This thread is meant to be a one stop shopping place for all of the statements, posts and comments made by Annie Duke in fulfilling whatever her exact role is and has been at CEREUS, UltimateBet, ieLogic and any other connected enterprise. I originally titled it "dissembling", but I guess she might really believe some of the stuff she says. She is fairly recognizable for making directly conflicting statements; some even within the same conversation. I will begin with a choice few. Please add others as I am sure I have only chipped the tip of the Annie iceberg. I don't know Annie personally and come away from her video and audio interviews as do many others; she is mildly annoying for her cocksure nature as well as a nasal and somewhat whiny delivery. I applaud her accomplishments; mostly her ability to market herself in the poker world.

Around July of 2008, Annie went on a whirlwind tour of press contact; ostensibly to trumpet her renewed relationship in representing the forthcoming CEREUS brand. She did several radio and video based interviews as well as posted in various poker forums. One of the first radio interviews was on the PocketFives Podcast dated 7/3/2008 (available at iTunes I believe). Here are some gems from that interview. The quotes are approximate transcriptions based on my own listening; if I got any of it substantively wrong, feel free to correct ITT. She does seem to believe her role in representing the brand does not equate to being a "spokesman", though I don't see the distinction.

"I want to answer about the UB side since that is the site I represent" - The CEREUS press release stated they had spent 12 months innovating a combined site, fully encompassing the time period when the AP scandal came to a head so its a distinction without a difference.

"Its a matter of public record the company changed ownership" - this was in response to a question about how the public could be confident in the future, intimating a change of ownership guaranteed that. The change occurred in 2006; long before the cheating was ever discovered.

"Somebody associated with the company which held the gaming license, basically developed a piece of software which that if it were used allowed you to see holecards... any account could use it. It wasn't like a superuser." - here she suggests somebody at eWorld Holdings developed the tool which kind of defies belief based on how the companies operated. In any case, eWorld would have been swallowed up by Blast Off since there was a 20 year license in place for UB. And being able to see opponents holecards seems exactly like a superuser; the KGC report actually named the accounts AuditMonster at UB.

"Mar 06 the company was going public.... the company which held the gaming company got bought out, disappeared because this all became one company listed on the stock exchange. The people who benefitted were done." - this is interesting because she is faded out into a commercial and when we return, we are on to a different subject. She had started to dig quite a hole concerning company structure; an misleading and incorrect hole.

"somebody from a long time ago was able to build old code, a piece of software that could exploit the UB code. In Mar/06 someone decided to start exploiting it." - this is just stupid but it has regained some recent traction with various blogs online. The company has admitted the cheating went back at least June 2003.

"There is no major poker brand that hasn't had something like this happen" - this implies multiaccounting, bots and collusion are on the same level as owner/operators using unfair access to defraud their own customers.

"Proud to be associated with a brand that didn't deny it" - except of course that AP and UB were under the same umbrella and the first AP reports were flat denials.

"makes themselves an open book to the community" - not sure how you can call the dissembling which has occurred an open book, but its an opinion.

"Paul Leggett... he was with another public gaming company until 8/06. Obv right when the AP thing broke, he was brought in as a management consultant just as that happened." - well, except that the AP thing didn't break until 2007 and Paul was slowly transitioned from basic marketing flack into Super Marketing Flack.

On June 6, 2008, she did an interview with Pokernews; who threw her a few softballs. One thing she did say which was interesting was:

"I'm not privvy to the exact financials, but revenue was not affected" - PokerScout shows that traffic from the combined sites has been cut in half with very few higher stakes games; one can feel confident revenue was affected.

On July 10th, she went on PokerRoad Radio for some beauties.

"Now because of the way the laws of the United States work, you need to form a company to hold the Brand and the Gaming License. That company really doesn’t do anything, right? It holds the gaming license basically. That company was called E-World Holdings." - Pretty much all of the available information shows eWorld as the actual operator of the site. IDS seemed to work directly in support of them. Excapsa may have ran the network and developed the software, but support and financial transaction processing clearly resided with this company that doesn't do anything, right? Also even after the IPO, eWorld continued to take 50% of ongoing revenues according to Excapsa financial documents.

"because a public company has to own the brand and the gaming license, so they buy-out E-World Holdings" - this never happened and actually could not have happened with current law.

"It was an inherited thing another is this guy, he is a good friend of ours" - she is talking about how Tokwiro explained the exploit. This is more interesting for the use of the phrase "good friend of ours". Doesn't Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro use this phrase a lot?

"this particular superuser was a very smart superuser, so it wasn't something you would pick up from general fraud protection on the site" - In other quotes, she says it was not a superuser, but more important is that general fraud protection would not pick it up. We know that UB employed a tool far beyond general fraud protection and it should have in fact picked this up.

