Annie Duke

Professional Poker Player
TeamUB Member, UltimateBet.com

	Annie's Book How I Raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, and Won Millions at the World Series of Poker
	Annie's DVDs Grab some cards and a bag of microwave popcorn.

Previous Entries


• Blame it on the Bassanova...I mean the Wii
• My New Tattoo!
• Check out this Video!
• The Allergies Just Get Worse
• Stilled Pissed Off about Prop 8
• Barack's Hidden Talent: Poker
• No...I am NOT leaving Ultimatebet!
• HR 6870 Passes Committee! Victory for Online Poker!
• Tina Few is my Hero
• Still Annoyed by Sarah Palin
• I can't resist a political rant
• Lucy Writes a Resume
• Ante Up for Africa 2
• Did I happen to mention I broke it in THREE places?
• I Fractured My Pelvis!
• Big Sunday and San Manuel Steps up Big Time!
• Joe is Out of Surgery and Doing Fine
• Green Dimes
• Down in Costa Rica
• Canadian Fun and then Debating Jom Leach...Even More Fun!
• Heading to NYC
• Coaching Week
• Doing a Cool Thing for The Humane Society with my Brother
• Special Day with Lucy
• London Calling
• Mulholland is a creepy place today
• Getting ready for London and Watch Craig Ferguson Thursday!
• Back from Australia!
• Werribee Open Range Zoo (and a little bit of poker)
• Penguin Parade!
• 19 miles! Holy Crap! Oh.. and heading to Australia today
• I might just run a marathon
• Testifying in Washington!
• Poker Camp Weekend
• PPA Fly-in
• Back from Aruba!
• Happy to be back in the US (for a few days anyway)
• Ante Up for Africa London Looks Like a Go!
• A Sad Day at Runyon Canyon
• What happens when you give up caffeine cold turkey?
• Ante Up for Africa
• Holy Crap! I'm out of Jail!
• WSOP Update
• My First Final Table at This Year's WSOP
• Damn...I'm sick before the WSOP
• Ante Up for Africa
• Mothers Day Breakfast is Improving but then I lost everyone toGuitar Hero
• North Carolina Court Decision
• Playboy Mansion Again!
• Over half a million for Children's Hospital of Boston
• It is a Dark, Dark Day
• Blades of Glory
• Hanging out
• I Think I Can Never Listen to The Kinks Again
• Busy Weekend
• Decision Education Foundation
• Playboy Mansion Party
• I hate my new internet connection!
• NBC Heads Up Challenge
• Another Demonstration of Skill in Poker
• Leo's Special Day
• Rincon WSOP Circuit Event
• Magellan Cruise Line Appearance
• Lucy's 100th Day of School Celebration
• 1 vs 100
• My Brother is a Super Genius
• Everyone is Sick Around Me
• Maybe Poker Really is all Luck
• Cory Lidle Foundation Event
• UltimateBet.com Emmy Party and Portland
• Mexico!
• The WSOP (Sigh)
• Roshambo!
• Lady in the Water
• Hanging in the UltimateBet Suite
• Lawsuit against the WPT
• I am so happy to be able to blog again
• Oh how I hate Computers (and Ringo Starr)
• It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Suited!
• Joe is the Pro in the Family Now
• First Day of the WSOP!
• OUCH!
• Make-A-Wish and oops!
• Lucy's Pretty Party
• Cool Poker Night
• Another Great Charity Event
• Poor Joe
• Head to Hollywood Charity Event
• Movies, DVD's and Kid Time
• What is it with me and hotels lately?
• Two Horrible Movies...Ugh!
• Joe's Birthday!
• Oh, the Humanity! Or the Rice! Whatever...
• Hanging with the Kids
• The Poker Camp was Awesome!
• I should have bet the peanut line
• Ultimate Blackjack Tour!

