Annie Duke

Annie Duke, like her brother Howard Lederer was born into a family of gamblers but also one of intellectuals. Her father, Richard, taught at St. Paul’s school in Concord, New Hampshire where she was born.

Annie attended Columbia University, where she majored in Psychology and English, and received a scholarship to continue her graduate studies in Psycholinguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. After 5 years of graduate school, she came within one month of defending her Ph.D. when she decided to quit school.

She married Ben Duke (hence her family name Duke – which she opted to keep after her divorce), and moved to his home in Montana. Fraught with financial hardship, Annie tried all she could to eek out an extra buck or two and she took up professional poker with the help of her brother.

Howard, who had already been playing professionally for a while, helped Annie through coaching and financially as well.

In 1994, Annie and Ben moved to Las Vegas where she could play professional poker full time.

It took quite a while till big time success decided to side with her. Her first impressive achievement came in the 2000 WSOP Big Dance, when she became the final table bubble girl, while 8 months pregnant with her daughter Lucy.

In 2004, she took down her first WSOP bracelet in an Omaha Hi/Lo event, eliminated her brother Howard from the Tournament of Champions and a few other WSOP events and drummed up considerable publicity through her tutoring of actor Ben Affleck who then won the California State Poker Championship. That same year Annie went on to win the Tournament of Champions and took down a prize of $2 million for her win.

Annie Duke currently holds the women’s record for the most WSOP money finishes, and for a while she’d held the record for the biggest single tournament cash a female poker player had ever achieved, until Annette Obrestad beat that record in 2007.

Duke doesn’t play in women only tournaments, as she firmly believes (and rightfully so) that women can compete on equal footings with men in poker.

In 2006, Annie took part in NBC’s 1 vs 100, a trivia show in which she answered 35 consecutive questions correctly before she was eliminated.

She has also appeared on Poker After Dark, no fewer than 3 times, but she failed to win anything there.

She is currently an in-house pro and spokesperson for Ultimate Bet, together with Phil Hellmuth Jr. Ultimate Bet is one of the poker rooms which offer a 30% rakeback. The Ultimate Bet rakeback is endorsed by both Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth.