Annie
Duke is a strong competitor when it comes to tournament poker. Nobody likes
to differentiate between whether a player is male or female. A player is good or
bad regardless of their gender, but I like the fact Annie is a female poker
player. She regularly proves that women can hold their own in a game that is
supposedly "male-oriented". Phil Hellmuth once stated that Annie is the best
all-around woman poker player in the world today and many would agree.
Annie was born in Concord, New Hampshire. She attended school at St. Paul and
went on to Columbia where she double-majored in psychology and English. She then
attended the University of Pennsylvania where she was in pursuit of a doctoral
degree in psycholinguistics. She left the program to begin to play poker. Her
brother Howard Lederer taught her how to play and she hasn't looked back since.
Although she attends the higher-limit tournament poker events, you would be more
likely to see her playing ring games at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
Annie is a mother to four children and that sets her apart from almost anybody
in the poker world. If it was a choice between a tournament or one of her
children's plays, the play was always going to win out. It shows that a person
can have the best of two worlds.
She wants to beat the best at the game whether they are male of female. Annie's
sister, Katy Lederer, recently wrote a memoir titled Pokerface. The book has
great insights into both Annie and Howard's competitive nature. Annie works with
the UltimateBet online cardroom, where you can find her articles on Omaha and
other topics.
Annie has taken over from Amir Vahedi poker tutoring actor Ben Affleck. In June
2004, Affleck won the $10,000 California State Poker Championship No Limit
Hold'em tournament at the Commerce Casino, along with its $356,000 first prize.
Annie Duke is the leading money winner among women in World Series of Poker
history including tenth place in the $10,000 main event when she was eight
months pregnant with her third child. She won her first World Series of Poker
bracelet in the 2004 $2000 Omaha High-Low event. Some of her other
accomplishments include winning the September 2004 ESPN World Series of Poker
Tournament of Champions where a first prize of two million dollars was at stake.
She also earned second in Limit Hold'em in 1999 and 2003 at the World Series of
Poker, second in the Omaha High Low at the Bellagio Five-Star World Poker
Classic and sixth in the Omaha High Low at the 2003 World Series of Poker.
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