Blame it on the Bassanova...I mean the Wii
January 04, 2009 05:53 PM

Okay...so I have pretty much ignored all my responsibilities for like a week now.  I haven't been blogging, I haven't edited my book, I haven't made my recordings for http://www.proplaylive.com...I have been ignoring everything.  Why?  Because of the Wii, goddammit.  I love that thing!  My whole family has become a bunch of addicts.  But what is really cool is that what we are addicted to is the Wii Fit. So Leo was starting to get a bit chubby.  Nothing too bad but like maybe 10 pounds too heavy which for an 10 yr old (11 in 3 weeks!) is not a good pattern to start that young.  But he is so into the Wii Fit and in the last week since he set up his file he has already lost 4 pounds and looks visibly more fit.  It is really cool.  He is really into the running and boxing and loves the tightrope! 

I have been doing the hula hoop and running and the balance games.  Love the ski jumping in particularly and I am geting way better at the slalom skiing.  I am the most uncoordinated person on earth with the soccer ball thing. I mostly get hit in the ehad iwth shoes and panda heads and scream the whole time like a complete spaz when everything is flying at my head.  The first time I tried it I only got two balls!  Completely pathetic.

Leo and I were up till 1 in the morning last night doing the Wii fit which I am pretty sure makes me a terrible parent.  We were having so much fun though.  We started on the boxing training and unlocked the 10 minute boxing and had a blast doing that.  Then we did the penguin balance game and the meditation game and then we starting ski jumping.  We did that for like a half hour.  Then we did snow boarding, which I am terrible at.  Leo rocked that pretty good though. After that we did some slalom skiing and then started on the strength exercises.  I think in the end we were Wii Fitting for like 2 hours!  We had such a great time.

Leo was so funny this morning because he was telling everyone that he didn't know what I was going to do now that school is starting and I wouldn't have my Wii partner until all hours of the night.  To tell the truth, he is right.  I have been having so much fun playing with him this week I am definitely going to miss it.

Oh, by the way, Leo isn't the only who has lost weight.  I have lost like 7 pounds after eating my brains out over Christmas.  I have been eating really healthy, no cheating at all, for a year and a half and, for some reason, the week of Christmas this year I just lost my mind.  I was eating cake and pie and just crap all the time.  I don't know why.  I really have no idea.  But I just wanted to eat what I wanted and I just did that for a week.  By the way, I felt like total crap afterwards.  Really just polluted.  So I got myself back in gear and started eating right.  Between the Bikram and the Wii Fit the weight I gained losing my mind has been flying off.

Oh, that is another amazing thing about the Wii...I do Bikram all the time.  I mean I am in really good shape.  Really good shape.  And after doing the Wii I am sore!  The boxing and tennis really get my shoulders and arms.  And after doing the balance games, particularly the ski jumping, made my calves so sore it was ridiculous.

I feel like my family is going to be so much healthier now.  Santa did good this year :-)

My New Tattoo!
December 23, 2008 01:39 AM

I am so excited because I finally got a new tattoo...one that I have been thinking about for a couple of years and I finally pulled the trigger.  So I have always said to my kids, "I love you infinity." And I had this idea for a tattoo that I would weave my kids' names into an infinity symbol.  I went to High Voltage Tattoo originally but the tattoo artist I saw there just didn't get it.  He drew an infinity symbol and then wrote my kids' names in it.  I want my kids' name to form the infinity symbol.  It is a subtle difference but was really important to me and this guy just didn't get what I meant.  That was back in September.

In the meantime, Joe had gone to a place called Zulu Tattoo on Crescent Heights and Melrose.  he got an amazing tattoo from an artist there named Lantz.  Joe's tattoo is the labyrinth from Greek mythology.  I was really impressed by Lantz's work.  So after the disappointment of the meeting with the original guy I decided to go to Lantz and he got it right away.  I was so excited because the drawings he sent my before my appointment were mazing and exactly what I ahd in mind.

I went in Friday morning and 40 minutes later I had my new tattoo on my left forarm.  Here it is:


It is in dark purple ink and I could not be happier! I think it is pretty damn kick ass!

