 Fame
& Fortune: Poker champ Annie Duke
Bored and broke until fate dealt her a new hand
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Annie Duke is the world's most successful female poker
player.
So, now that television has given poker players celebrity
status, Duke gets mobbed wherever she goes. She probably could have
done anything she wanted with her life: She's a graduate of St.
Paul's School, has a degree from Columbia University in English
and psychology, and has nearly completed her doctorate at the University
of Pennsylvania in psycholinguistics.
But, it's the "nearly completed" that changed
Duke's life. In her recently released autobiography, she is candid
about the recurring panic attacks, depression and other disorders
that made her leave school and marry a man she had never dated.
Her then-husband was a recipient of a small trust fund from the
Duke tobacco family. He was content to live off his $10,000 annual
stipend in a Montana shotgun shack. Annie found herself bored and
broke. Her brother, world class poker player Howard Lederer, taught
her the game and she soon was winning against the local cowboys
gambling away their retirement checks.
Next, Howard staked her in some Las Vegas games and a legend was
born.
In 2004 Duke won her first World Series of Poker bracelet. That
year, she also won $2 million in the No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em Tournament
broadcast on ESPN.
Duke consults for a lot of those celebrities you see
playing poker on TV, such as Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. NBC made
a pilot based on her life, starring Janeane Garofalo, but it did
not make the fall lineup. Duke has a production company that has
created a horror film, two game shows for the Game Show Network
and other projects. Duke is also the mother of four young children.
Bankrate: How many
tournaments do you play in a year?
Annie Duke: This fall,
my tournament playing has been very sparse. I just got back from
playing in Aruba. I also won $110,000 in the World Series Poker
Tournament. I'm playing at the Bellagio soon for a $15,000 tournament.
I only play 15 percent to 33 percent of the games that my peers
do; I balance it with being with my four kids. I turned down playing
in a tournament in Monte Carlo this year -- it was on Thanksgiving
Day -- so I could help with my kid's carnival.
Bankrate: Do you ever
still play in a pickup casino game?
Annie Duke: Very, very
occasionally. For the first eight or nine years I played, that's
mainly what I played. The tournaments didn't have enough money to
pique my interest.
Bankrate: What specific
advantages have your degrees in psychology given you in poker-playing?
Annie Duke: I have
a very deep understanding of probability and statistics.
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