She proved that in her first go that she could hang with the big dogs and had the makings of a great professional poker player. Fourteen years later, Annie Duke is still hanging with the big dogs in the poker world.

Annie Duke was born in Concord, New Hampshire in 1966. Her father worked as a teacher but is also a writer and linguist.

Her sister Katy is an author and her brother Howard Lederer is…well…a professional poker player just like Annie.  She attended Columbia University, carrying two majors, one in English and one in psychology.

During her studies she married close college friend Ben Duke and she left school in 1992 right before she had to defend her doctorate.

She took up playing poker professionally at this time in order to help get her and her new family through a rough financial time in their new home in Montana.

Howard Lederer financed his sister’s playing and Annie excelled at the game, quickly turning her family’s future around.

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Annie moved her family – Ben, and their children Maud, Leo, Lucy, and Nell – to Portland, Oregon to work for  ieLogic. The name is familiar to anyone who knows the poker community but in case you don’t, ieLogic is one of the many companies that produces online, real time casino gaming software.

Two years later in 2004, Annie and Ben divorced.  In 2005, Annie and the children moved to Los Angeles California and she is now dating producer Joe Reitman.

Since starting her professional poker career in 1994 and moving to Las Vegas, Annie Duke has been slowly making a name for herself among the circuit.

In 2000, she stepped foot into the man’s world of poker, refusing to play the ‘women’s tournaments’ and preferring to swap cards – and chips – with the men at the World Series of Poker main event.

She took 10th place in the tournament, finishing one position short of the final table. And she was eight months pregnant at the time.

Her name became a well-known one in the poker circuit when she tutored actor Ben Affleck for the 2004 California State Poker Championship, in which he won. She went on to play against her brother Howard in the 2004 World Series of Poker in not just one, but four different events.

One of those events just happened to be the Tournament of Champions event in which she took home $2 million in prize money. This was the tournament series in which she won her first gold bracelet at the final table of the Omaha Hi-Lo event. 

So far, Annie Duke holds the record for the most money finishes by a woman in the World Series of Poker. It is interesting to note that in the Main Event of the 2006 World Series of Poker, she was only one or two women left when she was eliminated at 88th place.

Her total live tournament winnings are over $3,500,000.

Annie enjoys spending time with her family when she is away from the poker table and she is part of the poker advisory team for Ultimate Bet, an online poker room. 

She does her best in juggling her family and being a mom with her poker career, something her winnings has allowed her to do more than most. 

She released an autobiography about what it’s like being one of the few women in the poker community and she has guest starred on a variety of television shows which include ‘The Late Show with David Letterman’ and the ‘Colbert Report’. 

She has participated in the ‘Poker After Dark’ games and was even on ‘Deal or No Deal’.

Her favorite poker game: Omaha 8 or better.  Many of the articles she has written for Ultimate Bet have dealt with playing Omaha in its many forms. 

She enjoys movies, and music that includes White Strips, Violent Femmes and Willie Nelson and she counts her big brother Howard Lederer as one of the poker players she respects the most.

Play Annie Duke at Ultimate Bet

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