In other news today we decorated a few dozen christmas cookies and gingerbread men,  Christmas shopping is done...and this morning we got all the food shopping done for Christmad dinner which included a 16 lb prime rib.  Tomorrow I am finishing up the wrapping and doing the baking.  Wednesday I am doing the prep for the savory dishes.  I am even going to squeeze yoga in the morning...I better given the number of christmas cookies I ate today!  Mooooooooooo.

Check out this Video!
December 13, 2008 02:42 PM

Ok...this is so super funny!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-HgBrVLv5I
Check it out and watch it. 

On another note, I have no idea where I was in the 80's (okay I do but I will explain that one later) but I just discovered what an amazing dancer Michael Jackson was.  I always think of him as a super creepy dude whose face is totally fucked up or as a cute little dude who sang with the Jackson Five.  But I missed that whole middle Billie Jean and Thriller period.  That's because at the beginning of the 80's I was in boarding school and we didn't have any TV's and then when I went to college I was in New York in the 80's which just meant a lot of going out to clubs every night doing whatever people offered me (stay away from that kids) and dancing and generally getting home around 6 am and trying to sleep through some massive teeth grinding if you get my drift. 

What that meant was that I really wasn't watching TV and, besides, all I had was a little 13 inch black and white thingy that I bought for like 40 bucks at Crazy Eddy's so I could occassionally watch a little something when I happened to be home and awake.  Si I was mostly listening to club music anyway or Jonathon Richmond and Violent Femmes or things that were just, in general, much edgier and less mainstream that Michael Jackson because, at the time, I was trying just too hard to be cool and different and edgy and eccentric (I think I still try too hard for that, by the way). 

So the thing is that I think in all of that I missed out because, in fact, Michael Jackson is a ridiculously good dancer.  And the amazing thing is that his dancing holds up today.  Him dancing 20 years ago looks modern.  Compare that to what hte Solid Gold Dancers were doing at the time (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyvYgDPcRIE)

Anyway, so you have all probably seen these since I was apparently hiding under some sort of NY hipster, club going rock in the 80's but here are some cool Michael Jackson dancing videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mU8QoZMVOU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKBLxh3u0tM&feature=related

The Allergies Just Get Worse
December 01, 2008 02:26 PM

So in September I went and got tested for food allergies because I had been feeling like crap for months.  Stomach pains, swollen joints, just a lot of discomfort since I changed my diet over a year ago.  It was really perplexing to me that when I really made a change for better health I started getting so sick.  I thought maybe I had an ulcer or something until my mom, who has rheumatoid arthritis, went and got tested for food allergies and discovered that she was allergic to a bunch of every day foods, like eggs.  When she cut all the bad foods out she really started feeling better.  her swollen joints unswelled and she is so much more mobile and in so much less pain.

So I thought that since my joints were swelling up a lot along with the stomach pain that maybe it was food that was affecting me. So off I went and when I got my results it was totally obvious why the only days I felt at all well was on days I didn't eat.  I am allergic to green beans, cabbage, carrots, garlic, onions, sesame, soy, baker's yeast, pistachios and hazelnuts.  And not just a little allergic either, a lot allergic.  So that explains why I was feeling sicker when I changed my diet to healthy...I was eating SOY every day all of a sudden.  When you cut dairy out you substitute soy.  Also, all the ehalthy foods I was eating I was flavoring with garlic and onions.  Duh!  So I cut out those foods in September and my health is night and day now.  No more stomach pains.  No more swelling and joint pain.  I am like a new person.

So I took my kids in the other day for testing, too.  Lucy and Nelly have been plagued by bad stomach pain.  Leo has been having lower intestinal issues.  maud has headaches, sinus pain and migraines.  Nelly couldn't be tested because a Calritin she had taken the week before hadn't cleared her system.  But the other three got tested and cooking in this household just got a lot mroe interesting.

Maud is allergic to wheat.  I am giving you the easiest one first.  Now Maud claimed that it was silly, that wheat wasn't a big deal.  But after a week of not eating she announced to me, in only the way a teenager can, "Mom, I hate to admit it to you but I feel a lot better now and my mood is much better."  Ha ha!  Victory for mom!

