After Mystique showed that she can’t walk in a Christian Dior dress without falling on her ass, Lee Davy looks towards the world of poker to see if we have X-Men in hiding ready to take her place.
The world needs better X-Men.
Jennifer Lawrence may kick ass as Mystique but she can’t walk in high heels. The X-Men: Apocalypse star tripped and fell while collecting her first Oscar in 2013, and did the same on the red carpet in 2014. However, her work was not done. In 2015, she stumbled and fell at the Madrid premiere of one of those awful Hunger Games movies, and last night she nearly went tits up at the London premiere of X-Men Apocalypse.
The world can’t have their superheroes falling over their Christian Dior frocks. A new era of X-Men needs to emerge from the shadows and reveal themselves to the world and what better place to look than the poker industry.
Before we reveal the real identities of poker X-Men, there are a few people who were ruled out for obvious reasons.
Daniel Negreanu has already been in an X-Men movie and so he must go the back of the queue.
Justin Bonomo and Daniel Colman are both out due to their fear of cameras. The team can’t trust Sam Trickett to the fly the X-Jet without crashing it into a fence, and Richard Yong was due to appear as the leader of an infamous Triad group until PokerNews revealed that he wasn’t a Triad after all. He was merely a businessman and avid poker player.
Phil Hellmuth’s ability to dodge bullets was useful but he didn’t have any other weapons. Phil Ivey was considered for the Magneto role but could only attract plastic chips and lawsuits, and Antonio Esfandiari nearly got the role as Gambit but kept holding up production because he wanted to take a piss every Five Minutes.
Here are the 13 up for consideration.
Jorryt van Hoof – The Sensitive Werewolf Type Dude
Former World Series of Poker (WSOP) November Niner, Jorryt van Hoof, is poker’s Sabretooth with a difference. He’s huge; hairy but hasn’t got a bad bone in his body. He gets my vote to appear as the hypersensitive werewolf type dude who cuddles and licks his prey to death.
Philipp Gruissem – Scary German Bad Guy
If we can push aside the fact that Philipp Gruissem created Raising for Effective Giving (REG) so he could spread the word about effective altruism and use poker as a stepping board to save the world by donating money to effective charities – he would make a pretty good bad guy.
The moustache alone scares the shit out of me. Hand him a white cat, tell him to stroke it instead of trying to set it free with thousands of other cats, and he would be one scary mother.
Tobias Reinkemeier – The Woodsman
I don’t want the Germans to hog all the super hero and super villain positions but they do go together like steak and mustard.
Take Tobias Reinkemeier for example. Stick a green bobble hat on his head, give him a pair of shorts, and bust open those guns and you have The Woodsman from Hoodwinked.
Reinkemeier would rely on his stare and biceps to scare the shit out of people before using his Thor-like axe to lop off their heads.
Doyle Brunson – The Godfather
Doyle Brunson would be perfect for the Charles Xavier I am in charge of everyone type role. Everyone in the poker world looks up to him, and he zooms around the Rio in that mobility scooter with the speed and grace of Ayrton Senna. All we need to do is hold him down, remove his Stetson and shave his hair off, and voila we have the head of our X-Men.
Andrew Lichtenberger – The Woodland Elf
There is nobody in the poker world more in tune to the universe than Andrew Lichtenberger. He is also a master of disguise, fooling people into believing he is a homeless down and out when really he’s a shit-hot philanthropic professional poker player.
Lichtenberger has magical, mystical powers that you wouldn’t understand if I tried to explain because I don’t understand. His mentor is Eckhart Tolle and that says it all. His superpower would be the ability to summon the animal kingdom to come to his rescue in time of need. I would also give him a wand with magic dust coming out of the top so he could zap people with it and make them all zen-like.
Byron Kaverman – Time Manipulator
Do you remember the hit TV show, Heroes?
Do you remember the Hiro Nakamura, the little Asian dude who could stop time in its tracks?
That’s Byron Kaverman.
You may wonder what on earth he is doing when the action folds to him in the small blind and he takes 10-minutes to fold 7-2, but little do you know that he has stopped time, and is in fact peeking at all of your cards without you knowing. It’s how he has been able to win so much money while at the same time giving off the impression that he can’t figure shit out.
Like most X-Men Kaverman has another trick up his sleeve. He doesn’t just freeze time. He can also put people to sleep and that also comes in handy during a fight.
Daniel Cates – Mr Furious
There is nobody in poker who can lose his shit like the Jungleman, and Poker X-Men are going to need that added aggression when shit gets real. I was thinking of painting him green and hulking him up, but I think Ben Stiller’s role as Mr Furious in The Mystery Men is perfect for Cates.
Freddy Deeb – The Penguin
With the Batman franchise focusing on Wonder Woman, Flash, and Aquaman, I see no reason why The Penguin couldn’t join the Poker X-Men and Freddy Deeb would fit perfectly into that suit and monocle. Deeb’s weapon would be a hookah shaped like an umbrella that blows toxic smokey shit into your face.
Bertrand Grospellier – Tongue Twister
Sticking with the Batman theme and how good did ElkY look when he dressed up as the Joker?
I would stick with the white blusher as it looks scary as shit. He is not a fighter, as was proven when Lex Veldhuis knocked his head into Korea, but he does have one of the deadliest weapons known to the poker world – he confuses people with his lightning fast speech.
Jason Wheeler – Plant Man
You may think that Jason Wheeler is on a different planet, but underneath that slightly sleepy look is a genius at work. Wheeler is one of those rarities on earth who manages to smoke for 12-hours a day and still function with more smarts than Elon Musk. Wheeler’s super power would be to summon the plants to his aid. They would breath strange smoke into their faces, dulling their senses long enough for Wheeler to sock them into submission.
I once heard that Bob Marley escaped numerous assassination attempts because the bullets were always so high by the time they reached him they forgot what they were sent there to do.
Liv Boeree – The Iron Maiden
Liv Boeree would be a great superhero. She would lure you in with her super sexy look like all great female superheroes and then she would pull out her guitar and deafen you with a horrendous rendition of some really shit heavy metal music. Like Gruissem, she also has a great Clark Kent type foil with her role in REG.
Xuan Liu – Gogo
Did anyone ever watch Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill?
I did, and it possessed one of the greatest bad girl type characters in the business. The cute and unassuming Asian schoolgirl psycho, and I can’t help but think Xuan Liu would be an absolute slam dunk for this type of role.
Olivier Busquet – Juggernaut
There was a time when Olivier Busquet was a quiet, laid back, chilled kind of guy. He looked like a French waiter, who played chess at a grandmaster level during his spare time, and ran campaigns to free Gaza. Today, he is the re-arranger of faces as JC Alvarado can testify, and he is an absolute shoe-in to play the role of Juggernaut. Line them up in front of him and watch Busquet knock them down.
Have I missed anyone?
Who would you choose and why?
