I am so honored to be speaking in front of this amazing group that has done so much to support the role of women in this industry.

2011 has been a tumultuous year for the poker industry, to say the least. Last year when Jeffrey [Pollack] spoke about a change in the poker industry I am pretty sure he was not foretelling the government shutdown of online poker on Black Friday. Our industry has been deeply affected by Black Friday as everyone has been forced into a position of self-examination, a redefinition of who and what we are and what we do to achieve success and excellence in poker.

If you are an American player who has mainly grinded online you now may need to  redefine yourself as a live action player or, even, make the extremely difficult choice to relocate to another country in order to continue to play and maintain your livelihood.

Maybe you are on the business side of the poker media – and now you are scrambling to creatively fill the void left by the advertisers forced out of the country.

Maybe you are on the other side of the camera – working production watching as poker show after poker show is canceled.

We have  all been forced to re-examine who we are and what we must do to carry-on.

For myself, I was forced into a personal re-examination this spring because of an event that happened just prior to Black Friday: the death of my mother. Her death, not surprisingly, triggered a lot of deep thinking about my priorities in life, my life with her and the deep impact and influence she had on me. There was a sort of strange beauty for me in the symmetry of working to be a part of the redefinition of poker, through my work at Epic, and the redefinition of myself as I have gone through this difficult personal journey.

So, as I was considering what I was going to talk about with you today, a nerve-wracking task to say the least, I had an epiphany. There surely is no better audience to talk to about the impact of a woman on my life than this audience. It was at that moment I found my voice and found my key message: MENTORSHIP.

Without my mother’s mentorship, I am positive that I would never have become a poker player. Ironically, my mother never played poker. To be fair, she was an adept card player, but at the time she grew up poker would never have been an option for her. So her mentorship was not about teaching me the intricacies of the game. It was about giving me courage – the courage that as a women, no matter what barriers to entry their might be, or whatever you might want to try – that if you believe in the power of your own intellect you can accomplish anything.

It is that belief that I truly have to thank her for instilling in me and it is certainly what allowed me to dare.

Now, as everyone in this room knows, there are so many barriers to entry for a female poker player.

We are told as children: Don’t be aggressive, it is unbecoming. Yet aggression is a key component of great poker play.

As women we are also told: Don’t be competitive, it’s not becoming, stand on the sidelines and cheer. And yet an intense competitive spirit is integral to success at the tables.

We are told: No boys will like you if you are good at math. Write poetry or draw. (and yes I was told those things by some). Yet, math skills and the embracing  of that discipline is also so essential  to successful play.

And then there is the simple intimidation at the poker table – a table always filled with mostly, if not all men – when certainly at the time I started playing and where I started playing, the words sexual harassment were not even in the lexicon (nor could they be spelled by their practitioners).

So I think back to how I dared:

How did I dare descend to the basement room in the back of the seedy Crystal Lounge in downtown Billings, Montana? How did I dare enter that testosterone laden place through a cloud of Marlboro Man tobacco smoke, and take my place at a table where I was the only ‘girl’?

And, yes, I was a girl, both in name and in reality – just in my 20’s, among ranchers and old men who swore at me when I would win and treated me like worse than nothing because their very manhood seemed challenged by my invasion.

I know that this feeling is not unique – so many of you in this room have experienced this, the same treatment, the same fears that I had.

So how did I dare? My Mentor. My Mother.

My mother gave me the power to play. Even while she was cringing at my choice of job, certainly in the early 90’s when poker was not on TV, when the glamour and celebrity attached to the game now was not even a whisper of a thought, you could not have expected my mother – a women raised in the traditions of the 50’s – to be completely on board right away.

But it was the way she had raised me that allowed me to dare to make that choice, and the way she raised me was the true mentorship.

I grew up in a household where competition thrived. As a family, we interacted through games: hearts, gin, scrabble, bridge. In my house, I was allowed, encouraged, as a girl growing up to want to and to strive to win.

And I wanted to win badly.

My mother taught me that it was okay for a girl to want to win. My mother, who had the quickest mind and sharpest intellect of anyone I have ever known or, surely, will know, taught me that if you put your mind to it you can do anything. She taught me that the pursuit of knowledge is the goal in life, second only to having good relationships. She taught me that the differences among us should be celebrated not hidden.

How could I not dare to become a poker player with her as a mentor?

So as we ask ourselves, “How do we bring more women into the game and, in general, more players to the game?” My mother has truly given us the answer.

Mentorship.

