Annie Duke

At 58 years old, Annie Duke has this physical status:

Duke first played Texas hold'em at age 22 in a casino and continued to play for fun in Las Vegas casinos while visiting her brother, Howard Lederer, during her graduate school years. In 1992 after Duke moved to Billings her brother encouraged her to play poker professionally, sending her $2,400 and providing her with poker instruction books and lessons by phone. She began to play poker initially at the Crystal Lounge, a local bar in Billings that had a legal poker room. Following a successful year playing in Montana, her brother prompted her to enter tournaments at the 1994 World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas. Within the first month, she won $70,000 and decided to move to Las Vegas to pursue a professional poker career.

In the first two tournaments of the 1994 World Series of Poker, Duke placed 14th and 5th, and finished 26th in the Main Event. Following her move to Las Vegas, Duke continued successfully playing poker on a professional basis through the late 1990s, and by 2000 had 16 in the money finishes at WSOP events, prior to the WSOP World Championship event that year.

From 2000 onward, she became well known for her high-profile achievements in WSOP events. In the 2000 WSOP World Championship event, although nine months pregnant with her third child, she placed 10th out of a total of 512 players, which was the second-highest finish by a woman in the event's history. She received a WSOP gold bracelet in 2004, placing first out of 234 entrants in an Omaha Hi-Lo Split tournament. By July of that year she had become the top female money winner in the history of the WSOP; earning over $650,000 from 25 in the money finishes, including 13 at the final table. Later in 2004, she placed first in the inaugural WSOP Tournament of Champions, beating her brother and nine former world championship winners and winning $2 million. In the 2006 WSOP, she was one of only two women left in the tournament when she finished in 88th place with $51,129 in winnings.

In 2010, Duke won the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship; she outlasted a field of 64 players, including eliminating previous winner Huck Seed, and defeating Erik Seidel in the final match. She won $500,000 and became the first and only female winner of the event, which ended in 2013.

In a 2020 interview, Duke described herself as retired from poker, stating she had not played since 2012. Duke's total winnings from her 39 cashes at the WSOP is $1,166,567. As of September 2021, Duke's total lifetime live tournament winnings of $4,270,548 still place her at fourth overall on the list of women all-time live tournament winnings.

From 2001 to 2004, Duke worked as a spokesperson and consultant for ieLogic, a company that developed online poker software for multiplayer poker websites including Ultimate Bet. She moved to Portland, Oregon where ieLogic was based in 2002 and remained there until 2005.

In 2008, poker champion and Ultimate Bet spokesperson Russ Hamilton was found to be using cheating software to see other players’ cards, which would ultimately win him millions of dollars. Though Ultimate Bet officials assured users that Hamilton acted alone, later evidence showed that other officials at the site knew about the scheme.

Duke represented Ultimate Bet as a spokesperson until December 2010, when she announced that she was leaving the company. No evidence was presented against Duke and there was no investigation of such with regard to any involvement or benefiting from any fraudulent crimes pertaining to the company.

On two occasions, Duke has testified in Congress on behalf of the Poker Players Alliance regarding the legality of Internet gambling. In 2007, she appeared in front of the House Committee on the Judiciary to testify against the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, and in 2010, she appeared in front of the House Committee on Financial Services to provide support for H.R. 2267, the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act.

In 2013, audio recordings released by Travis Makar proved that Duke knew about the so-called God Mode but did not use it to swindle players as it was on a time delay.

As of June 2020, Duke describes herself as retired from poker and says she has not played since 2012.

In addition to her advocacy regarding online gambling on behalf of the Poker Players Alliance, Duke has also been involved in debate about whether players should be allowed to wear the logos of their sponsor companies at televised poker events. In the mid-2000s, she was one of a number of players that argued against such restrictions being placed on players.

In 2006, she was one of seven players who filed a lawsuit against the World Poker Tour (WPT), alleging that the WPT's release forms, required for participation in their events, were anti-competitive and violated individuals' rights to their own image. The suit was settled in 2008, when the WPT agreed to modify the release form.

Duke has opposed and avoided playing at the WSOP Ladies Event, arguing that having a separate WSOP bracelet event for women suggests that there is a difference in intellect between men and women. Duke has supported women in poker through coaching women players at the LIPS (Ladies International Poker Series) Tour, instructing at several women-only World Series of Poker Academy events, and giving the keynote speech at the 2011 Women in Poker Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

She has served on the World Series of Poker Player Advisory Council and has taught at the WSOP Poker Academy poker school. She has coached a number of celebrities on how to play poker, including Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, whom she coached to win the 2004 California State Poker Championship.

Duke was a co-founder and commissioner of the Epic Poker League, which sponsored three tournaments at the Palms Casino Resort in 2011. Through the three tournaments, the league raised more than $125,000 for charity: $53,000 for humanitarian organization Operation USA; $25,000 for the charity Fallen Heroes USA, which supports families of law enforcement officers who die in service; and $48,000 for the Prevent Cancer Foundation's "Bad Beat on Cancer" campaign.

The league was co-founded by former World Series of Poker commissioner Jeffrey Pollack, operating under Pollack's company Federated Sports + Gaming. After Epic Poker held its first three planned events, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on February 28, 2012. Filing records show Federated Sports + Gaming owed creditors more than $8 million, while Duke earned at least $299,000 in salary. The Epic Poker League and its parent company were acquired by Pinnacle Entertainment in a June 2012 bankruptcy auction. During 2011, Duke and Eric Faulkner, the CIO of Federated Sports + Gaming, created the Global poker index (GPI). The index ranks the top 300 live tournament poker players each week.

Duke's first book was an autobiography titled Annie Duke: How I raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, and Won Millions at the World Series of Poker (ISBN 1594630127, 978-1594630125) was published in September 2005. Decide to Play Great Poker, (co-authored with John Vorhaus.) is a strategy book for no-limit hold'em, and was published in June 2011. The following year, Duke and Vorhaus published a second book together, The Middle Zone, which focused on strategy for difficult hands. Thinking in Bets, is a guide to selecting and applying decision strategies in uncertainty, was released in 2018. In addition to her instructional books, Duke released an instructional DVD series including Annie Duke's Advanced Texas Hold'em Secrets: How to Beat the Big Boys and in 2005 she launched a range of poker products with ESPN. Duke's most recent book "How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices" (ISBN 0593418484, 978-0593418482) was released in 2020.

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