Annie Duke: Celebrity Apprentice Star Recommits to Poker and Emerges as a Champion

You can get a good impression of a person after just one conversation. Annie Duke’s enthusiasm to discuss and debate a variety of subjects is infectious, and a simple question about poker can take you on a road trip that includes world issues and intellectual pursuits before circling back to the game that first brought her into the spotlight.

You walk away with a detailed picture of a well-rounded poker player in an era in which that is becoming an increasingly rare commodity.

In recent years, Duke has focused on raising her family, charitable pursuits, and teaching poker. She appeared on The Celebrity Apprentice on NBC, finishing second behind Joan Rivers, and became one of the most recognized poker players on the planet.

Duke’s multiple confrontations with Rivers on the show garnered a lot of attention, thanks to the popularity of reality television in America. But the show also highlighted her charity fund-raising efforts, which were aided generously by the poker community.

On The Celebrity Apprentice, she raised $730,725 for Refugees International, easily topping the $526,547 that Rivers raised for God’s Love We Deliver. She continues to be extremely active with her contributions to charitable causes. Her upcoming schedule includes charity events that will benefit Ante Up for Africa, 1736 Family Crisis Center, Decision Education Foundation, and After-School All-Stars.

These pursuits away from the felt have caused Duke to spend less time at the tables. But this year she has made an effort to play poker consistently, and so far, her efforts have paid off nicely.

She finished 19th out of a field of 745 players at the L.A. Poker Classic, and took home more than $45,000 in prize money. A few days later, she added another milestone to her poker achievements by becoming the first woman to win the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship (see the sidebar in this story). She now has more than $4.2 million in lifetime tournament winnings.

Card Player recently caught up with Duke, and she shared her opinion about harnessing her popularity in both the poker community and the general public to do good for others.

Finding Balance and Coming Back to Poker With Strong Results

Ryan Lucchesi: How important is it for you to find balance with poker so that you can continue to lead a well-rounded life?

Annie Duke: I’m a huge believer in balance, and one of the things I think is really funny is that one of the criticisms that is often thrown at me is, “She hardly ever plays, she’s not even a poker player.” I think that is so funny, because I consider it such a compliment; yeah, because I spend a lot of time with my kids and a lot of time with my nonprofit organizations. I teach at poker camps, which is really fulfilling. Poker has been so good to me, so to be able to inspire people and be engaged in their learning process so that they can become better players is very cool.

Erik Seidel has been my prime example, as he is a totally balanced individual. [Author’s note: This comment was made prior to the 2010 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship. We have kids on their computers all day when they’re in the Bahamas and Aruba. Erik made a funny comment during that week: “It’s a bad week for sunscreen sales in the Bahamas.” Really, guys, go outside.

RL: What does the NBC Heads-Up win mean to you at this point in your career?

AD: I have to say that it means so much to me, because I don’t play a lot of poker anymore. I just took October to February off from poker, and I spent a lot of time thinking about what my priorities are and what I want to do. I feel like I came back with a desire to win, and that time off gave me an opportunity to focus and understand my priority for poker. It’s family first, and poker second. This is what I want to do, and at my base, I’m a poker player, so I came back hungry. To take that hunger and turn it into one of the most prestigious titles of the year is really amazing and really, really gratifying.

RL: Will we now see you at a lot of tournaments?

AD: I’m not going to play a lot of poker comparatively, in a sense, because I don’t want to end up resenting poker. My family is always going to come first. I am going to hit the World Series very hard. The secret for me is to take some time off after the World Series. I play my heart out during the World Series, and take a break from my family. I started feeling that when I was at tournaments right after the Series, if I got knocked out early, it was cool, because then I could go home and see my family. Obviously, when you start thinking that way, you do not play as well. You make calls that are more risky because you don’t care about staying in the tournament anymore.

Charity Work

RL: Tell me about the plans for your two major charity groups in 2010.

AD: The more I can keep my profile up as a player — because the main way that I raise money for charities is as a poker player — the better it will be for my charities, and for awareness of them. I just love the fact that those two things are so synergistic.

