Annie Duke and Daniel Negreanu, in happier times.

As you may have heard by now, poker pro Daniel Negreanu teed off on fellow player Annie Duke in an interview the other day, referring to her as a "F***ing c***." Now Duke has responded in an open letter to one of his biggest sponsors, Poker Stars, that takes exception with Daniel's choice of words.

After Negreanu called her that less than charitable name, a female poker player, who goes by the alias PokerLawyer, wrote her own open letter to Poker Stars. In it, she said she hoped they would chastise Daniel in some way, for his use of the 'C' word. They didn't make any mention of the offensive word in their response to her, and basically just said that Daniel was entitled to his opinion, and they support his right to say what he wants, as an individual. And that's what made Duke mad.

In Duke's letter, she says, in part: "I am not offended by Daniel's opinion. He has a right to disagree with me and dislike me...This is not about his views. This is about a particular word he chose to express those views. The word "c***" is not an opinion, it is an abusive epithet, and PokerStars is completely ignoring the use of that term..." She goes on to say how disappointed she is that they support Negreanu and his role in the controversy.

To complicate matters further, the two have a bit of a history. A few years back, Negreanu posted a laundry list of reasons he didn't like Duke. He's since gone on the record to say he was out of line with some of those comments, but clearly the animosity remains.

Which means this all probably isn't over. Will Daniel Negreanu take it back? Will there be another flurry of angry open letters? Only time will tell...

On the Annie Duke fan leaderboard, Daniel Negreanu ranks dead last.

Daniel Negreanu, the world's second-winningest tournament poker player of all time and a beloved figure to many poker fans, is known for running his mouth over just about any topic you can think of. Usually he stops short of saying anything too offensive, but in a new interview he goes off on Annie Duke and unleashes some pretty harsh language on her.

In what almost looks to be a throwaway part of the interview, Negreanu is asked about the men who played in this year’s Ladies Event at the WSOP. After three sentences about the event in general, Negreanu turns the conversation to Annie Duke and doesn't hold back:

What irked me is that this woman has the audacity on her website to call herself ‘the best female poker player in the world’. So on one side of the coin she’s fighting for, ‘Oh, we’re all equal, there shouldn’t be any gender thing,’ but when appropriate she decides to call herself the best female poker player in the world. 

So I’m like ‘how offensive are you, you f***ing c***? You want to say you’re speaking for women, yet you claim superiority over all of them.

This isn't the first time that Kid Poker has gone off on the reigning NBC National Heads-Up Poker champion. In the past, though, he wasn't so terse about it. Check out this old post for a laundry list of reasons that Daniel Negreanu hates Annie Duke, including her behavior the first time they met, at a tournament at the Four Queens in downtown Las Vegas back when he was 22 years old. Neither of them yet had their faces plastered all over television and magazines, so the account is an interesting window into a different time in poker even though it's clearly biased.

If you did happen to win all this, could you hand it over to charity? (photo courtesy of WSOP)

Many top professional poker players are well known for giving generously to charitable causes. But one amateur player is getting in on the act too, with a plan to donate the entirety of his winnings from the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event to charity. He's a New York City entrepreneur named Michael Karnjanaprakorn, and he cooked up the idea while chatting to poker pro Rafe Furst at last year's WSOP.

The idea is to both try to raise money for a good cause or two, and to raise the profile of poker players who give to help out those less fortunate. So Karnjanaprakorn teamed up with Furst to launch the World Series of Good. The first step is to raise enough money for the $10,000 Main Event buy-in. He's using the web-based fund-raising site KickStarter to help with that. Assuming he's successful with step one, he'll sit down with one of poker's biggest philanthropists, Annie Duke, for some intensive coaching to help prepare for the tournament. Contributors to his KickStarter fund will also have a chance to sit in on the lessons.

Once he's all bought in and coached up, it's all up to Michael. If he does cash at the WSOP, he'll donate 100% of his winnings to a pair of charities. The Langston Hughes Academy is a charter school in New Orleans that was started after Hurricane Katrina, and recently lost a great deal of cash to an embezzlement scheme. The second charity is one that might be familiar to poker fans. Bad Beat on Cancer was formed by Furst and Phil Gordon in 2003 to help raise funds for cancer research. So far, poker players have donated more than $2 million to Bad Beat, mostly through giving up some of their proceeds from tournament winnings. And if Karnjanaprakorn can pull off a miracle at the 2010 WSOP, that number could get a whole lot bigger.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck sign-up for Ante Up For Africa. (photo courtesy of WSOP)

Yes, Hollywood actor Ben Affleck is partially responsible for unleashing the movie Gigli on the world. And it's hard to forgive him that. But he and his friend, and frequent collaborator, Matt Damon, continue to make amends for that terrible sin by contributing their time, and star power, to charity. This year, both actors have signed-on to play at the upcoming Ante Up for Africa.

