An Interview With Annie Duke - Part III

By Justin West

In part two, Annie expanded upon her thoughts regarding the ridiculousness of the ladies event at the WSOP, and moved on to her feelings on the World Series of Poker's main event. Does Annie still look at the main event as her “white whale?” Not exactly.

“Of course it's important to me. It's a lot of money. I'd be crazy if that didn't hold some value to me. However, because of what it's grown to, I definitely don't care whether I get knocked out or not anymore. Did I care two years ago when I came in 88th? Yes, but that's a different story, because I was so friggin' close,” said Annie. “This year I got knocked out on the first day, and I literally didn't care. There was a large part of me that was happy about it, actually, because it meant that after a very, very long six weeks...”

We conclude our interview with Annie's notions on the World Series of Poker Europe. While many players balked at the smaller fields, Annie's opinion was quite different. Finally, I ask her a question I've been dying to for months, and find out what she thinks of the recent Absolute Poker scandal.

Read on...

Part three of a three-part series.

Justin: You attended the World Series of Poker Europe, correct? What were your thoughts?

Annie: I thought it was fantastic. I went over there and really wanted to lend my support because I think the World Series of Poker is an amazing organization. I think that people come down too hard on them, and I think they forget that Harrah's hasn't had this brand very long. They are learning, working their way through in dealing with the numbers of people that play this event every year. It's a learning process.

What I can tell you about the World Series of Poker people Jeffrey Pollack, Ty Stewart, Gary Thompson, just to name some of them, is that these people are committed to having a partnership with the players. They are every last one of them a pleasure to work with. They really do listen and they really do try to learn from their mistakes. I think that people are unduly hard on that organization because they really are committed.

When I found out that they were doing World Series of Poker Europe I certainly wanted to support that. I thought it was awesome. The structures were really, really fantastic. They were small fields. It felt like playing the World Series back in the old days, which was really nice. A lot of the pro players talked about that, you know? It was so nice to go in and the field would have 270 or 360, or 305... it's like, "Wow! Gosh, look, I only have to beat 300 people! It's so cool!" It really was kind of a throwback for us, because that's the way the World Series used to be be. I thought that did they did a fantastic job. I loved it. I had so much fun over there.

Justin: There is a question I've been meaning to ask you for months. You came up to me one day at the World Series of Poker one day this past summer, fuming. What you told me was that another player had talked to you and said that he'd gone all-in, the other player had had him covered, and he'd lost the hand. The dealer didn't recognize he had busted out and dealt him another hand and the player just kept playing, basically getting a second chance. Can you tell me that story again, and tell me what you did as a result of it?

Annie: I was standing outside and a guy came up to me and he said, "I want to ask you a question."

"Okay," I said.

"If the dealer pushes the pot to the wrong person," he said. "And nobody figures out the mistake, and somebody says something a few hands later, are you obligated to give the money back?"

I said, "Well, no. If you're not sure that the mistake happened you can't take somebody else's word for it."

In other words, what I thought he was describing was a situation in which the dealer pushed the pot to me, and five hands later someone says, "Hey wait a minute! I had a flush on that hand. I was supposed to get that pot." Do you have to give the pot to them in that situation? No, because you didn't see the flush, the dealer didn't see the flush. You can't speak up five hands later and claim that you had a flush, right? So, I thought this was the type of situation he was describing.

He said to me, "Oh, phew! I'm really glad you said that!" This is what really angered me, because he really misrepresented the situation to me to try and get the kind of answer that he wanted in order to assuage his guilt.

Then, he described to me exactly what did happen. Apparently, he had been all-in on a hand. There had been some small center pot and his opponent had said, "I'm all-in." He had said, "I call." And the guy had flopped a straight. So, he had somehow gotten involved in this hand and it was a pretty big pot where I think he either had 5-2 or 5-3, he felt like he was priced in. The board ended up flopping him a wheel, while his opponent hit a set of aces. So now the board paired on the river, obviously the aces win, and the opponent had this guy covered.

The opponent who had aces on the flop said, "I'm all-in," hadn't actually pushed his chips forward so there was just this center pot. The guy had said, "I call," and his chips were in front of him. So now, the dealer pushes the center pot to the correct player, the guy's getting up to leave but he notices that dealer hasn't pushed his chips to the other player, and the other player hasn't said anything. So... the guy sits down and continues playing.

And the guy said to me, "I think that's okay from what you said. Because it was a dealer error and the other guy didn't say anything, that means I didn't need to do anything.”

"Excuse me?" I said. "That's a completely different situation because you noticed the error, at which point it was your obligation to speak up."

Now, what was really interesting about it was that literally the day before he told me this story, I had played a pot in No-Limit in which I had Q-J and the board came K-10-9 with one club. We got all the money in and the guy had K-Q of clubs, so obviously I have him drawing nearly dead to a tie. The board came club-club, of course, but the dealer then pushed me the pot. "No," I said. "I'm out of the tournament. Give him the money." The dealer argued with me and said, "No, you have a straight." Everyone at the table agreed with the dealer, and I then reached to the board and pulled the clubs out and said, "Yes, but he has a flush. Push him the pot."

So that had just happened to me the day before, when literally I was the only person at the table who recognized the winning hand. I had to argue that point before I walked out. And now I had this guy asking me this question about that day. I was so mad, for two reasons. For one, the hypothetical situation was described to me in such a way that I would give an answer that somehow would make him feel better about what he did. And I was very upset about the situation itself, that there are people who would take shots like that. Did I do anything about it? No, because there is no action that can be taken at that point. I took a note that the guy was a scumbag, but I can't go to the World Series and say they have to ban the guy, because it's hearsay. He told me a story. You can't go back and prove that any of it happened, which is what's so awful about it. I was so livid, just so upset, that he knew he was supposed to be out of that tournament.

Justin: It just amazes me that a dealer could make that kind of a mistake in the first place.

Annie: Could the dealers be improved at the World Series? Of course. But look at the sheer number of dealers that they need. Do you think for a second that they're not going to have a lot of dealer errors happening?

Would I like the dealers to be better? It's one of my pet peeves. I understand one of this issues, which is that dealers might be inexperienced. But what really upsets me is that when you correct dealer's they will argue with you. They'll disagree with you. I just want to say to them, "Look. I've been a professional in this game for 15 years. If I'm arguing with you about this, I'm probably right."

Justin: One final question. I haven't gotten the thoughts of a professional on this so I'm curious to get your take on the recent Absolute Poker scandal.

Annie: My only concern with something like that is that, look, there are a lot of really smart people out there. God knows you have to trust your site to do as much as they can in terms of security. In reality we all know there will sometimes be breaches. Full Tilt Poker had the issue where they discovered some bots. You know, they stepped up and did the right thing, said they found some bots, closed them down, seized the bots' money, and gave the money back to the players who the bots had taken money from. That, I think, is the appropriate way to handle these things.

I think that that's what you need to expect from any online poker site, that when something does happen the appropriate steps are taken to correct it and the players that were affected are refunded. It looks like that's what Absolute is doing, so in the end they're doing the right thing.

The only other thing I would say is that these kinds of things happen in real poker rooms, too. One of the differences is that when they happen in a real poker game, you can't refund the players because you don't know who played with the people, how much they lost, etc. It's very difficult to prove cheating in the real world. I just don't want people to get the impression that somehow it's a lot less safe to play online in general than it is in a casino. We're talking about a game where sometimes there's a lot of money and the unfortunate truth is that where there's a lot of money there are people motivated to not do the right thing. That's not even just true of poker, that's true of financial markets, as well. There's lots and lots of cheating in the financial market.

What you do have control over is that you're not a cheat, that you don't associate yourself with people that are cheats, and that you educate yourself about what cheating looks like. You should play on sites that, when things like this happen, do step up to the plate and admit that there was something that happened and refund your money. That's what you really need to expect.

Realize that these kinds of occurrences are extremely rare. There's a reason why you don't hear about them every single day; it's because they don't occur every single day. Just thank God that it was caught, and that Absolute is stepping up and doing the right thing in this situation.

part I | part II | part III

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Justin West played poker since the age of 17, he spent more than a year earning a living on the green felt; a modest living, to be sure, but a living nonetheless. His aim was at one point to win the WSOP main event, thus causing Hell to freeze over. However, given his penchant for sin and his extreme dislike of cold weather, Justin has put that dream to rest.