Annie Duke is a strong competitor when it comes to tournament poker. Nobody likes to differentiate between whether a player is male or female. A player is good or bad regardless of their gender, but I like the fact Annie is a female poker player. She regularly proves that women can hold their own in a game that is supposedly "male-oriented". Phil Hellmuth once stated that Annie is the best all-around woman poker player in the world today and many would agree.

Annie was born in Concord, New Hampshire. She attended school at St. Paul and went on to Columbia where she double-majored in psychology and English. She then attended the University of Pennsylvania where she was in pursuit of a doctoral degree in psycholinguistics. She left the program to begin to play poker. Her brother Howard Lederer taught her how to play and she hasn't looked back since. Although she attends the higher-limit tournament poker events, you would be more likely to see her playing ring games at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

Annie is a mother to four children and that sets her apart from almost anybody in the poker world. If it was a choice between a tournament or one of her children's plays, the play was always going to win out. It shows that a person can have the best of two worlds.

She wants to beat the best at the game whether they are male of female. Annie's sister, Katy Lederer, recently wrote a memoir titled Pokerface. The book has great insights into both Annie and Howard's competitive nature. Annie works with the UltimateBet online cardroom, where you can find her articles on Omaha and other topics.

Annie has taken over from Amir Vahedi poker tutoring actor Ben Affleck. In June 2004, Affleck won the $10,000 California State Poker Championship No Limit Hold'em tournament at the Commerce Casino, along with its $356,000 first prize.

Annie Duke is the leading money winner among women in World Series of Poker history including tenth place in the $10,000 main event when she was eight months pregnant with her third child. She won her first World Series of Poker bracelet in the 2004 $2000 Omaha High-Low event. Some of her other accomplishments include winning the September 2004 ESPN World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions where a first prize of two million dollars was at stake. She also earned second in Limit Hold'em in 1999 and 2003 at the World Series of Poker, second in the Omaha High Low at the Bellagio Five-Star World Poker Classic and sixth in the Omaha High Low at the 2003 World Series of Poker.