When I first started playing at the World Series of Poker, players like Barbara Enright and Linda Johnson acted as my mentors. I am sure they didn’t know it then and, may not have known it until now, but to see their example, the example of women competing toe to toe in the open events, capturing open bracelets, this was such an important example to me. They demonstrated that women can do it, can be competitive at the uppermost levels of the game.

And when televised poker boomed, a broader audience of women everywhere had the same opportunity that I did to see women competing at the elite levels: Women like Jennifer Harman, Kathy Leibert, Kristy Gazes, Cyndy Violette and more, women competing on television and winning. Winning bracelets and championships. What an amazing opportunity that presented to show women the path, to give women the confidence to dare to compete. To redefine this great game as game for everyone – not just a game for the stereotypical old, cigar chomping, baseball hat wearing man.

And as poker’s popularity grew, the opportunity to mentor in a more meaningful way, in a more personal way, in a way that would give women the tools and knowledge to compete at the game, presented itself through camps like the WPT Bootcamp and the WSOP Academy. As my mother taught me so well, knowledge is the most powerful weapon you can possess. Having the opportunity to give to others what my mother gave to me through my work with the WSOP Academy is a gift that only the poker boom could have given me.

Poker has provided  me with an amazing life and having a platform to pass on what I know about the game through teaching seminars or through my book, Decide to Play Great Poker, is something I could have never imagined back in that smoky room playing $10/$20 limit poker in Billings, Montana. I feel that every time I teach someone to play I honor my Mother and my other mentors, including and most significantly, of course, my brother.

I have no doubt that each of you feels the same way when you pass on your knowledge of this great game.

And this year I had the honor of having taught the winner of the Ladies Event at the World Series of Poker, Marsha Wolak. It is such a pleasure, a gift really, to see the fruits of my mentorship culminate in such a grand way. Congratulations to Marsha.

Today, I have a new mentor, Jeffrey Pollack. I truly believe that Jeffrey will be known as the individual most responsible for the modernization of the game of poker. I have been lucky to call him a friend for many years and, now, I am even luckier to call him a mentor as I embark with him and our partners on what I would consider a daring mission, to professionalize poker and to celebrate the great players in this game in the same way the elite are celebrated in other sports.

In every other sport, there is a forum for the best to play the best, and until now poker has been sorely missing that outlet. It is certainly the case that in other games like golf and tennis that anyone can play. My 72 year old father is still out there competing several times a week on tennis court. But just because anyone can play doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be a forum where objectively the best in the world compete against each other. That is certainly the case in golf and tennis. Basketball and football. Even snowboarding and skateboarding.

So why has this forum been missing in poker?

We have set out to create this forum with the launch of The Epic Poker League. We have referred to Epic as the PGA of Poker and that is certainly what we are striving to achieve. As I stand on this new side of the felt, I am lucky to have a mentor like Jeffrey Pollack helping me through the process as we work to develop a new kind of relationship between the players and the tournaments in which they play, as we work to redefine what it means to watch poker on TV in the post Black Friday Era.

I am proud to say that at Epic we have some of the most incredible women in the industry on our team: Our Vice President of Programming + League Operations, Kat Kowal. Our Director of Player Relations, Joanne Priam. And our Vice President of Marketing, Amalia Rosen. These are all incredible, powerful women who I am honored to be working with and learning from every day.

And of course, we have several female league members, including both the more familiar faces to the viewing public and the young phenomenal players that have recently burst on the scene. Jennifer Harman, Kathy Leibert, Annette Obrestaad, Vanessa Rousso, Sandra Noujoks, JJ Liu, and Vanessa Selbst have all qualified and are representing both the old guard and new guard so well.

It is so exciting for me, as someone who has been around for so long, to see a new crop of incredibly talented female players emerge, players who are consistently in the top 50 in the world.

But even so, there are only 7 female league members amounting to just 3% of the League roster. When I started playing the WSOP Main Event back in 1994 about 3% of the field was comprised of women. This year? About 3% of the field was comprised of women. So while the absolute numbers of women playing the game has certainly grown during the poker boom, the percentage of women playing has not. When you consider the fact that over 30% of all poker TV viewers are women – I know we can do better.

So how do we get more women to play? I truly believe that we have a responsibility as women who have successfully found their place in this game to mentor young women, to provide them with the same confidence and belief that your intellect is your greatest weapon that my mother gave to me. When I started playing, I could never have imagined a future where a woman, particularly me, would be in the role of commissioner of anything.

But the future is here.