I co-founded Ante Up for Africa, and I’m on the board for the Decision Education Foundation. I threw an event for them at Commerce Casino with Matt Savage during the fall [the event raised $70,000]. The DEF is an educational foundation, so we are developing a curriculum that helps kids to develop critical-thinking skills and decision-making skills in grades K-12. There is a specific focus on middle schools.

We also host a summer institute where the teachers come and learn the course and learn how to teach the stuff to their kids. We identify clear alternatives, figuring out relevant information, goal-setting, and peer values. If you’re Machiavellian and believe that the ends justify the means, your choices are different than someone who doesn’t believe that the ends justify the means, so you have to know what your own values are. We enforce commitment to follow-through and rational thinking. We teach them all of these steps. It’s built into the things they are already teaching.

Just think back to kindergarten and the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears with these questions: What was the first bad decision that Goldilocks made? What were her other choices? What were the consequences of those alternative choices? What were the direct consequences of the choices that she made? You go through the book like that, and you get kindergartners thinking about choices and consequences, and their alternatives. In high school, you can teach Macbeth that way. They retain the material better because they are more engaged.

I’ve been doing a lot of public speaking in conjunction with these causes. I’ve been spending a lot more time on that kind of stuff, somewhat to the detriment of poker.

RL: How important is it to harness the power of celebrity for charities?

AD: It’s huge, because a hurdle for a lot of charities is just awareness. Nobody can deny that each charity does good work, but it is about raising awareness. With Sudan, it has been really amazing to see what poker has been able to do to help raise awareness of that issue.

When poker started getting big, I thought there were two things I could do with this. On a personal level, I could spend more time with my children. When it becomes big, if you can build a brand, you can do passive things, which allows me to spend more time with my kids, which is always my goal. The other thing is that now I can really do some good with this. Those are the two things I have been focused on. Once poker went on TV, I saw an opportunity to really use that for some things that were important to me.

It’s been great, because I feel like, particularly in the last three years or so, I have gotten back to the kinds of intellectual pursuits I was involved with before I got into poker. That’s not to say that poker isn’t an intellectual exercise. I was a professor, and was teaching in college before poker. Particularly with all of the idea conferences and the work I’m doing with the DEF, I feel that it has been a renaissance for me.

The Celebrity Apprentice

RL: What made you decide to appear on The Celebrity Apprentice?

AD: Here is the deal with Apprentice. I had no interest in being on a reality show at all. I went into the meeting with the producers with no intention of going on the show, but it was a hard meeting to get and my manager worked really hard to get it, so I went.

During the meeting, they explained to me that I would be raising money for charity, at which point my internal monologue switched to, “OK, now I have to really think about going on the show.” I had some discussions with Don [Cheadle] and Norman [Epstein], my co-founders of Ante Up for Africa. They asked me what my strategy would be, and I was like, “I don’t know, I’ve never watched the show.”

So, when they asked me to be on the show, I couldn’t say no, because the opportunity to raise money was too great. That was the only reason I went on the show. I wasn’t looking to go on a reality show; I wasn’t looking to raise my profile. I literally went on there only for charity. I didn’t go on there to represent poker players. I went on there to represent myself and my charity.

RL: How do you think you and other poker players were represented on the show?

AD: Despite Joan Rivers, I think poker players were represented very well. The poker community was so generous. The show raised $1.5 million, and our community raised $730,000. It was a 16-person show, and that was 50 percent of the money.

I understand that I’m a poker player, as well, and I was mindful of that, but one of the things that really horrified me the most about that show was when Rivers started attacking all poker players. I really felt that had I known she was going to do that before she started doing it, I might not have done the show. She had such an outdated view of what poker players are. She actually said out loud on one of the shows, “All your friends are Mafia,” which is pretty funny if you think about Chris Ferguson being a mob boss. I was glad that people saw that this is a very charitable community.

