Annie Duke: An Accomplished Scholar and Attentive Mother Who Plays High Poker For a Living

Original oils in gilt frames, elegant chandeliers and cushy brocade chairs, piped-in music – an unusual setting in which to find a casually dressed, somewhat disheveled-looking young Montana gal? Not at all – Bellagio's poker room is where Annie Duke, arguably the best female poker player in the world, works her magic at cards. I pulled the highly educated, articulate, high-stakes poker aficionado away from the 6-12 ($600-$1,200, that is) half Omaha high-low/half seven-card stud game for what I call our "$3,000 interview," as that's what I figure it cost her to sit out of it for an hour. Thanks to her husband, Ben, who was babysitting their three young children, we had time to cram this interview into her hectic World Series of Poker schedule before the family flew home to Montana.

Duke is a thoroughly modern 30-something lady and attentive mother who just happens to play poker professionally. After receiving a B.A. degree from Columbia University in psychology and English literature, she attended the University of Pennsylvania on a National Science Foundation fellowship and earned an M.A. degree in psycholinguistics (experimental psych) in preparation for her Ph.D. studies. "As part of my doctoral curriculum, I taught an undergraduate course in cognitive psychology," she stated. "I literally had all my research done and was ready to get my Ph.D. – and had gone for a lot of job talks at schools like Duke, the University of Oregon, and N.Y.U. – when I realized at the last minute that I didn't want to be a professor. I had just married Ben, so we moved to Montana, where his father lives." And so began the first leg of her circuitous journey into the world of professional poker.

I wondered how someone with such impressive credentials and a bright future in academia could leave it behind to enter the competitive, nitty-gritty world of poker. Once I heard Duke's story, the puzzle unraveled – and my respect and admiration grew for the spirited and talented young woman who so perfectly balances the juggling act that today's modern women must perform in the three-ring circus of wife-mother-career, not to mention Internet entrepreneur and author (her recent Card Player article, "Movin' On Up," played to rave reviews).

Dana Smith: Moving from Pennsylvania to Montana in 1992 was huge. How did it work out for you?

Annie Duke: We lived in an $11,000 house with a leaky roof and single-strand electricity. Neither of us had a job, so I telephoned my brother (World Series of Poker bracelet winner, Howard Lederer), who already was successful playing poker, and said, "Maybe I'll give poker a try." Howard sent me some money, gave me some starting hands, and I started playing.

DS: You hadn't played poker before that?

AD: Not really. A couple of times earlier, Howard had given me a ticket to Vegas during the Series, and I had played $1-$3 hold'em at the Fremont – that was the whole of my poker experience. Three years later I played in my first World Series of Poker and placed 13th in the first event that I played and third in the second one, and then I cashed in the "big one." I got very unlucky or I would have done better, because at one point I had $95,000, which was almost the chip lead, with four tables left. I raised $5,000 on the button with pocket kings and a guy moved in for $65,000 with A-3 offsuit. I called and an ace was the first card off the deck. I thought it was just insane that he would make that big a raise and I was very upset. It was the first time that I had played the final event and I was quite nervous, almost throwing up from nerves. I did really well, though, and ended up with $10,000 in cash, and that was just so much money. Then Ben and I moved to Las Vegas, and within a few years I was playing really high-limit poker.

DS: Obviously, you have a knack for poker. I wonder if it's in the genes?

AD: It might be (chuckling), although my sister, Katy Lederer, is very literary. She is one of the country's "Best Young Poets" and just signed a book contract with Crown Publishing. She's a big-time poet these days.

DS: How about your dad? He taught high school English at the private boarding school that you attended. Is he still teaching or is he playing pro poker, too?

AD: My dad, Richard Lederer, left teaching and moved to San Diego because he has become a popular published author and a speaker on the lecture circuit. He writes books on etymology and morphology, but his most popular books are in a series called "Anguish English." They are collections of student essay bloopers and other writing goofs, including (unintentionally) humorous letters that people have written to insurance companies and doctors. But my mother, Deedy, actually is the smartest of all of us; she had perfect SAT scores.

DS: Apparently, there's a lot more than poker in the genes. What's it like to be a lady gambler living in Montana and traveling back and forth to Las Vegas to play high-stakes poker?

AD: When I'm in Montana I'm pretty much just a mom. I take my 6-year-old daughter, Maud, to kindergarten, and I hang out with my new baby, Lucy, who is a year old, and play with my 3-year-old son, Leo. All three were home-birthed and they're here in Vegas with me now. For most of the tournament, my sister, Katy, was here with me and took care of Lucy and Leo. Maud stayed in Montana with Ben until school was out. Last week Ben drove down here with Maud and Katy flew home.

