Annie Duke -
By: Kimmie Helk
Annie Duke comes from a family of card players and is one of only a few females to dominate the game of poker. Now on this season of "Celebrity Apprentice," Duke not only has to face a new game, but also one of the toughest 'dealers' in the boardroom: Donald Trump. TCC's Kimberly Helk caught up with Annie Duke to talk strategy and her feelings on both games.
KH: I read that you went to school for psychology. Do you find that you can use some of your psychology in decoding the other players' bluffs, and all their tells?
AD: Well, I didn't do much of what they call abnormal psych or behavioral psychology but I was studying cognitive science and a lot of cognitive science is things like understanding decisions, theory and probability, statistics and probability, that sort of thing. Honestly that's more of what's important and it's more of what I apply. So poker is just one, big, decision-making problem. You have to figure out what the right course of action is without being able to see your opponents' cards. That's really really hard, so really the decision-making stuff that I know about and all of that kind of theory comes in to play much more. The mathematical stuff, the ease of which I can work with probability is really just from the fact that I was doing an experimental science because anybody who is studying science has to be able to work with probability as well. That's really honestly what's much more important to me, rather than, you know, looking at somebody and seeing them twitch. You can do that without a degree. That's much more of a feel thing that you don't need a degree for. But kind of understanding the theory behind making decisions when you don't have 100% of the information you need to make a good decision, that is actually very much in the realm of the kind of things that I was studying.
KH: Do you have a sort of superstition when you play? I know a lot of poker players have some sort of superstition when they play, like wearing a lucky hat or using a lucky poker chip. Do you have one or buy into the superstitions?
AD: I don't have superstitions, and some advice to help your friends from me, is that superstitions are really really counter-productive. So people say to me all the time, "oh well, I have a lucky hat and it's no big deal if I think I have a lucky hat because it doesn't hurt and it doesn't help." So I point out to them, "clearly the hat isn't lucky, you know that, right?" It's a bit of a free roll, you know? But the fact is having a belief like that really does hurt you because what will happen is you'll have a tendency first of all, when things aren't going right you start to think like, "is it because I'm not doing something? Is it because I don't have a lucky thing on?" You need to look at what happens at the poker table as just absolutely disconnected from that. Just, "did I play well, or did I play poorly?" Because that's really what matters, that's what allows you to become a good or bad player, when you start allowing superstition to come into your thinking about the game, you're not going to be as good a player because you're not going to be as precise a thinker. Superstitions are really fuzzy thinking. That's not really precise thinking and poker really, really needs precise playing and thinking. And what I would say to your friend is, "what happens if you forget your hat?" What happens if your dog steals your hat one day out of the closet and eats it? Now what are you going to do? You pin like everything that you believe about how you do in poker on a hat as opposed to on your own skill and your own ability to out think your opponents which is probably where your focus should be, right?
My brother's like this too. I absolutely have no superstitions whatsoever. I know people who think that they have dealers that are lucky for them, and dealers that are unlucky for them. When an unlucky dealer gets in the box, it's really interesting because they focus on the hands that they lose when the dealer is in the box, instead of focusing on the whole half hour that the dealer is dealing, and taking that whole half hour in context, if they lose a hand, they'll be like, "oh see I told you this dealer was really unlucky." But what I notice during the half hour that their "unlucky" dealer is in the box, is that they play really bad. And the reason why they play really bad is because they believe there is an unlucky dealer in the box. So they play thinking they are going to get unlucky. If you play thinking you're going to get unlucky, you're going to play really bad. So it's totally like this self-fulfilling prophecy, right? They have this superstition about whether dealers are good for them or bad for them. And it has a really bad effect on the game, being like a self-fulfilling prophecy where of course you're not doing well when the dealer is in the box, you play like shit when they're in the box! So like superstitions can be really bad so I don't have any superstitions. I have like no lucky anything.
KH: Now you mentioned that your brother is also a professional poker player. Is there a little sibling rivalry or competition between you and your brother, especially when you are in the same tournament?
AD: Yeah see, it's funny we actually got seated at the same table at this $10,000 event two days ago and I was actually seated right next to him. I can truly say, I'm really happy to report this, that there isn't any sibling rivalry between me and my brother. I think there are a few reasons for that. One is that, when we grew up and we were playing games with each other it wasn't poker, it was different games, and there was a lot of sibling rivalry then. I think that, honestly what kind of got it out of our systems is like we always wanted to beat each other. It was the most important thing to us. I think that at some point you're like, "that was when we were kids." So I think that that was really helpful, but the other thing was I think that my brother and I both have this very analytical approach to the game and honestly the goal at a poker table is never to beat just one guy and if that's who you are focusing on, then that's going to cause you not to play well. So my brother and I understand like, "look, the rules of the game are that you're supposed to play the game the same way against everybody."
