Poker Takes Me Back To The Future

Blog By Annie Duke

When the interviewer asked me about where I first started playing poker it dawned on me that I started out playing in a fairly ridiculous place for a 20-something-year-old girl to be hanging out.(although poker might have been the safest thing to do there).

I started playing at a place called The Crystal Lounge in downtown Billings, Montana. The Crystal was not the seediest bar in Billings by a long shot, that was The Empire, which happened to be the place where the game initially started. The Crystal, however, was comfortably in second place. Need a fix of $5 video poker? That place was for you. Cheap booze?  Check. A pimp named Ice Cream? What?

No. Seriously. I’m not joking, there really was a pimp named Ice Cream whose base of operations was The Crystal. He was originally from Bed-Stuy, with full on Jheri Curl, gold tooth and silk magenta suit. I’m told he was a pretty good pimp, although I’m not exactly sure what makes someone a pretty good pimp.

To be fair, I never explored that too deeply.  Ice Cream might have been a good pimp but he was a terrible poker player, which made the game pretty good. Rumor had it that he found his way to Montana on the run from the law in New York. I have no doubt that the story was true although he was always really nice to me – hopefully not a recruiting ploy.

So, in my early twenties I somehow managed to find my way to this crazy place to play the game I loved against these weathered old men and Ice Cream. In my single mindedness to learn and master the complexities of the game, I just forgot to be appalled at the venue where I was playing. I forgot that maybe when I grew up I would never want my own daughter to hang out in a place like The Crystal. I just wanted to play, and I was going to play anywhere there was poker.

And now I look at the game today, particularly the Epic Poker League, and I think that no one would believe what poker looked like back then. I see a professional league where 50% of the membership is 30 or under. I see a league played on a beautiful set in an upscale  casino on national network television.

I just marvel how far this game has come. Back then, the idea of a professional poker league of young, cerebral, mathematically-minded pros, all as serious about their profession as any elite sportsman, would have been laughable and certainly would have gotten an eye roll from me as I anted up in the basement of The Crystal among old, weathered men – and as far away from the spotlight as a person could ever be.

I love what this sport has become (even if I have a little nostalgia for what it once was).

Annie Duke is the Commissioner of EPL and co-founder of Federated Sports + Gaming. She is third on the women’s all-time money list with $4.2 million in earnings. She was recently nominated for induction into the Poker Hall of Fame.