– Jennifer Tilly’s Career –
→ Beginnings ←
Tilly studied theater at Stephens College in Missouri. She’s been working as a film and TV actress since the early 1980’s.
As for her relationship with poker, here’s what she had to say in an exclusive interview with our website in 2019:
“I grew up in the sixties, and we didn’t have television. We had a lot of books, and every Friday night we would play cards. I always loved cards. We would play all these games, but never poker, which is weird because it’s a great American pastime.
(…)
When I moved to Hollywood, I had a boyfriend who was a poker player. I was really competitive, and I wanted to play at his Monday night games. He taught me, but, unfortunately, I only got invited to that game once. It was more a sort of guys night out, so they didn’t really want any girls there! In fact, my dad was a poker player too, but I never really realized that until he passed away. Apparently, he had a poker problem. He gave me this game called the World Series of Poker. It was a video game, and he used to play it obsessively for years, and I won the video game!”
After beating the play money video game, Tilly has been playing in “real money” poker tournaments regularly since 2005. She’s also appeared on poker TV shows such as Poker After Dark on NBC and Poker Night in America on CBS Sports.
→ Live Tournaments ←
Jen Tilly’s Hendon page shows $1.034 million in career earnings. She has amassed that sum over the course of 16 years, cashing in 61 different events.
The first recorded cash on her page is from December 2003. She finished 2nd for $5,000 in an invitational WPT freeroll for famous Hollywood actors.
Then, there’s a big gap in her poker resume. The next score of hers is from the 2005 WSOP – a few months after she started dating Phil Laak. Since then, she’s been delivering cashes in poker tournaments on a regular basis.
In February 2008, she came in 12th place in the $10K NLHE event at the LA Poker Classic for $61,610. In July 2010, she won a $5,000 Bellagio Cup event for $124,455. That is her biggest live tournament cash outside her WSOP victory.
Also, in March 2013, she took 7th place in the $125,000 No Limit Hold’em event at the partypoker Premier League in London for $98,000.
→ World Series Of Poker ←
Tilly has won one WSOP gold bracelet so far.
She took down the $1,000 No Limit Hold’em Ladies event for $158,625 in 2005. The Ladies Event is a female-only poker tournament hosted annually by the WSOP.
She doesn’t have any bracelets or final table finishes in a non-gender specific event. Her highest finish is 12th place in the $1,500 Razz event for $5,866 in 2019. At the 2012 WSOP Europe, she came in 11th for €20,443 in the €10,450 Mixed Max No-Limit Hold’em tournament.
In 2015, she finished 14th in the $5,000 NLHE 6-Handed event for an impressive $25,022.
Overall, Tilly has cashed 18 World Series events for a combined $322,522 in total.
→ Live Cash Games ←
Tilly is best known by poker fans for her appearances on poker TV shows. There, she usually wears deep-cut tops which are often noticed by the viewers, as evidenced by the comment sections of videos of her playing poker.
She first appeared on Poker After Dark in season 1, airing in 2007.
There, she played high stakes NLHE cash games against such greats as Patrik Antonius, Phil Ivey, and Jennifer Harman.
She also played on the classic NBC show in season 3 and 5; as well as the revived version produced by PokerGO. On the new iteration of the show, in March 2018, she played $50/$100 No Limit Hold’em at a table featuring Antonio Esfandiari and Nick Vertucci.
Tilly is also a regular on the CBS Sports program Poker Night in America. That show usually broadcasts edited footage of $25/$50 NLHE cash games. Tilly has played on a number of episodes.
→ Online Poker ←
There is no account on any poker site known to be affiliated with Tilly.
→ As an Actress ←
Tilly was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Supporting Actress category in 1995. She received this honor for her role in Woody Allen’s comedy titled Bullets Over Broadway.
Her biggest hit was the Jim Carrey movie Liar Liar in 1997, which grossed over $300 million in the box office. Tilly also played major roles in the Chucky horror-comedy franchise’s movies, such as Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky.
She voiced a character in the children’s cartoon Monster Inc. She also lends her voice to the character of Bonnie Swanson on the popular adult cartoon comedy series Family Guy.
Before getting together with poker pro Phil Laak, Telly was married to the co-developer of The Simpsons, Sam Simon. They got divorced in 1991.
→ Scandals ←
Her Straight Flush over Quads hand
Tilly has suffered a scandalously bad beat in February 2020 at the Wynn Casino in Las Vegas.
She rivered quad 10’s – however, her opponent, poker pro Bob Bright, flopped a straight flush.
Not my day: quads vs. straight flush. pic.twitter.com/CecbWOcjyD
— Jennifer Tilly (@JenniferTilly) February 24, 2020
What’s even worse, she never followed up with mentioning anything about a Bad Beat Jackpot, a type of promotion most casinos have. Losing a hand with quads in that case results in a nice payout – however, not this time for poor Jen Tilly.
Latest poker news about Tilly