Annie Duke Wins 2010 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship
Defeats Erik Seidel in Finals, Ending Five Years of Futility for the Two at the Biggest Invitational Tournament in Poker

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again; and if you still haven’t succeeded after that, just keep trying. This advice was taken to heart by both Annie Duke and Erik Seidel at the 2010 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship at Caesars Palace recently. The two players had a combined record of one win and 10 losses heading into this year’s event, but when the championship final began after three days of single-elimination matches, they were the final two players remaining.

Paths to the Finals

Seidel’s path to the finals included victories over defending champion Huck Seed (round one), David Williams (round two), Chris Moneymaker (“Sweet 16”), Peter Eastgate (“Elite Eight”), and Scotty Nguyen (“Final Four”). These five wins were the first that he had ever booked in the event; he had lost in the first round in each of the five previous years of the tournament.

Duke’s path to the finals included victories over Andy Bloch (round one), Darvin Moon (round two), 2007 champion Paul Wasicka (“Sweet 16” — the most exciting single match in the tournament), Jerry Yang (“Elite Eight”), and Dennis Phillips (“Final Four”). Duke had fared slightly better than Seidel in her five previous appearances, winning one match for a 1-5 record, with no cashes.

Her “Sweet 16” match against Wasicka lasted almost two hours, and Wasicka was all in twice for his tournament life and came from behind in the hand to double up. The second time, Wasicka took the chip lead, thanks to a rivered flush. Duke then moved all in with the A 10, only to see Wasicka wake up with the A A. The flop came A J 2, and Duke was nearly drawing dead. She picked up some life when the Q hit on the turn, giving her four outs to the straight, and the room went nuts when the K came on the river, giving her the winning straight and the chip lead. The two got all in shortly after that, and Duke managed to crack Wasicka’s pocket jacks with 8-5 suited to advance.

Championship Match

The final battle between the two friends began with Duke scoring a victory to take a one-game lead in the best-of-three championship. Duke started off game one in the hole against Seidel, but stormed back to take a big lead, thanks to countless value-bets and relentless pressure.

Seidel was backed into a corner and forced to commit the rest of his stack with the 8 6 on a flop of K J 7. Duke made the easy call with the A K, and it held up when the turn and river brought the J and A. Duke now had a 1-0 lead, but Seidel won the next game to even the score and ensure that the match would go the three-game distance.

Seidel quickly built up a large lead in the second game, and it was just a matter of time before Duke was all in. She decided to move in with the K 5, and Seidel was priced in with the 8 7. The board gave him a straight when it came 9 6 4 5 9, and he won the game.

Duke was all in for her tournament life at one point in the final game, but she doubled up to take a large chip lead with a pair of queens. Seidel moved all in with the A 2 shortly thereafter, but Duke was waiting for him with pocket nines, which improved to a straight on an 8 7 6 5 8 board, giving her the championship.

Runner-up Seidel took home $250,000. He improved his overall NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship record to 5-6, and increased his career tournament winnings to more than $10 million (making him the ninth player in history to achieve that feat). Duke added another landmark victory to her storied career, and won $500,000 as the first woman NBC National Heads-Up Poker champion. She now has $4,247,824 in career tournament winnings, and adds this marquee win to her other top achievements, which include a World Series of Poker _win in 2004 and a victory in the inaugural _WSOP Tournament of Champions in 2004. She improved her overall NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship record to 7-5, and added her name to an elite list of champions by winning the event.

NBC National Heads-Up Poker Champions:
2010: Annie Duke
2009: Huck Seed
2008: Chris Ferguson
2007: Paul Wasicka
2006: Ted Forrest
2005: Phil Hellmuth

Final Results:
1. Annie Duke — $500,000
2. Erik Seidel — $250,000
3. Scotty Nguyen — $125,000
3. Dennis Phillips — $125,000
5. Jerry Yang — $75,000
5. Doyle Brunson — $75,000
5. Jason Mercier — $75,000
5. Peter Eastgate — $75,000
9. Paul Wasicka — $25,000
9. Eli Elezra — $25,000
9. Annette Obrestad — $25,000
9. Barry Greenstein — $25,000
9. Gabe Kaplan — $25,000
9. Phil Laak — $25,000
9. Chris Moneymaker — $25,000
9. Jamie Gold — $25,000