Annie Duke On The Celebrity Apprentice
Written by RogerCP | Saturday, February 7th, 2009
The second season of The Celebrity Apprentice will go on air on NBC from the 1st of March and Annie Duke will be a part of it. The first season played out early in 2008 and was won by tabloid editor Piers Morgan.
Annie was reluctant to be on the show to start with. She does not like reality shows because she feels that they do not recognize talent. Some shows like Survivor have co-players deciding who goes out. If you are good then they vote you out because they do not want competition. So you have to pretend to be incompetent and pretence and Annie do not go together.
In other shows the audience decides who goes out and they do that on the basis of popularity rather than performance. And though Annie is top of the pops in the poker world she is not that well known outside it as compared to actors, singers, Olympians and Playboy Playmates. But after being almost forced to meet with the producers she realized this was not the run of the mill reality show. The participants were split into two competing teams and therefore the team mates valued competence. Donald Trump, who also held the power to vote players out, acted fairly.
But what really tilted the scale for Annie was that she would be collecting for charity as well. Annie has played for Refugees International. This charity is closely linked with Ante Up for Africa, which has been promoted by Annie and to which the poker fraternity contributes generously.
The teams this season have been formed according to gender lines and the women participants include Joan Rivers – comedienne, Claudia Jordan – model, Brande Roderick – Playboy Playmate and Natalie Gulbis – golfer. During the shooting Annie made good friends with Brande. Brande was the Playmate of the month in April 2000 and Playmate of the Year in 2001. She has also starred in Baywatch.
Despite the totally different backgrounds Annie was able to find something in common. In an interview to Poker News Daily Annie said, “What I really admire about her [Brande] is that she’s good at leveraging perceptions to her advantage. If people are going to think of you as some dumb hot chick and you’re not, then just leverage it to your advantage. It’s more of a poker player’s way to approach it.”
But overall Annie was more uncomfortable in the team of women than she would have been in a team of men. Poker players are used to being direct and blunt at the tables and that this the way one can behave with men. Women are more sensitive and more likely to be hurt with what is said about them and therefore Annie had to be careful of not ruffling feathers in the women’s team.
Annie has been promoting the Celebrity Apprentice in the poker fraternity and we can hope to see more poker pros in the coming seasons of the show.
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· Written by RogerCP · Filed Under Poker Gossip · 2 Comments
May 11th, 2009 at 2:43 am
Hey annie duke i’m voting for you as a poker player you are going to make it you very best in the because smart and bight has talent than joan river’s with bad bitch such a bipolar.I think that annie duke should win the next celebrity apprentice for charity donate in her organzation.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:03 am
I really wish she had won. That Joan Rivers was such a liar. I only saw the last episode but basically Annie got hosed!