To be able to work to redefine what it means to be a professional poker player, to be able to work to redefine the relationship between the fans and the players, to be able to work to redefine what televised poker is such an honor, such a privilege, and I can only hope to rise to the challenge the way my mother would have expected me to.

I would like to challenge each and every one of you tonight to follow in my mother’s footsteps.

On the personal level, consider becoming a mentor, to take another female player under your wing, teach her, encourage her and nurture her.

As a group, let’s work toward finally breaking that 3% number. There are a lot of people in this room with a lot of reach. So I put this challenge to this room. Next year, on the weekend of the Ladies Event, let’s organize our constituencies to play not only the Ladies Event but the open $1,000 event that same weekend. If we organize and plan in advance, and everyone unfortunate enough to get knocked out of the Ladies Event would enter the $1,000 WSOP Event, we could easily create an open event where close to 50% of the field would be comprised of women. This is would be unheard of and unprecedented. What better weekend to do it than when the entire community is in town playing the Ladies Event already?

Imagine the statement this would make. We have arrived and we are here to stay.

Let’s break that 3% both at Epic and the WSOP. Let’s set a goal of 10% within the next 3 years. Is it ambitious? Yes. But I think we can do it if we just believe in the power of our own minds.

If we believe in the force of our collective will.

Let’s make my mother proud!

Friday, June 24th, 2011

No blog posts these past few days for a variety of reasons. Scant free time, for one thing, for between work sessions and social gatherings after, well, Amsterdam, like gas, expands to fill the available space. Besides, much of those doings were cloaked in, if not exactly secrecy, discretion; I could tell you, but then I’d have to hit you with a large pillow. And that would be weird.

The biggest problem was that I shifted hotels, and while the new place was much more centrally located (and much closer, crucially,  to the Holland Casino in Max Eueweplein), it had — henceforth and forever the benchmark, by definition — the world’s sketchiest internet. I’m not saying that the wireless signal was weak; I’m saying that sometimes it would spontaneously deconstruct, taking my whole computer with it, necessitating an entire system reboot. I could barely upload a tweet, much less a picture. I decided to wait and post later, rather than look in the hotel mirror and watch my own head explode.

So now I’m in the British Airways lounge at Schiphol Airport, which is pronounced “ski-pole,” not “she-pole,” which makes no sense to me, since every other word in Dutch seems to come fraught with a mind-numbing and phlegm-inducing collection of guttural “ch” sounds. Don’t get me wrong: I love Holland and the Dutch and everything about them, but their language reminds me of a question I was asked once after a trip to Wales. “Now that you’ve been there,” someone said, “do you find the Welsh language pleasing to the ear?”

“Well, yeah,” I replied, “compared to Klingon.”

With work (and attendant socializing) completed, I was determined to make my way to the Holland Casino and see if I couldn’t iron out a few slackjaws over a friendly game of no-limit Texas hold’em. I’d been there before, and I’d kind of gotten crushed, for the Dutch play their poker fast and hard, and they’d gone through me like the proverbial freight train through the wind. “The thing you must understand about the Dutch,” I’d been told at the time, “is that we are all either farmers or pirates.” Well, okay, then.

Still, I’m a different player now. Thanks to my ongoing transformation under the tutelage of Decide to Play Great Poker, I enter every game I play feeling like finally, at last, I really know what I’m doing. Both globally — my goal for a given game — and locally — my play of every betting street on every hand — my default state of mind now is “dialed in.” That’s a consummation devoutly to be wished. (And always the standard disclaimer: though I’m co-author of the book, all the great conceptual stuff — the transformational stuff — is Annie Duke’s, not mine.)

Anyway, the details of the session don’t matter much, except for this: I had my choice of games, a small one against weak players, or a larger one against some weak players but also several very good ones. In past I’d have chosen the smaller game, seeking the softer target with the attendant lower risk of “getting hurt too bad.” This time I went for the big game, and even though I knew it was a tough lineup, I also knew I could beat it. All I had to do was play as tough as they played. And now I can.

You know, I don’t want to beat the dead horse of this, but the more I think about the impact of Decide on my game, I’m aware that it’s less about the lines of play I’ve learned than about the underlying confidence I’ve acquired. And the larger point is this: You can do something for a long, long time, think you’re really pretty good at it, and then suddenly, if the circumstances are right, experience a whole order of magnitude’s growth. It’s worth keeping in mind. Life is long. When we think we’re stuck, or plateaued, probably we’re not as stuck or plateaued as we think.

