Name	Annie Duke
Height	5'6"
Naionality	American
Date of Birth
Place of Birth	Concord, New Hampshire
Famous for

Annie Duke is a champion poker player famous for her tournament victories and contributions to promoting the game. She has tutored several celebrity players, appeared on TV shows, and written a book. She is also known for her outspoken attitude, refusing to play in women-only tournaments because she sees no reason why a female player should not be as good as a man.



Annie Duke was born on September 13, 1965, in Concord, New Hampshire. She is also known by the nicknames Annie Legend, The Duke, and The Duchess of Poker. Her father, Richard Lederer, is a best-selling writer and linguist who was working as a schoolteacher. Her mother, also a teacher, struggled with alcoholism, but nevertheless managed to look after the family accounts. She has two siblings: Howard Lederer, also now a professional poker player; and Katy Lederer, an author and poet, creator of the Winter Sex anthology, and sometime editor of Explosive magazine. Katy later wrote a best-selling book, Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers, about their childhood.



Given her liberal background, Duke found it hard to fit in at St. Paul's, the prep school where her father taught. She fared better in the city, majoring in English and psychology at Columbia University, and succeeded in winning a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics. She worked on a PhD, but ended up abandoning it after falling in love with a long-time friend, Ben Duke. The couple moved to Columbus, Montana, where she started playing poker in order to help them pay their mortgage.



Since she had played cards throughout her childhood, she already had a well honed talent, and her brother, by then already established in the game, helped her to develop it. In 1994 he suggested that she play in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, and she took thirteenth place, knocking him out in the process. Having earned $70,000 in just one month, she decided to move to Las Vegas to play the game professionally. She went on to become one of the best players in the world, having earned over three million dollars from tournament play alone.



In addition to pursuing her poker career, Duke has found time to raise four children: Maud, Leo, Lucy, and Nelly. She divorced their father in 2004 and now lives with her boyfriend, the actor and producer Joe Reitman, who has just completed work on new M. Night Shyamalan film Lady in the Water and was formerly married to the actress Shannon Elizabeth, who starred in Love, Actually with Hugh Grant. Duke's connections to Hollywood have been cemented by the poker tuition she has provided for stars like Matt Damon and Ashton Kutcher. Most famously, she tutored Ben Affleck, who went on to win the 2004 California State Poker Championship No Limit Hold'em tournament. She has also considered getting involved in acting herself, and has a horror movie and a comedy in development with Reitman's production company. At one stage, an Annie Duke sitcom was planned, to be directed by Friends star Lisa Kudrow with Jeanne Garofalo in the central role, but the pilot episode was not a success. More popular was her TV show Annie Duke Takes On the World, in which she played against amateur contenders. She has also appeared on the likes of The Colbert Report and The Late Show with David Letterman.



Duke now works as a spokesperson for Ultimate Bet and has written numerous articles for their website. In 2005 she expended her writing skills with an autobiography, Annie Duke: How I Raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, and Won Millions at The World Series of Poker. She and her brother have appeared as virtual characters in a series of computer games and cell phone games. She also secured a valuable promotional contract with Coca-Cola. Annie Duke is now considered to be the best female poker player in the history of the game.