DS: Is Ben mostly a proud househusband?

AD: No, he's in the small-scale venture capital business. He gets money together for small oil exploration companies, like wildcats and drilling projects, and right now he's working on a broadband fund in the high-tech field. Our marriage has worked out really well because he works primarily out of our home while I'm out of the house working at poker. And he's the most amazing father on the planet.

DS: Do you live in a big house in Montana and drive a luxury car, or what?

AD: No, I'm not a fancy person. Our house is 3,000 square feet on 30 acres of pine trees, but it isn't fancy, it's just down-to-earth. And I drive a Suburban – I didn't want such a big car, but I have so many kids, I needed one. I'm not very "spendy." As long as I have a roof over my head and can feed my children, I'm happy.

DS: You certainly aren't ostentatious – you dress, shall I say, casually.

AD: I call it "comfortable." That's important to me.

DS: After you had first lived in Nevada for a while, you moved back to the "Big Sky" state for several years. Now you and Ben are returning to Vegas again. Are you selling your Montana digs?

AD: Yes, but only because we're buying a 44-acre piece of property on which to build a house. We don't plan to live here permanently, just until we finish building our new home in Montana, because I don't really want to raise my children in Las Vegas. The only reason that we've moved back here is because after I had my youngest daughter, it became completely impossible for me to travel back and forth.

DS: And Vegas is where you make your living?

AD: Exactly. I usually play $400-$800 and higher. The mixed games are my favorites, but I also enjoy playing pot-limit during the World Series.

DS: In 2000 at the World Series of Poker, you were the chip leader at one point.

AD: Yeah, I was, but it was kind of a weird tournament for me because I was almost completely "card-dead." I got dealt aces once, I flopped a pair twice, I flopped two pair twice, and I flopped one straight – and that was it in three days of play! So, I thought that coming in 10th, particularly three weeks from my due date – I was very pregnant at the time – was a pretty hefty accomplishment. This year, I saw aces dealt about six times in the first two hours at my table and I'm sitting there thinking, "How do these people do that?! I had aces once in three 14-hour days last year!"

DS: Like Diego Cordovez's pocket aces twice within three hands?

AD: Yes; first he took me out with pocket aces and two hands later, he eliminated T.J. Cloutier with them. He looked at me later in the day as though he were thinking, "I'm sorry, Annie," but I was OK with it.

DS: Did you know that Diego went out of the tournament on the bubble?

AD: That's too bad, he's such a nice guy.

DS: Let's talk about some other stuff that you've done in the tournament world.

AD: Actually, I don't play many tournaments, just the World Series. I played a few tournaments in Reno this year because I was a host, but other than that, I'm not a big tournament player, although I've made some good finishes when I have played. I've made a lot of final tables, including a couple of seconds, one in which we chopped the tournament, and I have a third.

DS: Have you had poker coaches other than Howard?

AD: Actually, I would consider anybody I've played with to be a coach. I watch people very carefully; I watch for what they're doing right, for what they're doing wrong, and I learn from that. Hopefully, I incorporate as many good things from their games as I can. Everybody has a different style, so there are going to be some things that I can't incorporate into my game, but whatever I can use, I do.

DS: You've told me that your training in psycholinguistics hasn't really helped you in poker. So, what does it take to be so successful?

AD: I think that it takes a lot of things – obviously, it takes some talent for the game, and it certainly requires a willingness to know that you need to improve, which I think that a lot of people don't have. I've always said that when you're playing with $10-$20 players, you're playing with the best poker players in the world – or at least they think so. They tend to criticize everybody's play at the table. Occasionally, when friends are in town, I'll play $10-$20 with them and I always gets yelled at. They think that I play so bad – they don't know me, and they don't realize that the play that I made was right. And they're not willing to sit back and say, "Maybe there's a reason why she did that." You really have to set your ego aside to be able to admit that you can always improve. And you have to have a lot of self-control. Certainly, not steaming is very important, in addition to knowing when to quit, and knowing when the game's good and when it's bad.

DS: Have you had any trouble as a female among so many male poker players?

AD: No, not really. The only thing that I will say – and this is something that really affects me during tournaments – is that I get a lot more action than other people do. For example, in a hand that I raised (and lost) at the final table in this year's pot-limit Omaha tournament, I was a 3-to-1 favorite. My opponent was a player from the South, and I can almost guarantee you that he wouldn't have called me if I were a man. In the long run that works out for you, but in tournaments it can be devastating, because you can't reach into your pocket and get 'em later. That's it – that's the final table; you're out of the tournament because somebody called you when they probably wouldn't have called anybody else. A lot of the great tournament players do very well by making their opponents fold to them too often, whereas I need to play a very different style because I don't seem to be able to get people to fold often enough. In some ways, I actually prefer playing against very good players in tournaments.

