For every Shannon Elizabeth or Mena Suvari seated at the poker table, there are four guys who can hardly focus, fantasizing about sex. Celebrity poker babes gain an edge without even trying because all men can think about is how to get inside their pants.

Without even trying? How much of it is innocent, poker babes distracting opponents just by being their pretty hot selves? And how much of it is deliberate, celebrity chicks actually using sexual attraction to spoil male opponents’ concentration?

Shannon Elizabeth openly admits to using her sensual looks to disconcert the opposite sex in poker. She recently told Blender magazine: “A lot of men get lost in their cards if you introduce a decent distraction.”

You’d think an admission like would make it harder for Shannon to employ this kind of poker strategy. On the other hand, us men are that stupid over women. We know when poker babes are being a tease but let them anyway, pining for a different sort of showdown, after the poker game.

Mena Suvari confirms using the same poker technique as early as when she started learning Texas Hold’em in New Orleans poker casinos. Mena says she uses her petite good looks not only to disorient the guys but to make them think she’s a weak player.

Toby Leah Bochan, who authored The Badass Girl’s Guide to Poker: All You Need to Beat the Boys, told Bodog: “You need to be willing to use whatever advantages you have as a woman. Even if you have to appear weak to win, that makes you a badass if you’re willing to do whatever it takes to win.”

Lauren Graham employed the same strategy at Celebrity Poker Showdown. She would switch between an aggressive play and a toned-down one acting the ‘dumb hot chick’, and the male viewers loved it. (So did ex Matthew Perry.)

“There’s a section in my book that deals with putting on your poker persona, and one of them is on playing the dumb blond. A lot of guys don’t believe girls can play poker so you can take advantage of them at the table,” says Bochan at Bodog.

At the other end of the stick are poker babes whose strategy is to appear clueless that they’re making the guys feel woody. Don’t be fooled: it is as disalarming as the mystery of the thing we don’t see inside pretty girl undies.

Isabelle Mercier is an elegant poker player to the point of coming off as arrogant, but she confesses to wearing makeup so as to look better and appear more intimidating. Robin Tunney is a poker face if you ever saw one, but uses her shrewd and serious persona to keep guys intrigued if she’s really that blah in real life.

This post can not possibly end without the mention of Jennifer Tilly. She does not only tease, Jennifer has plopped and jiggled her boobies all the way to the WSOP. ‘The Unabombshell’ says she’s glad for her endowments, especially that it can keep a man 14 years her junior (boyfriend Phil ‘The Unabomber’ Laak).

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