Starting tomorrow, June 29, through Tuesday, July 12th, post a picture on Twitter to @annieduke of Decide to Play Great Poker. You can be in the picture or not. You can certainly use photoshop. And if you incorporate the @epicpokerleague logo that would be big bonus points. When you post your picture use the hashtag #dtpgp on twitter so I can easily search all the photos.

Obviously humor and creativity is encouraged here. After July 12th, I will decide the funniest and most creative use of the book and the logo in a photo and the winner will get a signed, personalized copy of DTPGP and that half hour phone lesson from me. Plus, you get the $25 Kiva gift card to honor my mother.

Enjoy!

Okay. Some what of a brag post. But this new review went up on Amazon today for Decide to Play Great Poker and I am just blown away by it.

Gotta give a big shout out and HUGE thank you to Mr. Boyle

5.0 out of 5 stars From a good player to a great one…, June 18, 2011

I’ve played poker semi seriously for about five years and have every poker book and read as many forum entries as possible in an attempt to ‘decide to play better’ and I was at the stage where I was winning marginal amounts regularly and my bankroll was slowly building, but marginal is the key word.

I heard about Annie Duke’s book through twitter and downloaded the kindle version…and it blew my mind! Other books follow a quite regimental structure “do this in this situation, dont do this in this one” which is fine if your just starting out but if you want to understand WHY professional poker players do what they do when they do it then ‘decide to play bettter poker’ is a must for your collection.

The first chspter alone will save you a fortune, I mean it, over your poker career the first chatpet will save you a FORTUNE!

Its written in a way that makes you question every decision you make at the table, instead of sticking to the ‘pattern’ suggested in other books she teaches you to think about the play that is correct in the situation at the time.

Annie Duke, one day ill thank you in person, you have changed my game for the better.

If you havent bought this book already….buy it! Make a decision to play better poker now!

Correct Aggression, June 18, 2011

I was studying poker for about two years before I read this book, and having only marginal results. I would occasionally catch a big hand and occasionally get paid off with it. The rest of the time I was simply at the mercy of everyone else’s betting and raising and accumulating mountains of chips while I was just barely squeeking by…like a little mouse.

That was my problem, the major leak in my game. No aggression.

I’m naturally basically a passive person and therefore a passive player…a nit, a rock, a mouse. I despise aggressive behavior in others and for me to behave aggressively makes me feel like a scumbag. So I don’t.
The problem with that is it’s not profitable poker; and I’ve been conceptually aware of that the whole time.

This book finally finally finally gave me the perspective I needed to put the aggressive plays in my game without making me feel like an aggressive person (scumbag).
Using the “game theory” thought process this book outlines in detail, I’m finaly able to make bets, raises and reraises in the correct amounts, in the correct spots, versus the correct opponents, for the correct reasons that make sense to me (instead of someone just saying “be aggressive”)…without the emotional baggage.
In other words, I’m not being an aggressive person (in which case I’d hate myself); I’m just playing correctly.

It’s like when you’re sitting at an intersection, and they light turns green: you step on the gas. Simple.
Well, this book finally gave me a clear-cut logical process for figuring out when the light is green, and the emotional freedom to step on the gas.

This August, poker’s elite will come together to play the inaugural FS+G professional league Main Event for $1,000,000 in first place prize money. This FS+G $20,000 buy-in tournament will feature the world’s best live tournament poker players competing against each other on national TV.

The league is offering a unique opportunity for poker players of all levels to take their shot at Main Event glory. The Main Event has nine coveted wild card seats for non-members and the only way to capture one of these nine wild card seats is through FS+G’s Pro/Am tournament.  That’s right, there are only nine wild card seats for the Main Event and you can win one only by playing in our $1,500 Pro/Am tournament with start days on August 5^th and 6^th. The Pro/Am tournament is a star-studded cash tournament with six-figures in prize money, plus the coveted nine Main Event seats that give you a shot at a multi-million dollar prize pool and the chance to play on national TV against the biggest stars in the game.

Satellite into the Pro/Am tournament now! The Palms is offering a $340 super satellite with one Pro/Am seat guaranteed every Saturday at 7pm through July 31^st and a $180 super satellite with one Pro/Am seat guaranteed every Sunday at 7pm though July 31^st. The Palms is also offering single table satellites into these supers daily for $40 and $65.

This means you could be playing on national TV for a $1,000,000 first prize in the pro Main Event for only $40. Are you ready to live the dream and take your shot at the glory?

