Annie Duke Dreams of Software

Annie Duke drew me close. "I want to tell you about a dream I had last night."



I am meeting Annie for just the third time. She is a remarkably nice and charming woman who has given me great insight into the booming poker business. But I didn't think we knew each other this well.



Still, I leaned in, our faces almost touching. Who wouldn't want to hear this?



"I dreamed that I went back in time. I was debating between inventing the holecard camera and finding UltimateBet.com's software developers. I could have told them how the original software would have been even better if …"



I missed the rest of the explanation, inexplicably sad that this dream in no way, shape, or form involved me. When I got over my disappointment, I realized that many of my poker adventures of the past several months butted up against the financial issues confounding everyone connected with poker.



At Bellagio's Five-Diamond World Poker Classic WPT event in December, I learned that Jennifer Harman, Ted Forrest, and some other players put up $15,000 to play, even though they would have to abandon their chips at 5 p.m. to fly to Los Angeles. Not that the specifics of their meeting were any of my business, but it involved backers or sponsors for a super-high-stakes TV tournament. It was a huge opportunity that, purely accidentally, got scheduled one day later than everyone expected.



Jennifer told me she was going to build her stack, leave at 5 p.m. to fly to L.A., attend the meeting, and fly back in time to rebuild with her remaining chips. (Note: Airport security must have some kind of poker-pro exception. If I am carrying a fingernail clipper, a computer, and a ticket on Southwest Airlines, 90 minutes is not enough time for me to make a flight to anyplace.)



Harman actually pulled it off, mysteriously disappearing, getting blinded off, and returning and playing on day two. I even helped, if you count keeping my mouth shut when she said, "You can't tell anyone at the table about this. They'll know I'm playing fast and will adjust."



I've seen Jennifer get angry, plus I didn't know anyone to tell, so I kept the faith. I was proud of my discretion, but she got eliminated before I learned whether I could hit her up for a piece of the action. Maybe it's just as well that we didn't have that conversation.



Poker's new celebrity pros don't even need to leave the poker room to find themselves potentially over their heads with lucrative/risky opportunities. When people ask me where the money comes from that the big cash-game players win, I used to give a very complicated answer about the "Poker Room Pyramid," in which the winners keep the losers' money in play by moving to games of ever-higher stakes, until Doyle Brunson, Chau Giang, and Barry Greenstein are fighting over it.



Scrap that! The pyramid now has an express elevator. I've seen at least four newly minted World Series of Poker and World Poker Tour millionaires in the last four months take shots at the $4,000-$8,000 game. Those guys, like Phil Ivey, may have the last laugh over everyone saying they are blowing their winnings by playing too high. But I wouldn't bet that way.



Even poker writers are facing this confusing avalanche of opportunities, although, appropriately, at much lower stakes. In the last month, three well-known poker personalities have asked me to co-write or ghostwrite their stories. This is in addition to the poker project I am currently pursuing, plus this column, plus various stabs at freelance writing about poker in other magazines, plus a book project about a serial killer and a forensic biologist that I worry I may never write. (I did, however, try to fix up the biologist, a brilliant young woman named Connie, with Mike Matusow at the World Series last summer, with disastrous results.)



I've yet to say no to anybody, so I'm hardly qualified to judge whether the pros are trying to do too much or making some incorrect choices.



Snapping back to attention in my conversation with Annie Duke, she tells me, "I have no desire to be famous," and I believe her. "I want to provide for my family, and if managing my image helps achieve that, I'm going to do it." So, as part of the job, Annie Duke dreams of software.



Annie is very smart, even when she is sleeping. While writing this column, I received a copy of a letter Steve Lipscomb wrote to the poker community. He notes that the WPT has yet to turn a profit, yet PartyGaming and FullTiltPoker are raking in the dough. I wonder, if his dreams took him back to the Time Before the Holecard Camera, if he might let Duke wrest control of the Annie Poker Tour, while he raced ahead to find those software developers-to-be of UltimateSteve.com.



The issues confronting poker players and everyone else making a living from poker will not be easily sorted out. They won't be – nor should they be – resolved quickly. My advice: sleep on it. Maybe it will make more sense in the morning.

If you have any comments to share, please contact me at [email protected]. And if you pick up a copy of my book about high-stakes poker, The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King, I can stay in this business for at least a little longer. All issues about the poker business, for me, return to the same question: Isn't "freeroll" just another term for "a job"?