Annie Duke - Personal Life

Personal Life

Duke was born Anne LaBarr Lederer in Concord, New Hampshire, the daughter of Rhoda S. (née Spagenberg) and Richard Lederer, a writer and linguist who taught at St. Paul's School. Her brother, Howard Lederer, is also a professional poker player. Her sister, Katy Lederer, is an author and poet who wrote a book about the Lederer family, titled Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers. She has four children: Maud (1995), Leo (1998), Lucy (2000), and Nell (2002). Duke is Jewish on her father's side.

Annie attended Columbia University where she double-majored in English and psychology. Subsequent to her undergraduate years, Duke was awarded an NSF Fellowship to attend graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania to study psycholinguistics, a field within cognitive psychology. Although originally intending to continue her studies, she decided to leave school in 1992, after five years of graduate school and one month before defending her Ph.D. work. She married Ben Duke, a close friend from the same university, and moved to his home in Columbus, Montana. It was at this time that, with the support of her brother, she began playing poker in nearby Billings, Montana.

In 2002, she moved to Portland, Oregon to work for ieLogic, a company that produces software for online real time casino gaming, which eventually came to life as UltimateBet. She and Ben were divorced in 2004, but she did win a $500 wager made with fellow pro Steve Zolotow, who bet her that her marriage wouldn't last five years. In 2005 she and her children moved to the Hollywood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Duke and her then new, Mediterranean-style home — with fiance Joe Reitman — were featured in The New York Times article "At Home With Annie Duke" on January 19, 2006.