Annie Duke Poker

admin  4/8/2022
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Most of the general public probably remembers Annie Duke from the Donald Trump-hosted Celebrity Apprentice reality TV program. She was the poker player who finished runner-up to the late Joan Rivers.

Those people might also remember how ugly things got between the two. Rivers compared Duke to a murderous Nazi dictator. Duke compared Rivers to a deadly disease. Neither celebrity’s image came out untarnished.

For Annie Duke, the poker table is a perfect laboratory to study human decision-making — including her own. “It really exposes you to the way that you’re thinking,” she says, “how hard it is to avoid decision traps, even when you’re perfectly well aware that those decision traps exist. Annie Duke has leveraged her expertise in the science of smart decision making to excel at pursuits as varied as championship poker, public speaking, teaching, philanthropy and parenting. For two decades, Annie was one of the top poker players in the world, winning several championships during her career. Annie's Poker:: Annie Duke unofficial fan site with bio, news, articles and tips. Annie Duke is a top rated female poker player in the world. Annie's Poker contains poker tips, poker strategy articles, poker news and much more. Duke's first book was an autobiography titled Annie Duke: How I raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, and Won Millions at the World Series of Poker (ISBN, 9125) was published in September 2005. Decide to Play Great Poker, (co-authored with John Vorhaus. Annie Duke was often the only woman at the poker table, which influenced the way people saw her - and the way she saw herself. Feeling like an outsider can come at a cost, but also be an advantage.

Of course, the poker community largely remembers Duke for a variety of different reasons. Mainly her role in a series of scandals and failed poker business ventures. Ones that left players out millions of dollars and Duke entering early retirement with a cushy bankroll.

Duke and Ultimate Bet

Duke was one of the faces of the online poker site Ultimate Bet. She was never implicated in the site’s super user cheating scandal. The one in which a group of Ultimate Bet insiders led by 1994 World Series of Poker Main Event champ Russ Hamilton gained access to the site’s back end. They were able to see other players hole cards and ultimately bilked them out of as much as $22 million.

However, Duke continued to take a paycheck and endorse the site. Even if it wasn’t directly involved in the scam, Ultimate Bet certainly turned a blind eye to the activity of members of its management team and consultants involved. Plus, it helped try to cover it up. Any endorsement of any of that is an affront to the poker community.

Duke and the Epic Poker League

AnniePoker

Duke was also the Commissioner of the Epic Poker League. She cashed a fat check from this organization. All while it piled up millions in debt and ultimately filed for bankruptcy. In the end, Epic cancelled the final two tournaments of its first season. Of course, this included the League Championship $1 million freeroll promised to the top money winners. Duke still got hers though.

Of course, most members of the poker community are also keenly aware Duke is the sister of Full Tilt Poker founder and board member Howard Lederer. Full Tilt was booted out of the American market by the United States Department of Justice in April 2011.

Principles in the organization were charged with various money laundering and gambling law violations. Later that year, Lederer and other members of the Full Tilt Poker board were accused of defrauding poker players. Full Tilt was referred to as a Ponzi scheme. Apparently the company’s owners regularly raided player funds to pad their own pockets.

The DOJ accused Lederer of personally taking over $40 million in player funds for himself. In 2012, PokerStars bought out Fill Tilt Poker and settled the case with the DOJ. PokerStars was the one that paid back $150 million to players, not Full Tilt or its owners. Lederer also settled with the DOJ, admitting no wrongdoing and giving up assets worth a paltry $2.5 million.

Duke and the mainstream media

Duke has since left the poker world behind. However, she continues to trade in on the success she had as a player before the various scandals. Plus, the mainstream media continues to let her. In fact, they’ve show no interest in revealing the whole truth behind Duke’s involvement in poker.

Just this week, CNBC trotted her out as some kind of expert in decision making. She was referred to as a “world-renowned poker player and now a consultant and author.”

CNBC even went as far as to list highlights of her poker accomplishments. These included the 2010 made-for-TV NBC National Heads-Up Championship title, her 10-entry 2004 WSOP Tournament of Champions win, and her 2004 WSOP $2,000 Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better bracelet.

It completely ignored the previously listed low-lights of Duke’s poker career. Much to the chagrin of the poker community, who took to Twitter to express outrage at the fact mainstream media organizations like CNBC are still making it seem like Duke somehow represents them.

