Talk about bolstering one’s celebrity through non-conventional means. Actress Jennifer Tilly, sibling to the once better known Meg Tilly, tried her hand at Texas Hold ‘Em, and walked away with $158,625 at the Ladies World Series of Poker. She beat out 600 other women.

This may be good news for Jennifer, but it also bodes well for the game to have a bona fide movie star, albeit a B-lister, in its rank & file. Not that poker needs much help. Shares of Partygaming PLC rose 11 percent on their first day of trading on the London Stock Exchange, putting the online gambling company’s value at a cool $8.5 billion.

Too Much to Swallow 

Filling in for the indomitable Stuart Elliott on The New York Times ad beat, consumer products reporter Melanie Warner, who made a name for herself at Fortune magazine, reports on the continuing woes of the world’s third largest ad/marketing conglomerate Interpublic Group. Unfortunately and erroneously, she listed as part of Interpublic’s holdings IPG’s main competitors’ Omnicom and WPP, the industry’s number one and two conglomerates.

Oops!

Let’s see how long it takes for this to be corrected on The Times’s website.

Fascinating to learn from Gawker, which learned from E&P, which learned directly via cell from Timeswoman Judith Miller about her efforts to “publicize” her case in the court of public opinion via a new personal website (as opposed to a blog). It’s clear that Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. wasn’t pleased by the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the Plame blame case. Still, I wonder how much latitude the newspaper-of-record will give Ms. Miller, who’s facing jail time, to make her case. I suspect as much as she wants.