This week, United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor visited Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. She took part in an interview with Washington University Chancellor Andrew Martin. After 20 minutes of a seated portion of the interview, Justice Sotomayor began mingling with the students in the crowd. She continued to answer questions but did so as she walked, shook hands, and occasionally asked students to stand up for hugs and photos.
For the last question of the event, Chancellor Martin noted that the Associate Justice did more than earn university degrees, she continued her education throughout life. After 40 years old, she taught herself how to dance, swim, and throw a baseball. He asked if she had any new skills that might surprise people.
She answered, in part:
“In the last few years, I took up playing poker. I read books about it. I’ve watched the World Series of Poker on TV. I’ve watched better players than me play, and I’ve learned a little bit.“My playing is a bit of a charity. I invite people to my home, I feed them, I give them all the liquor they want. You buy any advantage you can in poker. And so, when I win their money, I don’t have to report it.”
The World Series of Poker’s Twitter account did respond to the interview video, though it doesn’t seem that Justice Sotomayor is on Twitter. They invited her to play the WSOP Main Event this summer.
https://twitter.com/WSOP/status/1511826551892979716?s=20&t=H3i_z2_yDxrq4pGlCvrnNA
Not the Only One
Many people have talked and written about US Presidents who have played poker, but members of the Supreme Court of the United States don’t receive a lot of attention on that front.
Just last year, a Jeopardy episode revealed that Associate Justice Elena Kagan plays poker…and does it well. According to the Harvard Gazette, law professor and longtime friend Carol Streiker spoke of Kagan’s competitiveness. “She used to play poker,” Streiker recalled, “and I quickly learned not to do that (with her) because she is a very good poker player.”
And according to Above the Law blog, attorney Stephen Newman competed on Jeopardy in early 2021 and recalled a brief story about playing poker with Kagan. “She cleaned us out,” he said. That blog post author and site editor Joe Patrice noted that he, too, heard about Kagan’s solid play. Kagan and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer played in a regular home game when they were all students at Princeton.
Evidently, longtime poker pro Erik Seidel has known about the women’s poker prowess for years. He tweeted in 2014 that Sotomayor has even declared poker winnings on taxes in past years.
https://twitter.com/Erik_Seidel/status/477918235594326016?s=20&t=uZe30eT39hMdiquyQH98tw
Men Play Poker, Too
One of the newest members of SCOTUS, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, played in a home game prior to his SCOTUS nomination. The Atlantic reported that he and Chief Justice John Roberts once belonged to the same country club and played in the same poker game. And during Kavanaugh’s nomination process, one US Senator asked him – in the written question portion of the process – if he played poker. Kavanaugh answered that he did play, though he didn’t reveal details. He wrote:
“Like many Americans, I have occasionally played poker or other games with friends and colleagues. I do not document the details of those casual games.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ozn-fijFn8
Back in 2013, Justice Antonin Scalia granted an interview to New York Magazine just a few years before his death. Among several revelations in the piece, Scalia admitted to being a poker player. That part of their conversation was:
-Interviewer Jennifer Senior: “Do not take this the wrong way, but you strike me as the kind of person who would be a horrible poker player.”-Justice Scalia: “Shame on you! I’m a damn good poker player.”-Senior: But aren’t you the kind of guy who always puts all of his cards on the table? I feel like you would be the worst bluffer ever.”-Scalia: “You can talk to the people in my poker set.”-Senior: “Do you have a tell?”-Scalia: “What?”-Senior: “A tell.”-Scalia: “What’s a tell?”-Senior: “What’s a tell? Are you joking?”-Scalia: “No.”-Senior: “A tic or behavior that betrays you’re bluffing.”-Scalia: “Oh! That’s called a tell? No.”
The tell “tell” aside, others have written and talked about Scalia playing poker. A piece in Chicago Magazine noted that Scalia played in a monthly faculty poker game with his colleagues at the University of Chicago Law School. And when Scalia dealt, he chose unusual games.
That game started in the 1980s with eventual Chief SCOTUS Justice William Rehnquist. And the game continued monthly through to their time on the Supreme Court. Scalia reportedly called the game a “penny-ante” game, “adjusted for inflation.”
Said game included quite a few people in Washington DC. The Renquist Papers revealed that one of the players, law professor and American Enterprise Institute scholar Walter Berns, was one of the originals of the Scalia/Renquist home game. He noted that Renquist first announced his cancer diagnosis at one of the games – the last one he attended. Berns kept records of hundreds of the games. And he revealed, before his death, that the games continued on with Roberts taking over Renquist’s seat at the table.
