Annie, Phil and George
Annie, Phil and George is a threesome of a different kind. Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth played poker with George Stephanopoulos in order to fulfill his dream of playing poker with the best. Stephanopoulos is the former advisor to former President Bill Clinton. His desire was expressed in Living the Dream feature on the popular ABC show Good Morning America.
Therefore a training session was arranged in which Annie gave some tips to Stephanopoulos before he took to the table. Annie is regarded as the best female poker player. Good Morning America has a strong female audience and Annie would be perfect to relate to that. Her stint at Celebrity Apprentice was also useful because it gave her a considerable non-poker fan following.
30 minutes is far too less for teaching poker and fortunately for Annie her student was not starting from scratch. Stephanopoulos has played poker before and watches it regularly on television. Annie stressed that bluffing had become overrated. Annie rued the fact that most people who do not understand poker think that it is synonymous with bluffing. Occasionally a poker player will sense that he can win with the worst hand, but that is the exception and not the rule. A more immediately useful issue that Annie explained was the importance of position in a poker game.
Annie is poker’s brand ambassador and did not lose the opportunity to send a message to the legislators who are opposing the legalization of online poker. The fact that Stephanopoulos had a political background helped. Annie said, “Poker and politics go hand in hand. The game has a long presidential history for sure. It’s great when people bring our game into the mainstream world in that kind of forum.”
After the lessons it was exam time and the table was set in Harrah’s Atlantic City. Hellmuth, Annie’s colleague at UB.com, joined them along with Steven Begleiter and Jason “Jaspuduf” Lee. Ali Nejad of Poker After Dark fame gave the commentary for Good Morning America. The show was to go on air on May 5 and this poker clip was scheduled to run for about 10 minutes. The ABC promo video showed Stephanopoulos going all in much to the amusement of Phil Hellmuth.
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