Annie Duke Poker Book Review: How I Raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, and Won Millions at the World Series of Poker

The name of this book is Annie Duke and it's all about Annie Duke and how she won the Omaha 8 or Better tournament at the World Series of Poker, how she won the Tournament of Champions against a field of very good players, how she had four kids, how she grew up, how she got married and divorced, her anxiety attacks, her almost academic career, her critics, her passion for poker, etc.



The part I liked best was when she went into the Crystal Lounge in beautiful downtown Billings, Montana for the first time to play poker against an all-male line up of crusty old ranchers and cowboys and assorted male chauvinists. In one of the first hands she was dealt ace-queen and got a lot action and ended up making a full house on the river. How sweet that must have been!

It is also about how Annie kicks off her shoes and tucks her legs under her butt and settles in to play cards; how she pukes when she feels panicky, but how once the cards are in the air, she is in no danger of throwing up. The cards and the machinations of the game distract her. This is also about how she wanted so much to be thin and liked and pretty, and how she loved to party.

Frankly I don't know what to make of Annie (née Lederer) Duke. Personally I never played cards with her. I don't know whether she wins because she's good at reading people, or because she has an instinct for sharp aggressive play, or because of her experience and understanding of the game. Reading this book I would say all three. Her brother Howard Lederer is a world class player himself, and he taught her a lot. And she paid her dues playing small stakes games.

I found it interesting that while playing $50 and $100 hold'em in Vegas she made between $50 and $100 an hour (p. 160). And when she played at home on the Internet she made about $40 an hour. She also writes about losing $300,000 in one week at high stakes cash games (p. 182), and intimates that she bombed out of the $1,000/$2,000 hold'em game at (I presume) the Bellagio. She writes she "wasn't happy" playing at that level (p. 189). One thing I have to tell you--and Annie Duke mentions not a word about this subject, not a single word, is that high stakes poker players have an intimate relationship with the IRS and they are always trying to find ways to lay off their winnings to reduce their taxes. So I would take her winning and losing figures with the proverbial grain of salt.

It is also interesting to note that Annie Duke may be more of an instinctive player than a scientific/mathematical player. The great swings that her bankroll apparently went through suggest that she (and her brother as well) are very, very good when they are on, but fairly ordinary when they are off their game. Scientific/mathematical players keep a more even keel. Of course the greatest players in the world are both instinctive and scientific.

She writes that you can have a hand in which you are a 2 to 1 favorite and can "lose it ten times in a row," adding "that's not statistically surprising" (box on page 183). Well, the odds against losing ten times in a row when you are a 2 to 1 fav are almost sixty thousand to one. If it happens, it would be a lot more than "statistically surprising."

She also writes that for safety's sake you ought to have about 300 times the big blind in your game as a bankroll. Actually, how big a bankroll you need depends on what kind of player you are and how great an edge you have over the competition. If you have a big edge, you only need a small bankroll. If your edge is small you need a larger bankroll. But even if you are a winning player but play a lot of hands, your variance will be larger and you will need a larger bankroll. Annie does a good job of explaining this in Chapter 24. However, she reports that her brother went through a four-month period when he was "losing literally every day." (p. 182)

Somehow I doubt that. The odds of a winning player losing that consistently are astronomical. What can happen, however, is that even very good players can drift away from their best game and can go on TILT. They can lose their confidence and actually become losing players.

As was pointed out by another reviewer that was a king-high straight that she made on page 49, not an ace-high, but that isn't her mistake. That's the equivalent of a typo. Another bit of carelessness is in the glossary where "river" is defined as the "final community card in Texas Hold'em or Omaha." Actually the term originally referred to the final card in seven card stud, a game appropriately dubbed "Down the River" long before hold'em ever came into existence.

By the way, if you don't know how to play Omaha 8 or better (also called Omaha hi-lo) a lot of poker hands she recalls will be difficult to appreciate. Also the structure of the book in which alternating chapters refer to her playing and then to her life experiences may be a bit artificial for some readers.

Bottom line: a little too, too much Annie Duke here for some readers and not much in the way of instruction, but an interesting read anyway.

One final point: she did it. Annie beat the best and she made millions, and nobody can take that away from her. I just hope she invests her winnings well and concentrates on raising her four kids.

Bradley Monton

Poker DVD Review: Annie Duke's Advanced Texas Hold'em Secrets - How to Beat the Big Boys by Annie Duke

This is one of those "As Seen on TV" DVD series that included Phil Hellmuth, Howard Lederer and Annie Duke among others. With some failings in mind, this one is certainly the best of the series due to some original content not yet discussed by other pros.

From her poker table Duke chips up a significant amount of tips including some advanced theories on bluffing and tells which I found to be qualified enough to actually call them secrets, hence the title. Included in that is some pretty interesting stuff on FBI profiling, which annie claims to have studied in depth and relates that to bluffing at a live table.

I like this DVD for the main reason that it dishes out the steak, without wasting all the time other such products do with beginner material, which is so easy to find for free these days. Duke takes her work seriously here, and comes across more professional than I have ever seen her.

One of the things missing is excitement, be it audio or visual. Duke isn't the easiest person to listen to for over an hour, seemingly just on this side of abrasive for the whole session. As well, some visual accents would go a long way to breaking this thing up. I am sure someone must have considered throwing in some actual table shots, interviews, and real life examples - but got nixed it along the way. Too bad. Overall a recommended product.