| Last year, I hit up Annie Duke, thinking she\'d make for this wicked cool profile story. She\'s kind of a big deal—or was, back in her poker heyday. I mean, she was the top woman raking in dough at the World Series of Poker, right? But then she dropped the cards and went corporate—speaking gigs, strategy gigs, the whole shebang. She\'s got this vibe, you know? I figured she\'d have killer insights on fame, cash, and how she\'s been treated as a woman in the spotlight. So, we start chatting, and it\'s like this mental tug-of-war. Every message, every word felt like a move in some high-stakes game. Was I being played? Beats me.
She was all over the idea of the profile at first, slapping smiley faces on her emails and jazzing them up with excitement. She even invited me to tag along to some charity shindig and her brother-in-law\'s birthday bash. When I needed contacts for background, boom, she hit me back in minutes with a laundry list of names: family, exes, celeb buddies—the works https://aussietopcasinos.com/. She was no rookie; giving me the inside track kept me from digging around in the dirt for the juicy stuff.
Duke\'s been jet-setting all over the States since she left the poker scene, doling out wisdom at high-flying conferences for the likes of Citibank and Marriott. She\'s dished out gaming advice in books and dropped some serious knowledge in her first book for regular Joes, ""Thinking in Bets."" It\'s all about seeing life like a poker game—weighing risks, making sharp calls without all the facts. She\'s schooling folks to think twice before betting the farm on a hunch cbc. It\'s mind-bending stuff, really.
She says we\'re all gamblers at heart—ordering at a restaurant, buying a house—you name it. It\'s us against the \'what-ifs\' of life. Duke\'s driving point? Doubt yourself. It\'s not about being a goody-two-shoes; it\'s about being a smarty-pants. She thinks living in the unknown sharpens your wits, and I can\'t help but nod along.
If Duke were younger or less sharp, I\'d have thought her eager-beaver act was just naivety. But she\'s seen it all, knows the game, and there\'s no way she wasn\'t playing me like a fiddle. She\'s spent years making people second-guess themselves. And there I was, worried she\'d run circles around me without breaking a sweat.
So, I finally meet her at the Franklin Institute, right? She\'s on the board, and she\'s got this board meeting and a party after. But she\'s like, ""Hey, wanna grab a bite before we get down to business?"" And I\'m thinking, ""We\'re cutting it close here,"" but I\'m not about to argue. That\'s her turf, after all.
We head out, and she\'s telling me, ""Being vegan makes this a bit tricky."" We wind up in this Indian joint because, apparently, that\'s the only place we can find that suits her diet. She\'s cool as a cucumber about missing her meeting, and I\'m just along for the ride.
Duke\'s got this intense stare, and I remember her sister describing her voice as something fierce in her memoir. Their upbringing was like a battlefield at home, which must have been where she learned to fight with words. She took that fight to the poker tables of Vegas, schooling ranchers and retirees alike, and turned her life into something straight out of an action flick.
Poker used to be for the shady types, but then it hit the big time, and Duke was smashing those stereotypes cnn, showing up on TV and in magazines. She stood out, a woman against the boys, and man, she had to deal with all kinds of chumps. But she had a play for every one of them.
Fast forward, and she\'s on ""The Celebrity Apprentice,"" locking horns with Joan Rivers. Even the big man Trump chimed in. Despite the drama, Duke played her cards right, even as it drove Rivers nuts. And then the legal stuff hit the fan—her brother\'s betting company got into some hot water, and Duke got tied up in some shady-sounding tapes. But she stood her ground, saying she never cheated.
I gotta say, there\'s something about Duke—she\'s got game. As we\'re eating, she\'s open, but cautious. Like she\'s weighing every word. Earlier that day, she was all gung-ho about the profile, but at dinner, she\'s backpedaling, and I\'m left wondering what her real play is.
On my way back to New York, I\'m mulling over how she asked for feedback on her book. It was too late for changes, she had to know that. But it was clever, making her look humble and making me feel important. Was it a move, or did she genuinely want my two cents?
We kept in touch, and she\'s humming and hawing about the profile. Then she hits me with the ""no-go"" email bbc, all polite and stuff. She must\'ve had her people weigh in, though she didn\'t let on who. I press her for a piece on her book and career instead, but the profile\'s a bust—she\'s not folding.
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