Gamblers are gonna gamble, and screamingly successful high-stakes poker player Rick Salomon is betting he can get $12.5 million for his custom-renovated home above L.A.’s perennially chic Sunset Strip, almost four times the $3.4 million tax records indicate he paid for the city-view spread almost 15 years ago.
The card shark, who has reportedly earned close to $10 million playing professional poker tournaments (and who knows how much more in private games), is perhaps best known in pop cultural circles as the fellow featured in a salacious 2003 sex tape with heiress Paris Hilton and the guy who was very briefly married to “Baywatch” bombshell Pamela Anderson not just one but twice, most recently in 2013. Their first wedding was quickly annulled and Anderson was granted a $1 million settlement payment in 2015 following their divorce. Salomon has been married to two other women as well, voiceover actor Elizabeth Daily, with whom he has a couple of kids, and, for less than a year in 2002, to “Beverly Hills 90210” alum Shannen Doherty.
Tucked away down a quiet cul-de-sac, hidden up a long gated driveway and set on a high knoll of almost two-thirds of an acre with open city views, the two-story house was originally built in 1964 and packs in five bedrooms and seven bathrooms in its nearly 6,500 square feet.
A tree shaded courtyard garden with a waterfall that pours over a rustic tumble of boulders makes for a serene and picturesque passage to the front door that opens to luxurious and stylishly pared down contemporary interiors that were done up by local interior designer Karan Brady. Inside there’s a mix of polished concrete and wide-plank hardwood floors and numerous multi-pane picture windows that fill the house with natural light and frame sunset views that stretch, on a clear day, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
Adjoining living and dining rooms, the latter with a chunky and gorgeous live-edge wooden dining table are complemented by a fireplace warmed den with a white grand piano, a deluxe kitchen with spider-veined marble counters, raw wood open shelves and an imported range that cost as much as some new cars.
There’s also a spacious fitness room with a mirrored wall for tracking progress and a media lounge with integrated sound system does double duty as a high-end poker salon with a postcard ready view out the floor-to-ceiling steel and glass doors.
Several guest bedrooms open to the gardens and/or have glittery tree-framed city views, as does the primary bedroom that offers dual walk-in closets and bathrooms. One of the bathrooms in the primary suite is complete with a spacious dry sauna with huge windows to take in the city lights while sweating out the toxins.
The enviably private grounds include a lush crystal garden and a not particularly spacious (but desirably flat) backyard that offers a sexy dark-bottomed zero-edge swimming pool and spa combination with an open, over-the-hedge view.
The property is jointly listed with Branden and Rayni Williams of Williams & Williams at The Beverly Hills Estates and Cooper Mount at The Agency.
Given his unconventional profession, it isn’t too much of a surprise that Salomon, who is listed as an executive producer on the 2018 John Travolta-starring flop “Gotti,” also maintains a home in Las Vegas. Property records show that in 2014 he shelled out $3.8 million for a nearly 11,000-square-foot contemporary home in an exclusive gated golf-course community where some of his nearby neighbors include Wynn Resorts CEO Matt Maddox and deep-pocketed billionaire Republican donor Sheldon Adelson.