Annie Duke

Nick named the Duchess of poker, Annie Duke was born in nineteen sixty five in New Hampshire and is the product of two teachers who sought a different path from her parent’s line of duty. She was a University of Pennsylvania graduate when she realized that she was getting miserable. She sought her elder brother’s advice, Howard Lederer, who happens to be one of the world’s best poker players. He agreed to teach her how to play poker, as he himself was a poker teacher and soon she started causing ripples in the underground poker rooms situated in the East Coast.

There was a time when she used to be represented as the world’s female soccer player and there used to be an entertainment article back in the days that used to highlight Hollywood’s obsession with poker and she was the most featured player. She had for sometime been the lone female poker player in the male dominated world. It was while she was pursuing her doctorate that she moved in with her new husband, Montana Duke, in Philadelphia. They at first experienced some financial problems and as soon as she teamed up with her brother, brokenness became a thing of the past as dollars started streaming in from her many games that she won.

It was not until nineteen ninety four that the Duke’s decided to move to Las Vegas, soon after Annie made seventy thousand dollars, which she won in her first world series of poker. She was once quoted as saying that poker is the only game in the world where a woman is given equal footing with a man, a thing that was rubbished by many men, but it was not until the year two thousand that she silenced them up when she narrowly missed winning the main event at the final table while she was eight months pregnant. Up to date, Annie has refused to be drawn into women only poker tournaments, choosing to instead drag pots in the games and tournaments which are male dominated.

In the year two thousand and four, Annie made a name for herself when she claimed her first World series of poker bracelet in an Omaha event. The win earned her some place in that year’s tournament of champion table. Surprisingly enough, Annie navigated her way through nine of the world’s most seasoned poker players, her brother included, to claiming the winner take all event championship. She has made history as being the only female poker player to have received the greatest award, which she won at that tournament and which totaled to one hundred and thirty seven thousand, eight hundred and sixty dollars.

She is a book author and has appeared in various programs, as well as being poker’s new poster girl. Her poker tutorial skills were thrust to the fore when her pupil, the legendary actor Ben Affleck, went on to win at the 2004 California Stake poker champion. Duke still plays poker and was even in the three WSOP games held in the year 2007. She was ranked twenty first at the inaugural European championship and another female player Annette Obrestad was at hand to break her highest paid poker woman title after winning much more than she did. It was in that same year that she divorced with her husband.

In that same year, she and her children moved to Los Angeles and are also living with her current boyfriend, Joe Reitman. Her career tournament winnings are estimated to be about three and a half million dollars and it was in the year two thousand and nine that she shifted her gears and appeared on celebrity apprentice, where she finished second place. Early this year, she won an NBC heads up poker tournament, making history as the first ever woman to win the title. Other than being a celebrated woman poker player, Ann has a lucrative side job, teaching poker to the “who is who” in the celebrity industry. But she is known to put her children first before anything else, as she is known to miss some poker games if they happen to fall in the same time with her children’s school plays.

Throughout her career, she has earned herself quite a number of nicknames, among them the Duchess of poker and Annie legend. The family person trait that she cherishes is greatly admired by world celebrated sports commentators. She on the other hand works for ielogic, a company dealing with the production of online real casino gaming software. Her brother Howard remains a close associate of Duke and this has been proven by the fact that he is known to have issued a strong statement against a spokesman who had said hurtful things about his sister. The two have been presented as virtual characters in an online poker game and they have been known to be very close poker associates. To find out more about Annie Duke visit her official website at: Annie Duke

Posted by Joel on May 9 2010. Filed under Player Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry