Annie Duke Starts PGA-Styled Poker League

Annie Duke recently announced her latest venture which will be five-tournament poker tour that is modeled after golf’s PGA Tour, requiring players to qualify to play.

Duke is teaming up with former World Series of Poker commissioner, Jeffrey Pollack for the project which will see all five tournaments televised as 200 qualified players compete for cash and glory.

“This is incredibly pro-centric,” Annie Duke told the Associated Press. “This is the one piece that’s kind of missing from the poker landscape right now, which is something for the best players in the world to compete against the best players in the world.”

While the idea may seem novel and exciting at first, it’s not exactly an untested format. The Professional Poker Tour was born out of the World Poker Tour back in 2007. It was an invitation-only series that saw five tournaments aired on the Travel Channel before being canceled. And as far as seeing just well-established and known poker pros competing, one needs to look no further than Poker After Dark or High Stakes Poker. Albeit, they are both single table so there could be an argument to support larger tournament versions.

ESPN’s poker correspondent, Andrew Feldman, weighed in on the subject and was fairly skeptical about Duke and Pollack’s chances of overcoming some of the massive hurdles they will face.

One of the big challenges will be to get access to the poker pros that are sponsored by online poker sites. Poker sites have been increasingly controlling over their images and pro players recently and if the major sites don’t permit their pros on the show, then Duke’s project will be dead in the water.

Additionally, since it’s only top players competing against top players, the shortage of dead money in the field might make things seem a lot less attractive to the top players. Unlike in golf, and every other sport, you actually make a better living in poker when you play weaker opponents. Don’t you think that if players in any sport could make more money playing against weaker competition they would? Not to mention the fact that several of the top players don’t exactly subscribe to the Annie Duke fan club.

Ultimately, Duke’s new league is going to be facing an uphill battle to last more than one season. Duke does, however, bring a large degree of celebrity to the tour and undoubtedly has a large number of powerful contacts in both the poker and celebrity worlds. The only question is whether it will be enough to keep this idea afloat.

What do you  think? Will Annie Duke’s poker tour idea fly? Let us know in the comment section below.

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Tags: Annie Duke, Poker   Posted in Casino Gambling Category