Evil Poker Players Part I: The Annie Duke Edition

Written by:
Jagajeet Chiba
Published on:
Sep/08/2015
Evil Poker Players Part I: The Annie Duke Edition

Welcome to our new series here at Gambling911.com, a combined effort between two of Gambling911.com’s intrepid reporters, Thomas Somach and Jagajeet Chiba.  Great minds don’t always think alike, however.  Our first selection for the series, Annie Duke, had Somach and Chiba butting heads a bit.  Be sure to check out our "Evil Poker Players" sponsor AmericasCardroom and learn how to enter to win a guaranteed piece of a sweet $5 million

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“Annie (Duke) is not evil,” insisted Somach, who stopped short of annointing her sainthood angry.  “She does give to many charities.”
Chiba immediately chimed in: “Her top charity it appears was the ability to review super user information from a now defunct online poker, UltimatePoker.com, that she most certainly profited from.”

Chiba adds: “(Tom) Somach must have been asleep at the wheel these past four years when it comes to Duke's escapades.  By the way, whatever became of her charity?”

Things that make you go hmmmm.

Now, now fellas

Let’s check out below what Chiba really thinks of Ms. Duke.  Each series requires five reasons why the profiled poker player is evil to the core.

Reason 1 – She’s a Bitch

Forget how she treated the late great comedian Joan Rivers and her daughter Melissa on “Celebrity Apprentice” a few years back, this woman even grew nasty with our own famed reporter Jenny Woo.

I had a chance to meet up with Jenny the other day for some non-alcoholic drinks and dinner while traveling through her home base of Pensacola. 

Speaking of Jenny, some things never change.  I still had to pay for dinner.  But the world may be about to end.

Some things I swore I'd never hear Ms. Woo say: "I don't drink" and....hold on folks, wait for it, wait for it.

"7 pm dinner?  That's too late.  I need to be up early."

Good Lord!!!

Getting back to what Woo had to say about Annie.  She tells me: “Here I am giving this woman and her charities some free press and she was all pissed at me for getting the time wrong,” Woo tells us.  “First off, I was told a certain time by her publicist and that is the time I contacted her for the interview.  ‘No you were wrong and you need to get it right next time’.  Whatever Bitch!  I just bit my tongue. 

“Maybe she was on a different time zone but seriously, if she’s going to talk down to people who are supposed to be her peers, one can only imagine how she treats those poor uneducated Somalis she claims to help out.

“She sure was acting real evil that day, but maybe Annie was on her period.  She has a very nasty disposition.  I can vouch for this.

Reason 2 – Her Relationship with the Folks From UltimateBet

While recordings that surfaced after an insider cheating scandal at UltimatePoker a few years back appeared to show that site's other pro player representative, Phil Hellmuth, had been oblivious to all that was transpiring, not so with Duke. 

Poker player Russ Hamilton was eventually determined to be the “cheater”, and he’s gone on the lam ever since.

From PokerNews:

Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke, former endorsers and sponsored players for Ultimate Bet for many years, were also mentioned during the recording. While Hamilton and the others discussed keeping Hellmuth in the dark about the "God Mode" program, Hamilton pointed out that Duke was aware of it and even used the software herself on a 15-minute delay.

Reason 3 – Evil Kin

There is a great show on the network Investigation Discovery called “Evil Kin” that looks at multiple evil family members.  Seems the poker community has its own version of the “Bloody Benders”. 

Not that Annie or her even more disreputable brother, Howard Lederer, killed anyone. 

They didn’t have to.

In the case of Howard, he just used folks money to make himself fat and rich as part of an elaborate ponzi scheme.

We’re sure Annie was kept in the dark (sarcasm).

People finally started getting paid four years later, no thanks to Mr. Lederer, who would occasionally be spotted eating at fancy restaurants and driving a brand new luxury car after the U.S. Feds caught onto his scheme.

Oh, maybe Howard was giving all this money to those starving Africans Duke professes to help. 

Reason 4 – Sparring with Fellow Pro Daniel Negreanu

Unlike Duke, Negreanu is beloved by most in the poker community and he can’t stand the woman.  There must be a reason.  He once even referred to her as a “low life”, long before it ever became known to the rest of us that she probably is one.

He claimed back in 2003 Duke was angle-shooting in Stud-8-or-Better games by not splitting the pot when she said she was going to, according to PokerListings.com

There is enough evil here involving her treatment of Negreanu to do a whole series just on Duke, but check out what else PokerListings.com reported from that time.  The cliff notes:  He basically accuses her of being a cheater….not once, not twice, but on multiple occasions.

He says she habitually looks at the hands of players next to her and once swore on her kids that she didn’t look when she had, in fact, seen the cards.

Negreanu referred to a three-handed satellite to the WSOP Main Event where she picked up an opponent’s cards from the muck and looked at them. She apparently said “Just checking” and threw the cards back into the muck.

Negreanu accuses Duke of looking at his hole cards during a $300/$600 mix game.

According to Negreanu, Duke used to steal other player’s seats.

In the 1999 WSOP Main Event Negreanu claimed Duke was involved in a hand where another player made a string bet. Another player at the table, Steve Kaufman, who wasn’t involved in the hand made the dealer aware of the string bet. Duke lost it on Kaufman and said “This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me in a tournament.”

Negreanu talked in detail about how Duke treated him when they first met at the 4 Queens.

Reason 5 – She’s Been Compared to Hitler – “With Apologies to the Führer”

Okay so maybe Annie is not on par with Hitler and Joan Rivers went a little overboard comparing her to that evil little ruler from the early half of the last century…. But who didn’t love Joan Rivers?  And she does call Annie a Nazi.  Watch below. 

So is Annie Duke really evil?

We think so.

But you can all make your own judgments about her.

We here at Gambling911.com – with the exception of maybe Thomas Somach – think she is not just evil…..but evil to the core.

- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com

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