Annie Duke was full of poker love after closing out her first tournament.
"My record in that event hasn’t been great and neither had Erik’s (Seidel). Ironically Erik actually had the worst record in that event. [Previously] I’d come in and not necessarily put my everything into it and not taken it seriously. I was definitely taking it much more seriously this time. Erik and I were joking that if we didn’t win our first matches, clearly we wouldn’t be invited back the next year! So I won my first match, Erik won his and of course I was sweating him the whole time. He was on the other side of the draw and playing before me the whole tournament. So every time he won a match it gave me motivation because I was going to be damned if he ended up with a better record than me!"
She also named Paul Wasicka as the hardest opponent she has faced - "Oh God, the one against Paul Wasicka almost killed me. Paul Wasicka is obviously a former champion of the event and someone that does not give up any value at all. There’s not a penny coming out of his stack that’s not supposed to, it’s crazy. Two hours into the match and no one was giving up any value. Basically it was going to come down to these lucky hands because it wasn’t like anyone was dominating the match, we were just trading back and forth. He raised, I moved in with A-10 (because the blinds were really high) and he called with Aces. And obviously I won that hand, which was stupid. I made Broadway."
"I count myself very lucky to have won that match, but after we were done, he was really nice and he said, ‘I think you played great, if you play like that I think you can win.’ That’s great to hear from the previous champion who's just had Aces sucked out on."