Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor discussed her approach to winning at poker on Tuesday.
The comments came during a forum with students at Washington University, where the justice walked through the crowd, hugging students as she answered questions.
"In the last few years, I took up playing poker," she said.
"I’ve 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,” she joked to applause from the crowd.
Sotomayor also joked about poker during a 2018 appearance on "The Colbert Report."
Sotomayor said the small-stakes games were not illegal because she provided refreshments.
"The players around my table are just paying for their own food," she argued.
“That’s legalese if I ever heard it,” Colbert replied.
“Come on, that’s never going to hold up in court," the comedian predicted.
Poker was also mentioned in a 2010 profile in The New Yorker.
The magazine reported, "during the 2006-07 term, after an exhausting day of interviewing candidates for the next year’s clerk slots, Sotomayor invited her current clerks to her apartment, in Greenwich Village. 'She was like, ‘O.K., guys, the second I’m done with the last interview I’m running home, we’re getting burgers!’ Kyle Wong, a former clerk, recalled. 'We went over and she had Scotch and all this wine and beer. We sat down at eight and then she busts out the poker, and we play Texas hold ’em until two o’clock in the morning.' At the end of the night, Sotomayor made sure that everyone had cab fare, yelling, as the clerks drove off, 'I don’t have to see you guys before 10 a.m. tomorrow!'"
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