• Always raise if you are first into the pot
• Always make it 3 times the big blind when you play
• Always raise the button if everyone folds to you, no matter what your hand is.

Of course, all of these rules are ridiculous because they will only work some of the time. It is certainly MOSTLY correct to raise if you are first into a pot but it is not ALWAYS correct and understanding the difference is what separates great players from merely okay ones. It is the understanding of the things that this distinction depends on, what game conditions would make it right to not raise all the time coming in, that will make you a great player.

In going over this idea that you should never play poker by rote rules just because a book told you to do it I came up with an analogy I wish I had used in Decide to Play Great Poker:

A poker book that gives you rules like always raise if you are first in the pot and make it 3 times the big blind is like a spelling teacher telling you “I before E” without telling the “except after C part.” If you can’t even get to that exception how will you ever get to the “except when it’s ay like in neighbor or weigh.” And got forbid someone asked you to spell the word “weird!”

The point is there is no rule that could possibly apply all of the time to anything in life, much less a game with hidden cards, variance, and lots of different personalities at every table you play. If you follow rote rules in anything you are going to be a rigid thinker incapable of adjustment.

Don’t be that (broke) guy.

Here was the scary part for me: I knew when the book was published, out there, that was when I might get criticized. Annie doesn’t know anything about poker. I knew she was a terrible player. She’s an idiot who has nothing new or fresh to offer. These kinds of comments were my greatest fear and I imagined them all! I know I seem pretty confident but I seriously was somewhat paralyzed by these kinds of imaginings during the process of writing this thing.

If you never actually finish, then you get to just be the person who is writing a book on poker. There is no failing at that, right? I mean, I was writing the book. So I was doing what I said. But no one saw what I was writing, either. So there was no failing at that. It is when you deliver the book that is can be a failure. No one buys it. No one likes it. It is that moment when you hit send and it is off to the publisher that you jump into the abyss, take that leap where you open yourself up to what the world might say. And that is damn scary.

This is why it took TWO YEARS for me to deliver this book. It seems so stupid in retrospect that I allowed this kind of anxiety to slow me down. But I am treating it as a learning experience in being more brave, more bold, going forward.

So now it is delivered. I overcame my fears. I let the book out there. And the reviews are coming in. And they’re good. I mean really good. I am so happy!

So allow me, after two years of torturing myself, a moment to brag and thank everyone for all the amazing feedback I can only assume my next book will take me less time now.

If you are interested in the reviews on Amazon, go here. In the meantime, here’s a sample from Twitter :

@AnnieDuke dwnloaded the new book – read the whole thing! Like an Advanced cap-stone graduate course in strategic poker thinking! Awesome!

@AnnieDuke I’ve been playing for a while. I thought, not another poker book! They’re the same! After reading Poker bible, The New Testimate!

@AnnieDuke this book inspires not only the novice but the experienced player. Its ability to make you think about your play is amazing..:)

@AnnieDuke reading your book, great help. Won the SnG last night following your advice on raising. Thank you!

@AnnieDuke definitely an innovative poker book. One of a kind!

@AnnieDuke your words inspire confidence in my play . Learning why I am making a decision is such a boost

@AnnieDuke “…all that matters is the quality of your decisions, not the outcomes of those decisions. ” < best anti-tilt imaginable. Great!

@AnnieDuke half was through your new book decide to play great. What an exciting look into the process. Great read, very insightful, helpful

@AnnieDuke reading Decide and realised that this is the epiphany that I’ve needed to finally advance past ‘advanced intermediate’. You rock!

@AnnieDuke Just wanted to say THANK YOU for authoring a book that truly speaks to the way the game has evolved. It’s so so refreshing!!

@AnnieDuke Finally finished the kindle version of your book. I own about 30 kindle books and this is easily one of the best. Well done!

@AnnieDuke Just read your book and I haven’t read a better one since I got serious about poker. Sure it played a part in my first wsop cash

Can’t say enough for @AnnieDuke ‘s “Decide to Play Great Poker”. Starting it for the 2nd time. #NotjustwhattodobutWHY!

@AnnieDuke I’ve only just finished chapter 3 and I can’t wait to get back to the casino. BEST BOOK EVER!

@AnnieDuke So refreshing and insightful to not have a poker book based on charts/stats/percentages/”rules”. More realistic.

@AnnieDuke Am enjoying your book. Even though I’ve read a lot of poker books, yours still is helping me see things in a new way.

Enjoy the excerpt. Decide to Play Great Poker is available for preorder now and will be out June 7th. It will also be available on Kindle.