Now for poor Leo.  He is allergic to mushrooms, salmon, sesame, malt, vanilla and brewer's yeast.  It is the last one that is really bad because along with beer, win and champagne, brewer's yeast is in vinegar which means he can't have any prepackage mustard, mayonaisse, kethcup, salad dressing, most soups, jarred sauces etc.  Vinergar is in everything because it acts as a preservative. The vanilla is a pain too because it means I have to bake special cookies and such fo him with no vanilla and the ppor kids can't eat most chocolate because chocolate almost always has vanilla in it.

Now Lucy.  Lucy is allergic to green beans, carrots, garlic, CHICKEN, EGG YOLK, and cashew.  Chicken and egg yolks?  Okay...so this weekend I baked peanut butter chip cookies with egg white only and no vanilla and oat flour.  Phew...something every single child could eat!  Not easy to find!  But, the egg, chicken and garlic explain why she is always having stomach aches.  Those are staples in her diet.

I am trembling at the thought of Nelly getting tested!  I just hope she doesn't add any thing new to the lists!  As long as she is allergic to some combination of the things the other three are allergic I am okay.  As it is, mealtime is a huge enough challenge.

xo

Stilled Pissed Off about Prop 8
November 16, 2008 04:49 PM

Okay...I thought I would be calmed down by now but I am not.  I am still so angry and ashamed about Prop 8.  I truly cannot get into the head of someone who votes yes on Prop 8.  It makes no sense to me.

Here is the thing:  I don't get the whole we have to maintain the sanctity of marriage thing.  I mean, first, the divorce rate in this country is like 60% so what sanctity are you preserving?  That is a snarky answer, of course, but the real issue is what is this whole thing that marriage has to be between a man and a woman anyway?  As far as I can tell, the people who think homesexuality is a sin seem to reference one line in Leviticus for this.  Okay...so you think the Jews have not found the Lord and yet you are willing to cherry pick ONE line from their bible?  I mean why are you eating shellfish and pork then? Why aren't you stoning people?  There are a lot of laws laid out in the Old Testament that, last time I checked, Christians are not following.  And yet they choose this one line.  There is nothing...and I mean nothing...in the New Testament that says anything about homesexuality at all.  Not one thing.  Clearly Jesus didn't care.  So why should you?

And here is the real point anyway...let's say Jesus did care.  Let's say it was all over the Bible that homesexality is a sin.  So fucking what!  There is separation of church and state last time a checked.  So even if the Christian Bible said it was wrong it doesn't fucking matter.  Because religion doesn't get to influence legislation.  The California Supreme court ruled that you cannot discriminate based on sexual orientation.  The Constitution of the State of California is blind to sexual orientation. Or at least it was until enough people voted their religious beliefs to write discrimination and prejudice into the constitution of this state.  So gross.  I want to know how those people would feel if they got denied the right to make medical decisions for their partner or if they couldn't visit them in the hospital. I guess if you are a same sex couple you don't have feelings or wants or desires or love.  So let's just discriminate because I can reference one line in Leviticus while I eat my yummy lobster.

If we voted to not let black people get married people would be up in arms.  Why is discrimination against same sex couples so much more acceptible?  It is the same thing and equally appalling and disgusting in my opinion.  Discrimination based on sexual orientation is as bad as discrimination based on skin color because all discrimination is wrong.

Why does anyone care who gets married and who doesn't, anyway?  Seriously...when people get married across the country every day is has ZERO effect on me.  Doesn't matter one bit.  Has no effect on my life whatsoever.  Why does anyone care?  Does it threaten your marriage?  No.  Of course it doesn't.  It doesn have any effect on you at all.

The worst thing is all the lies that were circulated about the consequences of prop 8...that religious leaders would get jailed for refusing to perform ceremonies (not true) that gay marriage would be forced to be taught in schools (a.not true b. who cares).  Until more people stand up for what is right...stand up for equal rights for everyone...stand up and say that religious guiding any political choices is WRONG then none of this will change I guess.  In the meantime, I am ashamed to be a Californian.