There is not much in poker that Annie Duke has not achieved. She has a World Series of Poker bracelet to her name, has reached the final table of a World Poker Tour event, won a $20,000 buy-in Heads-Up tournament and won $2,000,000 in a single event when she won the 2004 Tournament of Champions. To date Duke has almost $4,300,000 in live tournament winnings, has written five books and is now the Executive Vice President and League Commissioner for the Epic Poker League.
Despite being an extremely busy woman, Annie took some time out in order to speak to Poker Channel Europe about the Epic Poker League, what it means to her, how it came about and a whole host of other subjects. Keep reading to discover how passionate she is about this amazing new league.
First of all thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to speak to our readers and viewers, it is much appreciated. The Epic Poker League premièred in Europe on Sunday 15 January but there are some people who do not know what it is all about. What is the Epic Poker League?
If someone was to say to me “what is the Epic Poker League” I would have to say it is the poker equivalent to the PGA Tour of poker, where the best professionals play against each other.
How is the Epic Poker League different from say a World Poker Tour or European Poker Tour Event, both of which are televised around Europe?
What has happened in the past is there have been these very large field open events where the focus seems to be on some Average Joes and building them up as the best in the world because they won a poker tournament or are trying to sell the idea that anyone can win, but the problem with this is you do not see the same cast of characters over and over again making the final table. You may see them in the B-Roll at the start of an event but not regularly at the final tables. Or they have small field invitational events but these lack an authenticity and the poker community often struggles to get behind them because there are arguments about who has been invited, who hasn’t been invited and all those things.
Poker is a game where there is a lot of data so we found a way to scrape the data and come up with a way to really determine who the best of the best, the elite really are and I think we have done that with our qualification criteria.
There were some members of the poker community who believed the Epic Poker League had been created so that so-called “Big Name” or famous pros could still be in the limelight and effectively pass money back-and-forth between themselves. What are your thoughts on this?
I think when we first announced it people were suspicious because I guess many poker players have been mistreated by televised poker or invitational events, so they had a right to be suspicious and think “this is a way for players who are already famous to stay famous” and I can understand why they would think like that because that is what the invitational events were doing. They were inviting the people who were already famous to appear on TV and become more famous. So if you were a new guy, say like Sam Stein, then you had no shot, or Chris Moorman or whoever it might be it was so difficult for them to break through.
But the criticisms of the Epic Poker League went away as soon as we released our list of eligible players and the criteria to gain entry to the Epic Poker League. They said, “hold on a second, half of this list is 30 and under! This isn’t for the old school at all, they really are trying to put the best up against the best!”
So how did the Epic Poker League concept come to light?
A lot of the televised poker events used the “Poker After Dark” model where they only invited well-known poker players and to tell you the truth I was a big beneficiary of that model because I got invited to all the invitational stuff but whilst I was being a beneficiary of it I felt it was unfair to the younger players who really deserved to have more recognition.
Along with feeling bad for the players I also felt this model was bad for the sport because if you take the top 300 players in the World you realise very quickly that poker is a very young sport, but the problem with how these invitational’s were being handled is you weren’t getting new stars through into the game so the stars were quite old. I mean, if you look at the most famous players they are almost all over 40 and when you look at those who are currently actively playing the circuit at the highest levels are under 30 and that’s a really big disconnect.
I think in any sport if you are not generating new stars, like Tim Tebow in the NFL, if the Tebow’s do not come along you are in trouble. You cannot have a sport that has an old face as its star, the NFL could not survive if its biggest star was Joe Montana. You need these new stars to break through but the old style of programming was not favourable to them so I saw a problem not only for them but for the sport that I felt needed to be solved.
Creating something on this scale must take an awful lot of work. How long had the ideas been in the pipeline, so to speak, and how much planning has had to be done?
What I just spoke about were the very beginnings of the Epic Poker League idea, they were things I had been talking about and other professional players had been talking about these kind of matters since 2005-06! Players questioning why they weren’t getting rake free tournaments or why weren’t there more limited fields.
In the second half of the last decade is when we really started to ask the questions and myself and Jeffrey Pollack and a number of others really started to sit down and discuss issues and come up with a real strategic plan for how to get this sorted. For me the real planning started in 07-08.
Wow, that is a lot of planning! When the first tournament ran in August that must have given you a massive sense of pride and achievement.
Yeah! When I first walked into that room it was so cool to see an actual tournament taking place. One with amazing dealers and Matt Savage as the tournament director and you looked around the room and it was so funny because I was looking around the room and thinking “God, that is such a tough table!” but then every single table was a tough table! Then you realised that you could have picked any table in that room and it would have made a really fantastic final table, and that was really gratifying.
How as the feedack of the players been?
The feedback we have received was overwhelmingly positive which was a relief as this was a new model to them. Some of them were worried they would not like the new format and playing against the best but so far they’ve told us they like the lack of celebrations from opponents, that nobody is stalling for no reason and that the floor’s not being called every two minutes. They like the smoothness of the play because everyone is so experienced but they also like the level of thought they have to put into it and they enjoy the challenge of having to play at their very best.
Season 1 is almost completed now, has it being how you and everyone behind the scenes envisaged?
I would absolutely say so. Our main focus is the serving the players so naturally we have been looking at the attendance figures so I looked at the World Series of Poker Europe Main Event and various other Main Events around the same time as our events and out of the 593 entrants at the WSOPE there were 94 who were eligible to play in the Epic Poker League and that is about what we got in September as we got 97. Then ditto at the Bellagio got 95 Epic eligible pros in their field of 400 and we got 100 in our event so we’re tracking the same as other events out there which is exactly what I was hoping for, so really happy with turn out.
As mentioned the feedback from the players has been positive and I love the television production! I think 411 and David Neal have done a great job and I think it is some of the prettiest television out there. The analysis is great and something I really love is the quality of the play. You will see so many high level play that you have never seen in televised poker.
Is there any particular thing that has stood out as a major highlight?
Well obviously the relationship with Poker Channel Europe! Hahaha!
I suppose just seeing something grow from a basic idea discussed over dinner into a full scale television production must be a highlight in itself.
I think the definite highlight was going through and completing our first event. It is actually hard for me to say because there have been so many amazing things that have happened so far. Two years ago we were just an idea, a cool idea, then in February when we announced we still didn’t have a tournament, we didn’t have anything. No cards, no table felt or even chips.
When you turn on your television set and your tournament is on there it is an amazing feeling!
Well I personally think you all deserve a huge pat on the back and I cannot wait for the first set of shows to start airing here! Thank you ever so much for speaking to our listeners and readers!
Thank you very much! I am super stoked for getting into Europe and I think it should have a major positive effect for future events in terms of European player taking part.
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So there you have it, Annie Duke’s thoughts on the Epic Poker League and I can tell you now there is nobody more passionate about the Epic Poker League than her. Do not forget to tune into The Poker Channel every Sunday from 2200 CET in Europe and 11pm in UK & Ireland for the only chance to watch the Epic Poker League on European television!