Part of the World Series of Poker, Ante Up For Africa is a charity poker tournament that raises money for a variety of humanitarian causes in Africa.  In 2010, a total of two hundred players, including Affleck, Damon and a variety of other celebs and poker pros, will play.

Ante Up For Africa was created four years ago, by Don Cheadle, Norman Epstein and Annie Duke. Last year's event brought in a total of $362,000 for the cause, and this year could raise even more. Traditionally, players who cash at the event are asked to donate half their winnings to the cause. In many cases, winners have actually handed over their entire prize.

Other stars who have played in previous years include Mike Tyson, Charles Barkley, and Jason Alexander, who played George Costanza on Seinfeld. The 2010 event takes place July 3rd in Las Vegas, at the Rio. Space is still available for those who'd like to play some poker for a great cause.

From the news desk to a poker table full of sharks.

George Stephanopoulos has lived an interesting life so far. He is a former television journalist and adviser to US President Bill Clinton, and these days he serves as co-host of ABC’s Good Morning America. For all his other accomplishments, it’s that last one that’s giving him a chance to do what he’s wanted to do ever since leaving high school: he wants to win at poker.

“Living The Dream” is a week-long series on GMA that will see its anchors travel to destinations around the United States on their dream adventures, set to air during sweeps week from Monday, May 3rd to Friday, May 7th. Stephanopoulos’ dream involves going to Atlantic City for what he called “basically a mini World Series of Poker” on today’s episode ofGMA. 

“I want to go back and win the poker games I lost in high school,” Stephanopoulos said this morning. In order to do that he enlisted the assistance of 2010 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship winner Annie Duke to adjust his strategy. Duke’s help, and his own experience with the game, is all Stephanopoulos will have to lean on when he squares off against Phil Hellmuth, Jason Lee, and 2009 November Niner Steve Begleiter. Poker After Dark announcer Ali Nejad will even call the action. All in all, it should make for good poker TV.

Regarding the fierce lineup, the former Clinton Administration official said, “I’m going to try not to lose my entire week’s salary.” He also revealed that while he no longer has a running game in Washington (“I used to play a lot but I’ve got kids now, got a life”), he’d be willing to set one up with his GMA co-hosts. Not to knock Stephanopoulos’ chops, but that sounds like a much better way to win than taking on poker players who are as familiar with WSOP final tables as he is with Washington politics.

George Stephanopoulos’ “dream game” will air on Wednesday, May 5th, on ABC’s Good Morning America.

The cards (and b.s.) fly, starting tonight. (photo courtesy of Poker After Dark)

If you tune into Poker After Dark to see exciting, high-quality poker, then I feel for you. But if you watch for the same reason most of us do, to see the biggest personalities in the game hemming, hawing and jawing, then you'll definitely want to check out this week's match.

They're calling it "He Said, She Said" in honor of the well-deserved reputations of the three male and three female pros playing this round. Starting tonight at 2:05 am on NBC, and running through Saturday, some of poker's loudest mouths will be facing off.

Of course, Mike "The Mouth" Matusow will be making the latest in a long line of PAD appearances. He's joined by Jean-Robert Bellande and David Grey on the men's side. The gentler sex are represented by Erica Schoenberg, Karina Jett and Annie Duke, who's fresh off her recent win at the National Head's Up Poker Championship.

Each of the six can hold their own at the poker table, but it's their verbal dexterity that got them the invite this week. So there should be no shortage of good TV, especially when the poker action heats up as they head for a Friday night finale. As usual, the Saturday night episode will be a director's cut of the previous five episodes.

Former Tournament of Champions winner Mike Matusow will be a WSOP All-Star. (photo courtesy of WSOP)

As we first reported a couple weeks ago, this year's World Series of Poker festivities will include a 2010 WSOP All-Star game. The event will be an updated replacement for the Tournament of Champions, which ran from 2004-2006, before being cancelled.

That event was an invitational, but the new All-Star game comes with a nice democratic twist. Twenty of the twenty-seven participants in the tournament will be chosen by we, the people. Starting today, until June 15th at midnight, you can cruise on over to the WSOP site to vote for up to 20 players you'd like to see play. The only twist, and it's a pretty big one, is that only past WSOP bracelet winners qualify.

Rounding out the 27 all-stars will be the past three Tournament of Champions winners - Annie Duke, Mike Matusow and Mike Sexton - as well as the most recent WSOP and WSOPE Main Event victors - Joe Cada and Barry Shulman. Finally, there will be two sponsor's wild card exemptions, though we'll have to wait a while to see who gets those.

