Annie Duke learned
poker from her brother. She makes no effort to hide the fact,
and she's proud that her brother is poker champ Howard
Lederer. “He started me off with a list of playable hands in
limit hold'em by writing them on a napkin in the coffee shop
at Binion's Horseshoe.” Four years later Howard began to
tutor his sister in earnest. That's when Annie dropped out of
graduate school as a doctoral candidate in Cognitive
Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania to embark on a
career in poker. “Howard's teaching and experience made me a
winner right from the start,” she says.
 When
Annie was a Ph.D. candidate she needed a good grasp of
probabilities and general statistics in order to do her
research. “I carried that knowledge with me into my poker
career, and that has truly helped,” she says. Most helpful to
her poker career, however, has been raising her four
children. “It has taught me to be emotionally even,” she
explains. “It has taught me that there are more important
things in life than whether I won or lost on a given night.
This has made me a tremendously better player.”
Since having children Annie says that she no longer gets
the terrible emotional swings from playing poker—except, that
is, when she's pregnant. That's another story. “When I was
pregnant with my last child I played poker when I was tired
and hormonal,” she says. “I lost my good judgment for about
two months—playing sessions that were too long, playing when
I was tired, playing when I was emotionally upset. I didn't
go all the way broke, but I decimated my bankroll.”
Annie started out playing cash games, but when her brother
saw just how good she was doing at the side tables, he
encouraged her to come play in the $1500 Limit Hold'em event
at the World Series of Poker in 1994. When she came in th ,
Howard suggested that she play in another. The second event
was a $2500 Limit Hold'em tournament. This time she finished
third.
Her most memorable moment at the poker tables, however,
was in the big event at the WSOP. Annie won a super
satellite, earning her a seat in the main event.
Coincidentally, she was assigned to the same starting table
as Howard. “Halfway into the day,” she remembers, “Howard was
struggling with only about $6,000 in front of him. I looked
at my hand and saw pocket Aces. I made it $800, and Howard
moved in on me! I called, and he had A-K, and was out the
door.”
This
particular game was so memorable to Annie not because she
took any pleasure in busting her brother, but because she
felt so bad for him. “It was heartbreaking for me,” she says.
“Howard had been playing this event since 1983, and I felt
terrible knocking him out. I actually burst into tears right
then!”
Annie doesn't typically bawl at the table when knocking
other men out of tournaments. Often, she admits, she takes
quite a lot of pleasure in beating men, especially those whom
she considers chauvinistic: “I make sure they know it when
they lose a pot to me. For example, I will discuss the hand
afterwards just to get them mad.”
Annie often gets asked what it's like to be a mother of
four young children while juggling a poker career. She
answers by pointing out that any career is difficult when
you've got four children to raise, but she believes the
flexibility that poker provides her is the best in the long
run. “When I'm home, I can spend the maximum amount of time
with my children,” she says. “I believe that it's easier to
successfully accomplish the balancing act with poker as a
career because it's not 9 to 5, and you have no boss to
answer to. Overall I couldn't imagine doing anything I could
possibly enjoy more.” |
