Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book intercuts between the play at a huge WSOP Omaha Hi-Low Split poker tourney and Ms. Duke's life story.

The method works, but depending on the reader, you'll be rooting for one -- the game -- or the other -- the life story -- to come back.

She's from a studious but dysfunctional family: heck they're probably all geniuses, but Mom's drinking and playing solitaire, and Dad's grading papers and trying to break out of his genteel poverty teaching at a prestigious prep school.

Fortunately, things get better: her older brother, poker champ Howard Lederer, learns to beat the odds in card games and sports betting. Mom works for him. And Dad writes a series of entertaining, immensely popular, pun-filled books on the English language. (No, I'm not making this up.)

Therefore, the book is filled with a harrowing life story, a report on what it feels like to be the final table of a big poker tourney, and poker tips. The poker tips are scattered about the text in little boxes, but they are the real goods from a professional player.

Unlike other poker memoirs I've read, this book has a whiz-bang happy ending, and it reads as fast as folding to an allin bet from Ms. Duke.

Or, for another point of view on Annie's family, read Poker Face by Katy Lederer, her younger sister. (I told you they're all geniuses.) It's a touching memoir of growing up Lederer, but you won't learn any poker from it.

P.S. I wanted a bigger book with more poker strategy. When you learn how well Annie's done at the tables, you know she knows a lot more than she reveals about the game.

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!

The two best reasons for reading ANNIE DUKE are for its point of view on big-time tournament poker and its honest self-examination of the life a controversial poker pro.

Duke and co-author David Diamond succeed in revealing a view from the table at high-pressure poker tournaments. The book goes through Duke's win at the World Series of Poker in 2004, then at the Tournament of Champions later that year. The vivid details and notes on the hands (the book isn't overly technical and contains explanations of the terms and rules of play, but part of the book's draw is that it takes you "inside," and that includes playing some poker hands) help understand the swirl of emotions and details that can fill a player's head when they get into this unusual environment.

The second reason for recommending the book is Duke's willingness to reveal how she became a professional poker player and celebrity through the circuitous route of a competitive family, academia, marriage, and motherhood. Plenty has been written about Annie Duke's story (including her sister Katy Lederer's POKER FACE, which also tells the story of their unusual and remarkable family). Her own version has some new details, but its best feature is its honesty. Duke thinks highly of her poker abilities and says so, but she also shares stories of her losses, insecurities, and bad decisions. She does a great job explaining the decisions that brought her into poker as well as those that led to her backing away from the biggest cash games.

Duke and Diamond also structured the book in a very readable fashion, shifting chapter-to-chapter between the action in her two big poker wins and her life story.

As a matter of disclosure, I wrote a book about professional poker players this year, but never spoke with Duke in connection with it. One of my sources on that book was Annie Duke's brother, Howard Lederer. But many other sources were players who did not like Duke and whose attacks on her are mentioned (though she doesn't give out their names) in her book.

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.

Have you ever tried to tell a story to a friend or acquaintance, some personal epic filled with twists and turns, comedy and drama, thrills and chills and all sorts of gut clenching climaxes only to be met with a blank expression and a vaguely rhetorical "I guess you just had to have been there?" That was my reaction to this book.

It's an interesting insight to gambling culture and one woman's take on it, but after a while the two threads of the book (chapters alternate between her autobiography and her experiences at the World Series of Poker) begin to feel schizophrenic. Her history begins to read more and more like a recitation of rote facts while her descriptions of the hands she played in Vegas become more bombastic, which makes for an awkward reading experience. One chapter is a description of how she met this guy and they hung out and he moved back west and then she married him and followed him and so on while the next is a breathless explanation of how exciting it was when the three of clubs came up!

Given that this book is essentially focussed on her experiences in poker, this dichotomy is perfectly understandable, but towards the end of the book I was worn out by the constant yo-yoing of the narrative that I was simply relieved to be done with it.

Annie Duke's book is long on title, short on substance. The chapters alternate from her past to her present (at the time...her first big win in an Omaha Hi Lo tourney). The present-day stuff is presented well and you get a feel for what happens at a poker tournament...tension, boredom, table talk, and "rail birds" are all covered well. That's the good part and poker fans like myself will enjoy it for that.

The bad part is that the personal stuff is not fleshed out enough. The breakdown of her marraige for example, is never really explored and I'm certain there was a good story behind it. The relationships between herself, mother, and father are described in depth at first, but the parents seem to drop off the face of the earth about midway with little or no description of her relationship with them now. Since she included this personal side in the book, she should have followed it through and given the reader a full picture of where she is now.
Prior to reading this book I admired Annie Duke. She is competing in what is truly a man's world and for that she should be congratulated. Unfortunately, after reading this, I ended up not liking her at all. The "poor me" attitude she adopts runs thin after just a few chapters. Poor her, indeed. Having to "scrape by" on her husband's TRUST FUND. Those of us who work every day aren't likely to feel sorry for such a self-centered mess. I feel certain that if she had included more detail in the past/personal life chapters, one would understand and sympathize with her more.

Purchased this as a gift for my spouse. He is very pleased with the book! Two thumbs up!
Was a birthday surprise and was very happy to receive this and another book written by Annie Duke.

This is a combination poker tutorial and (auto)biography. It was delicious. Though I relish the poker, I was most enthralled by the biography portion. It is a frank, ferocious, self analysis that makes you want to know more. Her skills as a writer do not end with PhD dissertations.

Annie Duke and David Diamond, Annie Duke: How I Raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, and Won Millions... And You Can Too (Plume, 2005)

If you put aside the odd grammar of the book's title and dig into it, the first word that will no doubt come to mind is readable; I am not (to understate the case a great deal) a fan of memoirs, and I still devoured this in one day (while working on two other books as well). Duke, or co-writer David Diamond, or both, is a born storyteller. And while I grant you that people who don't play (or watch) poker are probably not going to be as on the edge of their collective seat during the relating of a particular hand in a particular tournament, there's more than enough meat in Duke's private life to keep the non-card-sharks interested as well. *** ½

Not knowing much about Annie Duke, but being a big fan of biographies and Poker I couldn't resist picking this book up in a bargain bin. It was the hardcover and selling cheap, had to have it.

I got my money's worth. It was a nice distraction from the other book I am reading now. I like how she lays out her life story while describing her win in the Omaha 8-or better tourney she was in. The reading was smooth, the story interesting and I liked her poker insights, although fairly basic in nature, which is the way I believe she intended them since this is a biographical account of her rather then a poker study manual, they are timely reminders for the game.

I give the book barely 4 stars, simply because I was not bored reading it. Most books have areas that are snoozers or after 50 pages you ask yourself "What was that I just read?" Get this book if you want to read about the genesis of a great poker player that started out in life going where she was expected to go only find out that she was on the wrong road and then rather then doing a U-turn she drove off the road, cut through the forest or land and got on the right highway. This book was good and worth the discount price I paid. The EV was there for me. I'd recommend it from that percpective.