"you can take advantage of this datamining and make sure everybody is made whole" - well, you can if you are willing to release all of the HHs and not suggest that some have been destroyed and others simply too hard to access.

"I think that we need to be supporting brands that stand up and do the right thing" - ooops sorry, this one slipped in there. I actually agree with this.

The following came from PokerRoad on 12/14/2008.

"60 minutes is a dying show, thats the good news" - This has been said for over 40 years. Perhaps if the company you helped build didn't completely gob**** the poker community we would not have been subjected to a Sunday night "slam piece".

"if regulated... their investigation would have been audited" - this actually sort of has some reverse logic to it. She suggests the company didn't need to submit to any legitimate audit process because they are not legitimately regulated. In the liquidator documents, Gaming Associates admits it simply took Uri Kozai's report and rubber stamped it.

"People cheated by boesky were never made whole" - this may have truth to it, but it doesn't recognize that people cheated on Wall Street have access to the courts via civil suit and in fact many of Boesky's victims did receive some compensation. I find it amusing because she is essentially comparing her company's minor league fraud with the major leagues in NY. The better cheater you are the more you get to keep I think is the confusing message here.

"We'll send anybody who requested their hand histories" - umm no.

Her testimony on Capitol Hill had a few memorable lines, I may add those as time allows.

Annie Duke is terrible in general, as an ambassador to poker and as a human being, everyone can move along this isn't news.

OP cliffs pls. I gots the ADD

Annie Duke says inconsistent nonsensical stuff concerning the company who refuses to come clean about stealing ur monies; ITT we identify all of that stuff so people stop relying on her as a legitimate source of accurate information (yes, some still do)

Testimony from November 17, 2007.

Iovation mentions appear on pages 55 and 77.

Couple more from an interview on thewomenofpoker.com

"a problem with a level of encryption that would have been very difficult to exploit" - except that the exploit itself wasn't that difficult and gaining access could have been done at numerous points across the network including by rogue employees at MIT on the Kahnawake. I'm sure UB agrees that rogue employees exist in companies. The truth is we don't know if this was ever exploited and likely never will.

"Are you comfortable with the kinds of responses that the site gives" - well if you mean when it is shown the site operates in an irresponsible manner in software design and implementation at a site handling millions of dollars in financial transactions, but then agrees to clean it up when outsiders expose problems, yeah I guess.

"this is the first time this new management has had to deal with something like this" - so, in early 2008 when the whole UB cheating was being uncovered after the AP fiasco, we are now saying that the new management was not yet in place? Somebody really needs to be clear on exactly when new owners/new managers/new cheaters/new shills have been put in place. Idea; publish an annual program like sports teams do highlighting the roster and any offseason trades. Maybe for the first edition you could put the Joey Harrington wannabe; Garin Gustafson on the cover.

I wish she would burn in hell, well she will, but yeah.

annie duke just takes money, turns a blind eye to where its coming from... just like phil helmuth....

because of the ****ty legal system, shes saying basically "well because its not regulated, we can do whatever lols noobs"

if i was in a position to reap millions of dollars of questionable money with virtually no reprocussions except for maybe a ****ty rep....

Can you quote some of the inconsistent nonsensical stuff? Maybe I'm being too generous, but the things you point out just seem like innocent enough mistakes, and the kinds of slightly imprecise things we sometimes say when speaking.

If we somehow knew that she had a complete and accurate organizational chart for UB, E-World Holdings, and all related companies, and was intimately familiar with all of the financial dealings, and all of the cheating issues, then I would agree that some of the things she wrote are contradicted by people like Mookman and whoever44. But "inconsistent" as used in the title implies to me that she is internally-inconsistent, which would of course imply she is dishonest or very confused. But as confused as the whole situation is, does anyone honestly think that Annie Duke, the company's poker pro celebrity cum game-play-consultant, really has that level of detailed knowledge?

If it makes any difference, I think over the years she has come across on tv as a bitch. So I'm not her cheer leader. I just think the whole hunt for the truth behind the whole Cereus mess would be better off if we reduced the amount of mud slinging and stuck to the facts.

Really? Is this a level? I wrote a few words, then stopped because of laughter. But yeah, for quotes of the above, see OP.

This!

[x] The shill has spoken

Godzilla face palm FTW.

"say yes when no one asked [ivy] [flower] [dingleberry]"

Annie duke doesnt need to be disproved or anything, she only needs to be ignored.

Cell phone Records . Any documents would incriminate her during this time period or could.

Most importantly. These shills as her and helmuth. Liek most poker books Preach the 10 card pocket pair system. Yet when you play on their site. The program targets this . And rips it off over and over. These pros have been up way more any you think. They will do anything for money.

Her hands and eyes and ears knew about this. Get records of who she tlak to etc. She wont produce this cause she knows .

Im in here to say hi to froggythe, good to see you back bud!

I like the concept of this thread as Annie has clearly been lying through her teeth for a long time in regards to the scandal

Annie and Phils buffoonery of spokes people for CERUES should be legend by now the two arguments why we should play on UB that irk me the most are:
1. both Annie and Phil claim all online poker sites have had cheating scandals involving a million dollars or more, hey PS,FTP and PP can you please tell us what Annie and Phil are referring to, so we will fell safe playing on UB huh
2. this gem from Annie on PRR goes like this: the reason UB cant report the 21+ million dollar fraud to the authorities because its like when you go to cop coke and you get baby powder you cant go to the cops and complain

Where's mookman5?

I'm here. At one time or another I have pointed out the flaws from Annie's interview. I thought the UB discussion would be more focused now on the named cheaters and Wicked Chops Articles. I really do not mind pointing out how ridiculous Annie looked though, but she is never going to reply or admit her mistakes. I will just look at an interview she gave on Pokerroad to start:

Ok. If the KGC report is to believed or the Wicked Chops story, wouldn't the Auditmonster account be an account with separate privleges?
So they could have logged in from any account, and not just the Auditmonster account? If this is true, how could UB possibly know which account could have gained from the cheating and who used this software? Either way, the stories out now compared to these 2 quotes from Annie seem to differ greatly.
This "somebody" at E-world, presumably Russ figured out there was this tool? Or asked for it to be built like the Wicked Chops story reports? They developed this piece of software? Who is they, the person at E-World? I though it was Pierson who had this software developed? Was it really a tool, or just part of the UB software code?

So here Annie is saying it is NOT ielogic or Pierson. This again directly contradicts the latest story coming out from Wicked Chops. She is implying someone at E-World developed the software? Who is this person or people at E-world she is referring to, b/c Russ is not a software developer.

Huh? I was under the impression it was already part of the software, written in, by Pierson at Ielogic guys and then later a contractor. I am so confused by what Annie is saying here.

As pointed out, this is not true. E-World was still a part of UB after Excapsa went public. Annie is also implying the cheating started much later than it actually did. Like a few years she is off on when the cheating started.
Again, she is saying the person who developed it was from E-World. Not Ielogic.

LOL. Completely open? Refunded every single dime? Yet later on, more refunds were issued due to the settlement.

Within a week? Nope. They did not make a statement until March, and it was through 2+2, Then the next statement was in late May, when it appeared they were finished with the investigation, until BWDD showed up.

Nope, 2+2 discovered a lot of names, and by default discovered all the Cheating accounts.

Yes, new accounts were created. See my thread on UB Account Errors. This is a big lie, b/c new accounts were made and discovered, after UB said there were no new accounts, only new user names. This was a big lie by UB and Annie, which can be confirmed by press releases, or the thread I made.
How could name changes be missed? I mean going by the sleepless account, exact dates of each name change were given, and even the order. I do not see how name changes were missed, esp. with iesnare in place.

Read the statement UB put out in May. I have not read it in awhile, but I am pretty sure it never mentioned the investigation was ongoing, more refunds were coming, or more names would be found. It did not say the were still investigating.

Is this a level? Let's look at the big bad inconsistency in your first quote...

What exactly do you think this quote, and your commentary, shows? Are you suggesting that at the time she gave that interview, she really was intimately familiar with the (historical) goings on at Absolute? I mean, it's possible, but I wouldn't assume it to be the case. Despite what the press release said. Yes, companies lie to make themselves look better than they are. Yes, UB is probably worse than the typical company. But to me, that means more than anything else that the press release was most likely an exaggeration, and that Annie (and almost everyone else from both companies, aside from the top management) probably knew next to nothing about the specific details of what was going on with the other group.

It isn't exactly the same thing, but I've worked for completely honest and above board companies, been bought out, and seen press releases announcing that we were now working hand-in-hand, united, one company, etc., without having ever met any of my new bosses, or seen any changes in day to day operations -- much less learned anything about the management of the other company (i.e. my new company), their policies, their history, ongoing problems, etc. I just did my job. And PR people just did their jobs. And sales people just did their jobs.

If you see that quote from Annie Duke as damning, I can only ask if you've got any quotes that are significantly more damning, or else I'm afraid it just looks like you are throwing mud without anything to back it up.