So first of all we won't play differently against each other just because we're brother and sister, because we would consider that cheating. And honestly when we are at the poker table, we treat each other just as we would any other opponent. And if my brother knocks me out, it's just part of the game. I'm not extra upset because my brother knocked me out [as opposed to] somebody else knocking me out. And vice versa for my brother. If I happen to knock my brother out, it's not like he's particularly upset because it was me. He feels the same about me knocking him out as anybody else. I think that's because, particularly when we started playing poker, there were very few people playing at the level that my brother and I were playing at. So we ended up in that situation a lot. We were at the same table playing together a lot. And so we just had to figure that out. Like we just had to realize the game is the game, and what happens during the game is isolated to the game. And when we walk away from the game, there is no, that doesn't invade our personal lives at all. And I think that poker players in general are really good at that. You can be sitting at a table with your best friend and your best friend will check-raise you on a total bluff and make you fold, and you're not pissed off at your best friend. You know, because it's not that way, you sit down and you're all agreeing to the rules of the game, and you understand that that behavior is just part of the game and not anything to do with your friendship. Meaning that it's the game, it's not personally directed at anybody. So my brother and I definitely over the course of 15 years, we definitely behave that way. What happens at the table, happens at the table. Actually, I think that it's actually anti-sibling rivalry because I can tell you, in poker, there is nobody that I root for more than my own brother. Like I want my brother to succeed. I hope he succeeds more that I do, he deserves it.
KH: Like professional respect between the two of you?
AD: Complete professional respect between the two of us. He is such an amazing player. It's ridiculous how good he is at this game.
KH: I love this one quote that I found you said: "That poker is one of the only sports which a woman can compete on a totally equal footing with a man." And that you refuse to play in all-women tournaments, do you think that the women that do play in them are holding themselves back by doing so?
AD: You know what? I feel like the majority of them haven't really thought through the implications of what it means. I think that most of the people, when they sit down in a tournament like that, they're just thinking, "oh this is going to be really fun, it's cool because I'll get to play with a bunch of women, it's not so scary because the men kind of intimidate me, and what a nice, sort of friendly way for me to get involved in the game." So I completely understand that thinking. And I wish that they would take the thinking one step further. Which is this: that when you divide people up, that you have to be dividing them up according to whatever the situation is measuring. So let's take tennis. What does tennis measure? It measures physical strength and agility, right? So in that case it totally makes sense that women would play women and men would play men because men are 20 percent bigger and stronger on average than women are. So there's a problem. You can't put women against men because the thing that the game is measuring is significantly different between the two sexes. That makes sense, right? So what is poker measuring? Poker is measuring something akin to intelligence. Let's call it mental agility as opposed to physical agility. So it's measuring your cognitive skills in some way. So let's take the exact same logic from the tennis tournament. If you divide men and women up, what are you saying about women?
KH: Oh, that unconsciously they are putting themselves on a lower level mentally.
AD: Exactly! Because that's all that it's measuring. So the only justification for dividing people up in regards to a game is when whatever skill it is that that game is measuring has to be significantly different between the two groups. So what you're saying is that there is a significant difference between the mental agility of a woman and a man. Obviously, since you are dividing the women out, you must be saying that they're not as good.
KH: You're on the new season of "Celebrity Apprentice" and I am curious, what is more nerve-wracking, being in the final round of a poker tournament or facing Trump in the boardroom?
AD: You know what's really interesting? I actually found the boardroom to be fun. But I find poker fun too. The reason why I enjoyed the boardroom is because, ok, so first of all you have to remember that we don't see anything that happens on the other team. We get all of our information about the players from the other team from the boardroom. So as a games player, I obviously found the boardroom to be the best part of my time there because that was the time that I got to gather the most information about my opponents.
KH: Ah, so it was kind of like seeing the other players' hands.
AD: It's also when you learn about how Trump feels about all the players on the show, including the people on your own team, including you. So it's when you get to find out how Trump feels about everyone on the show, it's extremely important strategically to listen very very well in those boardrooms because it's the single time in the game when you get the most information that you can use. For example, I watched season 1 and there was a very classic case when Gene Simmons was debating on who he was going to bring in or not bring in to the boardroom. This happened to Marilu Henner as well. Had they listened to Trump really well, Trump literally told them who he would be willing to fire. They allowed their personal feelings and how they felt about the past and the other players in the game to actually cloud their judgment.
So in Gene Simmons' case, he didn't bring Nelly back into the boardroom with him even though Trump was pretty clear, like, "you SURE you want to bring Nelly in?" And then in Marilu's case, he kept saying, "you know, Carol has been selling stuff on the show forever." This was a QVC challenge, but she didn't say that they had this flow-pay thing or whatever, and instead, Marilu was like "girl power" and she's not going to throw her friend who is a woman under the bus, so she ended up bringing in the two men. But the two men hadn't done anything wrong, the only person who had done anything wrong was Carol. So she ended up fired herself. But what was interesting was had she actually listened, to Trump, she could have heard the "right" answer. Because his questions are very leading. "Hey what do you think about Carol not mentioning this payment plan thing?" The minute that you hear that, you should be bringing Carol into the boardroom.
But people don't listen well because they are so terrified of the situation, right? Because they find the boardroom really really really stressful. But I think that because I am a poker player, I am used to being in these kind of stressful situations that are really just about getting information. Because that's all you do at a poker table, it's just constant gathering up of information about the people that you're playing against, whether you're in a hand or not. In fact, the best information you get it from a hand you're not in. So I was used to that and I walked into the boardroom and all I did was listen. I listened to what everybody had to say about each other and what Trump had to say about the other players. So I actually found those boardrooms to the the least stressful part of the game because they were the most useful part of the game.
KH: Wow, that's an interesting take on it. Thank you.
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