Sigh.. I wish Dan and Cnbc had looked more into the background of a person who was heavily involved and endorsed Ultimate Bet and Epic poker (both failed businesses that cheated their customers). So many honorable poker players- no need to pick scammy Duke https://t.co/oKVmu2bexC

— Ari Engel (@AriEngelPoker) February 7, 2018

The entire thing was really just a plug for Duke’s latest book. The title of which is, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All The Facts. The title makes it sound like the book is about succeeding in business by treating decisions the same way a poker player does.

It’s an interesting concept. Maybe next time CNBC will introduce someone who truly represents the poker community to discuss it.

In the meantime, it’s hard not to think of that title as strangely apropos to this particular situation. CNBC is essentially asking readers to make a decision on buying a book without all the facts about its author. I think I know what most poker players will do.

Photo by Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock.com

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Since the collapse of several ventures that she was a part of, Annie Duke – former poker professional, winner of the National Heads-Up Poker Championship and face of the former Ultimate Bet – has stayed far away from the poker tables. She first reinvented herself as a business consultant who worked in the area of decision making. Now, it appears that Duke is moving into a different arena – political consultant.

Annie Duke Poker Tournament 2016

Article Promotes Duke’s “Probability” Theory

Editor in Chief Andy Serwer of Yahoo! Finance interviewed Duke for his Influencers with Andy Serwer podcast, talking about a recently penned new book from Duke called How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices. In the interview, Duke analyzes how the campaign of the Democrat in the race, former Vice President Joe Biden, made critical decisions as to their approach to the 2020 Presidential battle. Duke points out in the interview that, unlike the 2016 campaign, the Biden campaign thought that indicators from 2016 would play in the same manner in 2020 and planned accordingly.

Annie Duke Poker Book Pdf

“Biden was pulling very far ahead in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan,” Duke stated. “Yet, when you look at his ad spending, that’s where most of the spending was because…they were taking into account that there could possibly be a polling error again.”

According to Duke and Serwer, the analysis of the Biden campaign was correct. While the polls on Election Day gave Biden a huge margin (8.4 percentage point lead in Wisconsin, 4.7 in Pennsylvania), the finishing margin was vastly closer. In the end, Biden won Wisconsin by .6 percentage points and Pennsylvania by 1.2 points.

Duke credits the Biden campaign for not putting faith in what she calls “resulting,” or looking at the result to determine the success of a strategy. The Biden campaign, with the knowledge of what happened in 2016, was able to plan for that and not be focused on what the polls said was going to happen. Instead of pulling money and campaigning from those states, Biden continued to pound the state with visits and ad money spent working for the votes.

“Resulting” a Familiar Duke Theme

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The “resulting” theme is a familiar one from Duke’s prior works. Even her poker books emphasized making the correct decision over what the eventual outcome brought. In one of her first business books, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts, laid tremendously on this concentration on the process rather than the endgame. Duke attributes much of her observations on this field from her poker background and has stated that it impacts other areas such as investing and business.

Duke’s life in poker, despite being somewhat successful, has been a rollercoaster, however. While she owns a World Series of Poker bracelet and that victory in the NHUPC and the WSOP Tournament of Champions back in 2004 (where she tortured Phil Hellmuth for a $2 million victory), Duke endorsed Ultimate Bet in the online community. Although she left the site well before the “Black Friday” shutdowns, she still catches scorn (unlike Hellmuth) for the shutdown of the site and its treatment of players.

Duke also was a part of the Epic Poker League situation in 2011. Duke was named the first (and only) Commissioner of the poker tournament circuit, which failed within the first year of operation. The EPL was a great concept, an invitation-only poker tour built around the usage of a ranking system (the Global Poker Index) to determine eligibility to play, but it came up short in raising money to conduct the tournament schedule and folded after three of the first four events. Despite not being shown to be one of the “decision makers” of the EPL, much of the blame for its demise (and the resulting millions of dollars the group owed to creditors) was placed on Duke’s shoulders.

Annie Duke Poker - Top Videos From Yahoo

After the EPL failure, Duke withdrew from the poker world and reestablished herself in the business and literary worlds as a consultant and author. Now, it appears, she’s ready to take on the world of politics, which may be more cutthroat than poker ever was!