Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #559875 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Customer Reviews

You gotta love her!
I have been playing poker for several years, and when they started broadcasting the World Series of Poker on ESPN I was hooked from the start. And as happens to most people I immediately took a liking for some players and started hating others. Annie Duke was among my favorites from the start, together with Daniel Negreanu, Chris Ferguson and Gus Hansen. So 2004 was a great year for "my players", since Negreanu was player of the year, battling it out with Ferguson, Hansen dominated the WPT, and Annie won the Tournament of Champions.

That is why when this book came out I undoubtedly wanted to check it out; and the result was as good as expected. Not only did I get to relive in Annie's own narration some of the tournaments she had played, but I also got to know more about what led her to that place in life. On top of that, she uses a very interesting style in her writing, intertwining the chapters about poker with those dealing with her marriage, studies and kids. While I was reading this book I got the same sense I get from when I see her playing on TV: that she is a very entertaining person, and one that would be fun to have in my poker table (of course, unless my goal is to win some money).

Annie also includes text boxes throughout the book that contain poker advice, mostly for newbies, but I found a couple of pointers that helped me become a better player. At the end there is a more thorough explanation about the different types of poker (focused on Texas Hold 'Em and Omaha Hi-Lo) and a brief description of the most prominent poker players that dominate the spotlight nowadays.

The book is great, but I cannot help but point out a couple of things that surprised me as being wrong. The first one has to do with the fact that Annie makes reference to another poker pro that carried out a vicious internet campaign against her, but she never mentions him by name. I don't really understand the reason behind this mystery. The second has to do with a mistake she makes when describing an Omaha hand. She mentions having a nut straight, which is accurate, but then she goes on to say that the straight was A-K-Q-J-10 when for this she is using three of her hole cards (A,Q,J), which you cannot do in Omaha. She did have the nut straight, because there was a 9 on the board, and the straight was K-Q-J-10-9. Anyway, this is not a huge deal, but it really surprised me that such an accomplished poker player would make that mistake. Bottom line: she still gets five stars in my book!

Interesting insights into the life of Annie Duke
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 punks 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.