iCommune Poker

Annie Duke of UltimateBet was born in Concord, New Hampshire and lived there throughout her entire childhood. Cards was a huge part of the family and they always played house games against each other where winning was the only thing important to them. If you didn’t already know Annie Duke’s brother is Howard Lederer of Full Tilt Poker who is also a poker pro and has dominated the circuit.

Annie left her small town of Concord to go to Columbia University when she was eighteen years old as she wanted to try life in the big city. She later graduated from Columbia with a major in Psychology and English and was planning on becoming a teacher like both her parents. Her plans changed though and she went to the University of Pennsylvania to study Cognitive Psychology.

After starting her studies at the University of Pennsylvania she decided to propose to an old-time friend and leave all of her studies behind. She married her old friend Ben Duke and moved away to Colorado to live with Ben. In order to pay the bills and mortgage Annie started playing poker in local card rooms and winning quite a bit of money.

Once her brother Howard seen how well she was doing at the local poker rooms in Colorado he made a suggestion to her that she should join one of the World Series of Poker events in Vegas. Annie decided that it was worth the chance and she entered the 1994 WSOP main event where she placed thirteenth. After winning money in the main event she started playing cash games in Vegas for the rest of the month and she kept seeing success. At this point Annie and Ben Duke moved to Las Vegas so that she could continue playing poker professionally on Ulimate Bet.

Annie is a true poker star and has been playing poker professionally now for over a decade and has amassed quite the resume which has made her one of the best poker players in the world. She won her first WSOP bracelet in 2004 and in that same year she won an invitation only event for poker champions with a first place prize of $2 million. You can still see Annie playing in many of the large buy-in events on the WSOP, WPT and other events as well as television shows. Duke is constantly asked to appear on poker television shows and she has made more appearances then most poker players in the world.

Annie has appeared on television shows like Poker After Dark and she has also hosted an UltimateBet television show with Phil Hellmuth where the two needed to choose poker teams from certain players after watching them play. Annie also has her own book and DVD series training poker players to become professional poker players just like she has. Just recently you might have remembered seeing Annie Duke appear on the Celebrity Apprentice.

Currently Annie Duke is living in Los Angeles and taking a break from the cash game action to spend time with her family. Annie has four children who she cares for dearly and this limits the amount of time she can spend playing poker these days.