I will pretend you are not affiliated w/Ms Duke to make this easier. In these interviews, Annie makes a strong point that she was ready to "leave the brand" over the two scandals. Remember, she didn't just recently come to the company, she had been there since almost the very beginning. If you read her book, you will see she actually relocates to Portland where she puts considerable energy into the site.

She was involved with the company when the AP charges broke and as an owner/player rep (according to a Forbes interview), one would hope she made inquiries based on concern for her own reputation. Apparently she did and decided to "leave the brand". Then comes new management (although I'm not sure any of us really knows when exactly that occurred) and she becomes committed to not only representing the brand, but taking an even more active role. So she had to be plainly aware of what was occurring with the AP side or else she was agreeing to stake her reputation on a siamese twin without knowledge of its involvement. It is a specious argument.

Moreover, you have to understand what really happened in the merge. In the fall of 2006, UB was bought out by Blast Off. Whether AD was an owner of the new enterprise or not is open to speculation, but she absolutely knew the company was now owned and operated by an entity comprised of both UB/AP; one year before the AP cheating was discovered and two before this interview. And she was never just some poker chic repping the brand; there is strong evidence she held/holds ownership via an offshore trust in the name of Fluffhead LLC. So, yes she was "intimately familiar with the historical goings on at Absolute"; at least from a date where it is relevant to her being a spokesman (rep/whatever) for the combined brand; CEREUS which is what these interviews were about.

So ITT, we not only point out AD's issues, I guess we will also respond to the weak rebuttals her supporters bring to the table. (its easier to just use the godzilla facepalm, but I started the thread to make it clear the individual in question has played a significant role in obfuscation and miscommunication making a clean start for the new brand impossible. It is also sad AD has tender feelings concerning forum participation and openly expresses her disdain for 2p2 or else she might respond herself.)

Well said. I will try to examine what Annie and Paul have said about this as well. You hit it pretty spot on though.

First some Paul Leggett quotes:
The story goes, Joe Norton bought UB/AP in Oct. 2006 (but did not announce he did so until a year later) and Paul Leggett came on board in late Aug. 2007.

Since Oct. 2006 UB/AP has been operated as one company. OK?

Hmmm. No Scott Tom? Either way, it seems he is saying since 2006, it is all Joe Norton/Tokwiro making the decisions. So one could assume any later decisions at AP in late 2007 were done by Norton/Tokwiro. Annie's new boss, or the guy who owes Excapsa Fluffhead and other shareholders some loot.

Now look what Annie had to say about The way things were handled by UB/AP, and if she even gets the time when Paul Leggett joined UB/AP correct.

Some quotes from Annie:
This is October 2007 she is talking about. Paul said he joined in late August. Either way, I thought the management change took place in Oct 2006 when Joe Norton bought the company?

So the guys who were running AP at the time of the AP scandal did deny what happened, but this is in 2007. At this point Joe owns the company and has done so for a year. Wouldn't he be the one running AP at the time of AP scandal? Paul was working there in late Aug. so he had to have his hand in this as well. Is Annie calling Tokwiro ridiculous here too then?

How can we believe Joe Norton bought the company in Oct 2006, but did not put any new management in place until almost a year later? What went on from the time he "bought" UB/AP until the AP scandal broke, which is how we came to find out he was the one who was supposedly behind Blast Off? When did Paul come in really? He said Aug but Annie said Oct. Is this correct?

Yeah, I remember that. That's why I think it is pretty believable for her to say "I'm not going to talk about AP, I'm from the UB side of things" or whatever she said.

Edit:

Annie Duke tries to put a positive spin on the company she works for (and is possibly a shareholder in?), but to this relatively disinterested observer none of the many quotes provided by EG appear "inconsistent" or "nonsensical."

Are you just going to ignore the last 2 posts I made ITT? One post I added to the quotes Annie made that were questionable, and the last one about her not talking about AP, but AP/UB were essentially the same company a year before the AP scandal broke, thus making the company Annie "works" for behind both.

Well, there is always a cable news career if all you are really interested in is ignoring words and sentences and grammar and logic and things. Answer this Sock

"We'll send anybody who requested their hand histories"

Has the company done so? Why/why not? If she doesn't know the answer she shouldn't have answered the question.


"It wasn't like a superuser." Annie Duke
"this particular superuser was a very smart superuser" Annie Duke (Universe where Spock has a beard)

You got me there. That is either inconsistent, or possibly a reversal of position.

The fact that you can't discern real inconsistencies (like the above) from all the other piddly or nit-picky crap you called out in the OP gives the impression that you are biased and petty. EVEN THOUGH AP and UB merged a year before Duke basically said she represented UB and not AP.