 "My dad was ridiculously competitive; he never let us win ... He was like a Tiger Woods dad, he just didn’t know what he was training us for." — Annie Duke |
In between? Well, take a deep breath and try to follow along.
The 42-year-old studied at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania for nine years, got married, had kids, moved to Montana, became a professional poker player, moved to Las Vegas, had more kids, got divorced, moved to Oregon, wrote a book, moved to Los Angeles, got involved with several notable nonprofit causes (Ante Up for Africa, Decision Education Foundation), produced instructional DVDs on poker, tutored celebrities such as Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, started a production company (Ten Dimes Production) with her actor boyfriend Joe Reitman, developed a game show (Annie Duke Takes on the World), fronts a popular online poker site (UltimateBet.com), makes promotional appearances and travels around the world playing in tournaments.
“I’ve taken a weird, winding path,” Duke says.
We caught up with Duke between trips to Australia (for the Aussie Millions Main Event tournament) and Las Vegas, the city where she gained poker fame.
She was headed to Las Vegas for the World Series Of Poker Academy’s two-day Ladies Only Event starting Jan. 25. The academy features some of the top players in the world at its seminars — Phil Hellmuth Jr., Greg Raymer and Scott Fischman — but Brandon Rosen, co-owner of the WSOP Academy, calls Duke the best instructor.
“A lot of good players are excellent players, but they’re not able to explain it,” Rosen said. “She’s able to explain it.”
Duke said it goes back to her days at Penn when she taught classes while working on her doctorate in psychology.
“I love teaching,” Duke said. “It wouldn’t have been the worst career path for me. Now I’ve come full circle.”
Roughly 80 women paid $1,699 each to learn from Duke and the other instructors. Days after attending the WSOP Academy’s only other ladies-only event, Sally Boyer of Utah went on to win the ladies’ world series championship in June. She topped a record field of 1,286 women, but Duke was not among them. She doesn’t play events only for women.
Duke is disappointed there aren’t more women playing against the men, estimating only 3 to 5 percent of the players in WSOP events are women.
 Annie Duke, left, instructs players at the World Series Of Poker Academy's first Ladies-Only Event in June. (Courtesy photos) |
She rose to poker prominence in 2004 when she won a WSOP event and followed up by beating nine of the best players in the world — including her brother, Howard “The Professor” Lederer — in that year’s WSOP Tournament of Champions. At the time, the $2 million she won was the largest purse ever claimed by a female player.
That was headline stuff, but Duke had been making news well before that. The buzz started back at the 2000 WSOP when she just missed a trip to the final table while she was eight months pregnant with her third child. Since 1994, she has won over $3 million in WSOP events.
“She’s definitely withstood the test of time,” Rosen said. “She’s one of the brightest minds in poker.”
She is also a good story in a family of good stories.
Her father, Richard Lederer, a former teacher at St. Paul’s, is a prominent author and speaker who now lives in San Diego. Duke credits the card games they used to play with him for helping her and her brother become such successful poker players.
“My dad was ridiculously competitive; he never let us win,” Duke said. “He was like a Tiger Woods dad, he just didn’t know what he was training us for. Thankfully my brother found it first.”
Duke says it was Howard Lederer who taught her to play poker and encouraged her to move to Las Vegas and become a professional. Her sister, Katy Lederer, wrote a book about their lives in Concord called “Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers.”
Duke is certainly a star, a player the big tournaments want to have in the field. But her recent trip Down Under was the first time she had played the Aussie Millions.
Why? Because it always took place during her son Leo’s birthday. This year, Aussie Millions came a week before his birthday, so Duke went. She didn’t do well, but she found a great place to take her family on vacation next spring.
And that takes us back to this spring trip to Concord.
“I love Boston and I look forward to my kids seeing the history I saw as a kid,” Duke said. “And I’m going to show them my hometown.”
