Annie Duke

Born and raised in Concord, New Hampshire, Annie Duke grew up in a family who had cards and competition in the blood. In a home where card playing was the glue that held the family together, everybody not only wanted to win but needed to win.

In 1994, at the suggestion of her brother, famed poker player Howard Lederer, Duke tried her hand at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. She ended up placing 13th in her first tournament, knocking her brother out of play. After winning 70K in her first month of competition, Duke and her husband made the move to Las Vegas so she could pursue poker professionally.

Over the course of the next decade, Duke established herself as one of the best poker players in the world. In 2004, Duke beat out an assembly of 234 players in the WSOP $2000 buy-in Omaha Hi/Lo Split and won her first WSOP bracelet. In August of the same year, Duke knocked out 8 of the worlds’ greatest poker legends and won $2 million in the No-Limit Texas Hold’em winner-take-all, invitation-only WSOP Tournament of Champions, established by ESPN and Harrah’s Entertainment.

Poker aside, Duke’s autobiography, Annie Duke: How I raised, folded, bluffed, flirted, cursed and won millions at the World Series of Poker, hit shelves in mid-September 2005 and is still a huge hit. Written in conjunction with David Diamond, the autobiography weaves the struggles of Annie’s life side-by-side with her struggles to achieve her first WSOP bracelet. She also worked with NBC to develop and produce a sitcom based on her life as a single mother of four who plays professional poker.

While doing all this, she still enjoyed a successful family life raising her four children: Maud, Leo, Lucy and Nelly.