The All-Star game will have a prize pool of $1 million up for grabs and will be televised on NBC on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010. The actual event will start on Sunday, June 27th, where the 27 players will play until there's just nine left. The final table will go on Sunday, July 4th.

Made-for-television poker tournaments have been good to Annie Duke.

Annie Duke, who has become known more in the past few years for promoting poker on television than for playing it, is the 2010 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Champion. 

The quarterfinal brackets in this year’s NHUPC saw eight-time WSOP gold bracelet winner Erik Seidel defeat former WSOP Main Event champ Peter Eastgate; former WSOP Main Event champ Scotty Nguyen beat 2009 Bluff Magazine Player of the Year Jason Mercier; former WSOP Main Event runner-up Dennis Phillips beat two-time world champ Doyle Brunson; and Duke beat former world champ Jerry Yang.

In the semifinals Seidel had the tougher of the two matches but still emerged victorious over Nguyen. Duke had the slightly easier, though still unenviable, task of vanquishing Phillips - and once she did so she set herself up to play the role of underdog in the best-of-three finals against one of poker's all-time greats.

The final matchup proved to be as dramatic as NBC’s producers had hoped. Duke won the first match after winning two big pots with a straight and a flush before getting into a confrontation on the flop with A-K against Seidel’s spade flush draw. Big Slick held and Duke was up 1-0. But the second match went to Seidel, who was already in the lead when he hit trip deuces to cripple Duke before finishing her off with 8-7 against her K-5.

In the ultimate round Seidel once again chipped up and had Duke’s back to the wall, grabbing a 3-to-1 lead that looked as if it would be enough to seal the win. But Duke got in with Q-9 against Seidel’s A-K and hit two pair to double up into the chip lead. Short-stacked, Seidel shoved with A-2 not too long afterward and Duke called with pocket nines, which became the championship hand when they were still ahead once the river card was dealt.

The $500,000 score in this year's version of the National Heads-Up Poker Championship is Annie Duke’s first win since 2004, when she took down the made-for-TV WSOP Tournament of Champions by defeating Phil Hellmuth in a now-classic heads-up battle. (That was the same year she won her only WSOP bracelet.) Seidel, meanwhile, grabbed $250,000 for finishing in second place.

Chip-stack engineering enthusiast Carlos Mortensen leads the way in LA

The World Poker Tour’s producers probably didn’t sleep much overnight. With just 22 players left the top two spots in the LA Poker Classic main event are currently held by former WPT winners, with the top spot going to 2007 WPT Championship winner and ex-WSOP Main Event champ Carlos Mortensen at 1,669,000 chips and the runner-up position going to Day 3 chip leader and former Borgata Poker Open winner Mark Newhouse with 1,308,000. But there’s still one day of play remaining before the TV table and anything can happen in the meantime - thus the lack of sleep.

Mortensen seems to be back on a bit of a roll after a dead patch without the kind of success poker fans became accustomed to seeing from him early last decade. He won a $4,800 preliminary event at Foxwoods in November and then won a $1,000 prelim at the LAPC last month, bagging more than $425,000 between those two scores. Mortensen’s past successes have often come very close together, so if the streaky champ can avoid any pitfalls today he’ll be very hard to beat once the lights and cameras enter the equation.

Even if Carlos Mortensen were to stumble he would have plenty of room to catch himself and still make the final. But there are several players lurking in the background at the moment who would love to take advantage of any misstep and boost their own fortunes. Tops among them would have to be Steve Sung, last year’s $1,000 WSOP Stimulus Special winner who has previously made three WPT TV tables but never finished better than second. Then there’s two-time world champ Johnny Chan, who has never made the TV table of an open WPT event, and Annie Duke, who has promoted poker more than she’s played it for several years now.

Until play resumes at noon PT today at Commerce Casino there’s no telling how things will go, but for now the possibilities at the LA Poker Classic are still golden.

You might not know his name, but if you follow or watch the World Series of Poker, you're familiar with his work. Well, as of yesterday, his former work. Jeffrey Pollack stepped down from his role as commissioner of the WSOP, a job he'd held since 2005.

The WSOP is the longest running, most popular and richest poker event in the world. Under Pollack, the WSOP became more aggressive in pursuing sponsorship and marketing opportunities, while also working to improve the playing experience for those who take part in the event. One of his biggest innovations was flattening the prize money structure - so players at the final table make a little less, while players eliminated early, but still in the money, won a little more cash.

He also was a big part of expanding the WSOP into Europe and partnering with Annie Duke and Don Cheadle to add the Ante Up For Africa celebrity/charity event.

A clear sign that he did some good work, is that his departure was met with a lot of warm goodbyes from the industry and, especially, poker professionals. A quick check around those pro Twitter accounts mentioned yesterday will show lots of messages thanking Pollack for his good work as commissioner.