DS: Now let me ask you this, Annie: Can you actually beat the $10-$20 game?!

AD: Sure. I was playing online poker (Paradise Poker) from about August until January and I did really well at $15-$30. Every day, people online told me that I was the worst player they'd ever seen, which was fun since I wasn't using my real name. I was making a lot of money, but I was spending too much time at it, so I quit.

DS: Now you're associated with an online poker site yourself.

AD: Yes, Ultimatebet. It's a new online poker company that is doing some good things. We're associating ourselves with some major tournaments so that you can play satellites to win your buy-in. Ultimatebet has been broadcasting some major tournaments and has some top-name poker players associated with it, like Phil Hellmuth, Scotty Nguyen, Russ Hamilton, and me. You can play with us and we'll give you some advice on what you're doing. You might say to yourself, "I don't wanna play with a pro," but the fact is that if you have put in any time playing $15-$30 hold'em at Paradise Poker, you've played with me a lot. You just don't know it because I use a different name online. But with Ultimatebet, you know that it's me and you can watch me and maybe learn something, and I'll even give you some advice if you want it.

DS: How have your parents taken to the idea that two-thirds of their children are professional gamblers?

AD: They're in a good spot with it, although my dad will always be disappointed that I didn't get the piece of paper (a Ph.D. degree). You know, Howard and I don't shoot craps or play baccarat, we only play poker and we're pretty successful at it. We don't smoke or drink or have other gaming-related bad habits, so our parents feel cool about our doing what we do.

DS: Does Howard still coach you at poker?

AD: Howard definitely is responsible for most of what I know about poker. At this point in our lives, we help each other out and have a very close relationship as well as an ongoing co-teacher relationship. If we see something that the other is doing wrong, we'll discuss it and, hopefully, help each other to be better players.

DS: You seem to be in amazingly good physical condition, Annie. Do you have a health regimen that keeps you in shape?

AD: I have acupuncture treatments every other week, and I try to work out five times a week. I go to a naturopath rather than an M.D. Naturopaths practice a combination of conventional medicine, herbs, homeopathy, and acupuncture. They're much more open to different kinds of treatment and are much more into preventative medicine.

DS: What does the acupuncture do for you?

AD: Mostly, it's a constitutional treatment. You know, this is a stressful life – I never get enough sleep because I have three kids and that takes a lot out of me. I've nursed my children now for seven years without much of a break, and that's hard on the body.

DS: I know that you must have a few comments to make about the poker world, so here's your chance.

AD: First of all, congratulations to Bellagio for going nonsmoking. It's good for poker and it's good for my health, because I don't smoke. I believe that all the major tournaments should be nonsmoking, and it would be especially nice if the World Series of Poker were nonsmoking.

DS: When you played in big side games during the Series, where was most of the action?

AD: I played twice at Binion's and the rest of the time at Bellagio. It's secure, it's clean, you get good service, and the atmosphere in the poker room is elegant.

DS: Who are some players you admire?

AD: Obviously, I admire my brother, plus Erik Seidel, Ted Forrest, John Hennigan, Chau Giang, Jennifer Harman, David Chiu, and Chris Ferguson. David and Chris are two of the nicest people in all of poker. Not everybody in poker is that way, so it's really good when you find some gems. In fact, from the time that I began playing at the World Series, a lot of people have gone out of their way to be nice to me. T.J. Cloutier is one of them. From the beginning, he has been helpful to me. Ron McMillan, Dolph Arnold, Bobby Hoff, and Carl McKelvey – you know, the seasoned veterans – all were nice to me from day one. This isn't to say that I haven't had some people be jerks to me, but from the minute that I walked into the room, the professionals were incredibly nice to me.

DS: In closing, let's talk about the public's image of poker. For example, I think that drinking alcohol at the final table does not present poker in its best light.

AD: Let me put it this way: As sponsorship becomes a more real possibility, I think that it would be good if some people cleaned up their behavior. I am really saddened about some things that are going on right now among some of the younger players. I see a few of them throwing it all away because of some bad personal habits. It's a shame that they are holding themselves back from becoming the great players that they could be.

Poker already has a problem in that it doesn't have that clean an image, and I would like the public to understand that you don't need to be a cigar-smoking, drinking, drugging good ol' boy to be successful at poker. I want people to know that there are players like me who are leading a clean-cut life and raising a beautiful family. All of my kids are healthy, loving, wonderful, beautiful children. To them I'm just a mom. I just happen to also play poker professionally.