Poker News Daily: We heard that you’ll be launching a new trail mix company, MyMixedNuts.com, just in time for the holidays. Can you tell us about it?
Duke: It’s a custom mixed nuts and trail mix company that I started with my boyfriend, Joe, and Ryan Sympkins. You have your choice of nuts and all sorts of dry fruits and candies. Ryan had this idea for a long time. Ryan is one of the producers on “The Apprentice” and we became very good friends during the show. Ever since, we’ve wanted to work together. I spend all of my time picking things I don’t want out of my trail mix, so I’ll go and buy individual ingredients from the store.
At MyMixedNuts.com, you add items into your cart. We’ll have personal and corporate gifting. There are also ready-to-go mixes where $1 goes to charity. If you buy my mix, for example, $1 goes to Ante Up for Africa. There’s one that goes to an AIDS hospice and one that goes to a rain forest preservation charity.
PND: That’s quite an undertaking. What kind of marketing are you doing for it?
Duke: Our marketing is through social media to start with. Once we get going and things are going smoothly, then we’ll do placements in health magazines and parenting magazines. It’s ironic that Ryan and I met on a show about fake business and now we’re doing a real business. Trail mixes run 14 ounces each and will be between $8 and $15.
PND: We noticed that you weren’t at the World Poker Tour’s (WPT) Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic.
Duke: Christmas comes up on me and I have four kids. I literally looked at my schedule and said I can’t do it. Christmas won’t happen if I go to the tournament. This is the kind of decision I have to make a lot. Sometimes I have to choose my kids over poker. I’d rather make sure my family has a good holiday.
PND: What have your kids asked Santa for this year?
Duke: Nelly asked Santa for a computer and I think that’s totally appropriate. All of my kids have laptops except for her and she wants a netbook, which is inexpensive, and some earrings. Lucy asked for a hermit crab. Santa might consider whether he could transport a hermit crab from the North Pole. Lucy’s other big request was a Kindle. Leo, outside of a Kindle, is really interested in anything having to do with the Denver Broncos. Maud is into anime stuff, so maybe some sort of comic book or graphic novel would be good.
PND: What did you ask for?
Duke: I asked for a trip to Mexico for New Years Eve because Annie Duke hates New Years. I have never had a good New Years. How can you possibly have a good time when there’s a huge pressure to have a good time? There’s no spontaneity. My good times are unexpected. I don’t drink, either. The goal on New Years is to get so plastered that you vacate your body and that’s not fun. For someone who is not drinking to speak to someone who is really drunk is not fun. If we go to Mexico, there’s no pressure. The odds of that coming through are good since Santa was asking me for places to stay.
PND: Give us your thoughts on the UB.com-sponsored poker news show “Poker2Nite,” which airs on Fox Sports Net every Wednesday night.
Duke: It’s really good. I think that Joe Sebok is going to grow into it. Scott Huff is incredibly talented. The set is great and I was pleasantly surprised. I like it better than “ESPN Inside Deal.” Joe just needs to get off the prompter. He’s very good just going with the flow.
PND: How tough is it to balance providing a credible news show with accepting guests from other online poker sites besides UB.com?
Duke: You have to do it. It’s one of the things that Full Tilt was ahead of the market on. They’ve done this back to the “Learn from the Pros” days on Fox Sports Net. They didn’t let you wear a logo, but they gave you a shout out. What Full Tilt understood was that it’s their show, but it’s going to be more credible if it has pros from other brands. It’ll be a higher quality show if you open it up to the world. They’ve done it with “Poker After Dark” and that was a mistake they made with “Face the Ace.”
“Poker2Nite” is supposed to have quality coverage of the poker industry. If its guests are from PokerStars, that’s fine. If they’re from Full Tilt, that’s fine. If they’re from UB, that’s fine too.
PND: We understand you just had an interesting experience with eBay.
Duke: At UB, one person can’t make multiple accounts. As a policy across the industry, it’s one player to an account and there are strong reasons why you have to do that, which have to do with fraud.
On eBay, my ex-husband used to have an account associated with my e-mail. I went onto eBay to check on some things for Christmas and wrote in to get the User ID. I called up my ex-husband and he gave me some passwords that could have been right and couldn’t remember the security questions, so I got onto Live Chat and asked for help. They said that he was the owner of the account and asked that he get in touch with them.
Finally, they said, “What you need to do is create a new e-mail address and open a new account with it.” So, I could open up a new account even though they knew I had an account? I asked them if I could do that 20 times and they said yes. At that point, I started screaming into the chat. The policy of allowing someone to have more than one account is mind-boggling. This is one huge site that the Federal Government seems to be okay with, but they are concerned with online poker.