The tension between the two honourable pros is well known in the poker community. You could even read their battle of blog posts on the issue of the WSOP Ladies Event (see Duke’s and Negreanu’s comments). Now, however, Negreanu probably went too far, calling Duke some less-than-flattering names.
Daniel Negreanu and Annie Duke
In an interview published at PokerPlayer.co.uk, he answered the following to a question on what exactly annoyed him about the event and the males participating: “What irked me is men playing, using tampons as card protectors, and Shaun Deeb wearing a dress. I like Shaun Deeb, though. He’s a good kid – I think he was just misinformed. But then Annie Duke sticks her nose out and says, ‘Good for you, men, standing up for sexual equality.’ (…)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.”
These statements from him were, however, not unknown before; more surprising was what he said afterwards: “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.’”
As far as their argument is concerned, we might side with or against Negreanu, but this, I believe, is not a civilised way of dispute.
