Annie Duke to lead poker league

LAS VEGAS -- Card professional Annie Duke plans to be the commissioner of a new league that is hoping to become the PGA of poker, defining the game's best players and hosting invitational tournaments for only its biggest stars.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/poker/news/story?id=6032880

I knew Annie Duke had something else in the works when she left UB. I was interested to find out what it was. I guess this is it.

As for Phil Hellmuth, who knows...

Interesting. I've heard mention of a PGA type arrangement discussed on a podcast recently and so this could be it. It's deliberately excluding online poker which will cause some controversy I think.

I cant wait to see the criteria for this, outta be intersting.

Tangerine 53 said:

Interesting. I've heard mention of a PGA type arrangement discussed on a podcast recently and so this could be it. It's deliberately excluding online poker which will cause some controversy I think.

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I think combining live and online player stats and other data to determine participants would end up being a nightmare to the organizers. What is more likely to happen is that a similar League will be created for online players as well.

Oh great - something else to compete with the NAPT and wsop Circuit.

Like I said before, watch Annie Duke kiss all the Famous poker ass and be a human being with them. And it doesn't surprise me that other player (online included) weren't invited because Annie Duke Look down on every nameless, unlive player. Bet she is doing backflip knowing only the most popular, famous player are in it. She is a witch.

Knew she had to leave for a reason indeed.

Should be interesting to see if Daniel Negreanu is invited to play in this with her running the show. The press release says the top 200 players will be invited. He recently became the all time money leader in tournaments. They have a bit of a feud going on after his bad comments about her last year.

arahel_jazz said:

Oh great - something else to compete with the NAPT and WSOP Circuit.

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The article says its not meant to compete. I believe it isnt. (You cant have too many poker tournaments, unless they're on the same day.) I think its a great idea. All other sports are run like this. Think of professional golf. They don't let just anyone with the money buy into a tournament. How fair would it be to Tiger Woods to have some rich hack job playin' on the same card as him?

Also, I think it will way decrease on the luck factor, of surviving some of the other events, with everyone wanting to be able to say, I eliminated so and so from the blah blah blah. It will be interesting to see who's always coming out on top in these events.

There's still gonna be the WSOP, nothing is gonna change that. This will just be a chance to watch poker done right. By the best players in the world, and not be the circus show, the Main Event has turned into.

smd173 said:

Should be interesting to see if Daniel Negreanu is invited to play in this with her running the show. The press release says the top 200 players will be invited. He recently became the all time money leader in tournaments. They have a bit of a feud going on after his bad comments about her last year.

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I'm sure she's just gonna have to bite her tongue on this one. There's no way Daniel Negreanu can not be invited. There's no way this league could be taken seriously if the current top money winner wasn't invited, because of a silly feud. She's just gonna have to bite her tongue, or apologize, even if she's not at fault.

Anyone else having PPT flashbacks?

That managed to fail with pretty much this same format at the height of the poker boom, I'll be intrigued to see how they plan to make it work this time.

Personally, I only want to watch a bunch of top pros in a cash game. Isn't the whole fun of a tournament that anyone can win?

OzExorcist said:

Anyone else having PPT flashbacks?

That managed to fail with pretty much this same format at the height of the poker boom, I'll be intrigued to see how they plan to make it work this time.

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Did you catch the Poker Edge podcast on ESPN with Annie and Pollack? Basically she said the PPT failed because the investors in WPTE (which was publicly traded) didn't want to invest the money into the PPT which were freerolls. She also said the freerolls kinda took the bite out of the games because no one was risking anything.

It will be easier to gauge this venture when they put out some more info like buy ins and structure and the formula for getting "tour" cards.

I want a tour card. Please please.

I was wondering what the hold up for something like this was. You have the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, PGA, WBC and UFC yet no league/association/organization for top poker professionals? If I had money, power and political influence then I would have set this up a long time ago!

CoddBrunson said:

How fair would it be to Tiger Woods to have some rich hack job playin' on the same card as him?

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In poker we want that to happen. Basically that guy has no chances of winning the tournament, yet his buy-in makes the prizepool bigger for the ones who do have good chances. His presence in the tournament increases the EV for the good players.

What an awful idea this is

a sports radio show i regularly listen to had Daniel talking about this league last week and he brought up alot of good points why it will not succeed. he was on "Prime Time Sports" on Fan590 in Toronto and it was a pretty good listen. it might be archived at the website.

Paj1975 said:

a sports radio show i regularly listen to had Daniel talking about this league last week and he brought up alot of good points why it will not succeed. he was on "Prime Time Sports" on Fan590 in Toronto and it was a pretty good listen. it might be archived at the website.

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Which I'm sure that his points had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he really does not like Annie Duke.

Mortis said:

Which I'm sure that his points had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he really does not like Annie Duke.

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He can lot like Annie Duke and still have valid points. Plus I suspect he's got at least some respect for Jeffrey Pollack.

Interested to hear what he said if anyone's got a link?

For those that are interested, this is a very good article on why this league has next to no chance of succeeding:

http://wickedchopspoker.com/will-jeffrey-pollack’s-federated-poker-league-work/#more-9331

Short version: it's almost certainly going to haemorage cash in the short term (if not permanently), it's not actually anything like the PGA (which is effectively owned by the players) and the major online sites are more likely to treat it like a competitor than anything else which has implications for the amount of funding it will receive and (more importantly) the players that will be allowed to appear on it.

But Chainsaw Kessler thinks it's a good thing so there's that at least.

OzExorcist said:

He can lot like Annie Duke and still have valid points. Plus I suspect he's got at least some respect for Jeffrey Pollack.

Interested to hear what he said if anyone's got a link?

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Here's the whole 10 minute interview... http://www.fan590.com/media.jsp?content=20110119_164139_10824

Go to 2 minutes into it, then at about 6:30 or 40. Several problems. Negreanu is not restricted, as poker stars is very liberal. He might get special treatment being their biggest pro star, IDK. But Full Tilt is not so liberal, and will restrict their pros from an event like this, which is clearly in competition with online. Also, there is no revenue to support this. All the tour biggies are actually largely supported by PS, FT, et al. And Daniel contends that she didn't consult her top 200 to see if they would even participate.

I'd have to imagine the logistics would be a problem. If Gus Hansen and Patrik Antonius can't make it to the WSOP in Vegas in a timely fashion, why will they jump on this? He also mentioned the attraction of dead money fish, which will not be present here. And also that there were so many other poker tours, often going on at the same time, so no lack of options or want for action.

Great another league..pokerstars has the NAPT,LAPT, then we have the WOSP and its WSOP circuits. I dont think this league will do good and just die in a year.