Poker News > Annie Duke on Acting Out in the Poker Spotlight


Annie Duke on Acting Out in the Poker Spotlight

By Annie Duke - Nov 17th, 2008

I had a very interesting month of October where I had cameras on me for most of the day, every day.  I learned something from the experience that might seem really trivial, but is actually really important to me. I learned that I am the same whether or not a camera is on me.  This fact might actually hurt me as much as it might do me some good to be more aware of the cameras occasionally.  I mean sometimes a little self-censorship is not such a bad thing.  But love me or hate me, I am who I am and it turns out that it just doesn’t matter whether or not there is a camera around me or not.  I won’t do anything special to get them to point in my direction.  I don’t change who I am or what I am willing to say just because there is someone filming me.  Take me or leave me, this is just who I am.

Now the thing is that I also learned that that is not true of everyone.  There are a lot of people in this world who are really different when a camera is around than when it isn’t.  ...

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3 Comments

Andy   November 17th, 2008 at 6:36 pm

Annie,

Thanks for the essay – a very interesting topic. The Brenes example is indeed a classic case of what should have been a positive for the game (cameras, TV exposure) turning into a disturbing travesty.

You don’t cover an important aspect of this debate though – the encouragement of this type of disgraceful antics by both ESPN and the online poker sites. ESPN devotes a lot of their coverage to this type of behaviour (with some admonishment in the commentary admittedly), presumably because they believe it will lead to higher ratings. Poor behaviour therefore leads to more precious “tv time”. Online sites then provide sponsorships to those players who get “tv time”. Havad Khan in 2007 acts abusrdly, gets huge coverage & lands the big deal. Would he have gotten the same deal had he acted normally? The way he acted in 2008? Will Darus Suharto or Ylon Schwartz get anything like the same deal? Despite the same result as Hevad? It seems unlikely.

Lastly, the first two paragraphs of your essay (unintentionally i believe) comes across as very condescending.

Cheers, Andy

Brian Cullingworth   November 17th, 2008 at 11:50 pm

Celebrities behaving badly….it’s become a part of our Western culture, I’m afraid, and spurring it is the hunger for publicity and a media that craves the outrageous to attract eyeballs and revenues.

Poker is not the only victim – from pop and movie stars to sportsmen and heiresses the emphasis is on men and women behaving at their basest and bragging about it.

Especially when the cameras they profess to hate so much are around.

Over-celebration (or as we saw with Nguyen recently, losing badly) has become the norm, creating a need to be even more abrasive in order to be noticed.

Maybe this is a good thing, because the elegant winner who courteously shakes his opponent’s hand and thanks him or her for the game will soon be so rare as to in itself become newsworthy!

Sharkfan   November 19th, 2008 at 6:52 pm

Humberto Brenes has his shark as a means to bring awareness to shark predation in his native Costa Rica.

Oh yeah, the good old times… you mean like when the people most profiting from the game of poker were actually the ones playing it? Becoming a losing poker celebrity in this day and age is still more lucrative than being a winning anonymous pro was or ever will be.

Why is that? Because ESPN figured out how to make poker exciting to the masses.

You yourself have greatly benefitted from this growth, not only in the form of your $2 million victory in the made for TV Tournament of Champions Event but in the passive benefits of this new poker friendly environment.

And for you, an extremely visible ambassador for the poker industry to take the time out of your schedule to write something in a time full of bans in Kentucky, cheats in UB (the very site you endorse,) impending UIGEA implementation and even Eastgates WSOP victory on feigned excitement and the moral ramifications of attention craving is petty to say the least.

You’ve fought hard to be a leader of this industry, of the people involved in this industry. Now you are going to remain silent on the major issues of our time in favor of redeeming Matusow and Hellmuth and slighting Brenes? Come on Annie

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