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My friend Annie Duke is one of the 16 celebrities appearing on this season’s edition of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice. NBC and Donald Trump made the smart move last year of extending the franchise by having celebrities play out the game based on how much money they raise for charity. Because hot, current, A-list celebrities won’t do reality TV, you get people like Scott Hamilton, Dennis Rodman, Joan Rivers … and Annie Duke. The first episode, which ran on Sunday night and is streaming on NBC.com, was fascinating.

Let me start by saying that I love Annie Duke. I know some people don’t like her, and some of the people who don’t like her have made it their mission to express their dislike. I don’t agree with it, but I see how some people don’t like the same qualities I do: she’s extremely smart and brutally honest, and that combination means she’ll insist she’s right, you’re wrong, she knows what she’s talking about, etc. But I dig people who are smart and competitive. I enjoy either giving it right back to those people, or learning from them.

These kinds of characteristics, which are among the reasons I like Annie Duke and some people don’t like her, make her a perfect contestant: She is outspoken, gets things done, and knows how to play the game. Even people that don’t like her would have to admit that she dominated the first episode.

Naturally, she has been the subject of some critical comments, both sniping by others on the show and on reality-show and poker forums. But in most of areas where she’s catching flack, SHE’S RIGHT. The people criticizing her don’t get it. I’ll focus on one example. I have a list of things I found interesting and entertaining about the episode – watching it has become like crack cocaine to me and I watch hardly any television – but I may not be able to post the whole list before the next episode (and the Heads-Up Championship, which is going to require all my attention).

There’s a poker term I invented called “dick-out hand.” That’s where you bluff-raise, get reraised by someone who knows you’re bluffing, and you rereraise because you know he’s bluffing. It’s not about who has the bigger hand. It is, in the vernacular, about who has a bigger dick. There’s no sexual or sexist component in my mind; that’s just the term I came up with when two players go to war when they are essentially daring each other to show down with practically nothing. (It also originated with a line in The Godfather. When Michael Corleone is going to kill the drug dealer and the crooked cop, his brother Sonny warns Clemenza to make sure he gets the right restaurant for the meeting and has a gun securely hidden in the men’s room. “I don’t want Mikey coming out with just his dick in his hand.”)

Dick-out hand, got it? It will be a great expression if it ever catches on, because it perfectly encapsulates any situation where two people, playing each other rather than the merits of the situation, push each other to greater daring. This kind of behavior can lead to bizarre poker hands, wars – and great things like scientific discoveries and superlative physical and intellectual achievements.

Annie Duke used a version of the dick-out hand to challenge herself and her teammates to raise money for charity. A few of them got it, but most just resented her challenging them. I’m sorry, but that’s how the game is played.

The assignment in the first episode was for the men’s and women’s teams to organize, pick a name and project manager, and compete to raise the most money baking and selling cupcakes on the streets of New York. During a session in which she was mixing it up with teammates about where they should locate their cupcake vehicle, she asked if anyone had an estimate of how much money they would need to raise as a team to win. Melissa Rivers suggested $15,000-$20,000. Annie said, “I can raise that myself. If I can raise $15,000, can I count on the rest of you to raise $5,000-$10,000?”

There were shots of several team members shaking their heads, rolling their eyes, and acting insulted. I could see why a bunch of people would have an instant reaction of “what a bitch” when witnessing that.

But that’s completely the wrong reaction. Annie Duke was issuing a challenge. She offered to raise 75% of what they told her was needed and she challenged them to come up with the other 25%. She was daring them to be better than her at raising money.

The CORRECT response would be for Joan Rivers to say, “My plastic surgeon alone will come up with $15,000 and from the millions I have made for my agent and manager, they’ll do the same.” Or for Tionne to say, “TLC was one of the biggest R&B acts of the Nineties. Between concert promoters, record executives, producers, and agents, I’ll bury your $15,000.”

That would be the spirit of friendly completion: people who are good at what they do (and who have big, healthy egos) setting a high standard and daring others to top it. Every philanthropic enterprise with which I have been involved raised money this way. Other than people leaving money to charity after they die and a few True Believers, people don’t give to charity for purely altruistic or philosophical reasons. They do it because it makes them feel good, and it feels great to come through when someone needs you. It feels great to set a high standard and meet it. It feels great that you can put the touch on your friends and they’ll be there for you. And it feels great to do that better than anyone else, especially because you know it should motivate them to do even better.

Sure it’s confrontational. But the name of the game is raising the most money for the team and that’s how you do it. Brande Roderick got it, convincing the group – in a way that Annie was unable to do – to locate on 57th & 5th where Playboy’s offices were, instead of near Penn Station. Brande would get Hef to whip out – a Playboy Bunny pulled Hefner’s Platinum Amex Card out of her cleavage for a $5,000 donation – and get a bunch of Playboy employees to buy cupcakes and some other heavy hitters to show up with big money.

In fact, Brande and Annie got into it at the end. Brande had a couple big-shots by with a check for $9,000 right before time expired. They wanted to buy everything and Roderick, of course, wanted to comply to get the nine grand. Annie didn’t want to sell EVERYTHING to anyone – in addition, this was before it was known how much they were going to pay – because it would leave them nothing else to sell if another Mr. Big showed up with a check. So they argued about it, both before and after the transaction went down.

For the record, Duke was correct. Whatever amount those guys were going to pay – and $9,000 was a healthy amount – wasn’t going to change whether they bought one cupcake, two cupcakes, or fifty cupcakes. But because they had to exchange cupcakes for money, they needed some product in case some other big gambler – Erik Seidel bought a cupcake for $5,000 and several other gamblers and friends of Annie’s whipped out – or Playboyer showed up at the very end with another big donation.

Even more important than who was correct, though, was that the argument was a GOOD thing: two teammates competing to raise the most money, fighting to outdo each other and having the effect of spurring each other to try to do more. Charity wins. The team wins. Both individuals in such a fight win. The only losers are the people who choose to complain about it instead of getting their back up and putting Annie Duke in her place by raising a gazillion dollars.

I think Annie Duke represented poker very well in the premiere. She raised the most money of anyone on her team. She was also responsible for the four-person group in the kitchen actually baking the cupcakes, which were good enough to win an additional $15,000 donation in a team v. team taste test.

So Claudia Jordan, a model from Deal or No Deal, thought she was pushy? Joan Rivers – who was the project manager but didn’t seem to have much to do with baking cupcakes, designing the sales/marketing truck, picking the location, or bringing in donors – compared her to Mussolini, “who made the trains run on time but there were no Italian smiles on those trains”?

I don’t think those people know how the game is played. Camaraderie and cooperation are great, but in a professional setting they need to be linked to results. Demonstrating leadership is also great. And so is setting high standards, meeting those standards, and challenging others to do the same. When those things are at cross purposes and leadership, honesty, frankness, and confrontation work better, I’ll take Mussolini.

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3 Responses to “#678 – Annie Duke on Celebrity Apprentice – Cupcakes, Controversy, and the Dick-out Hand Theory”

1. Damen Says:
   March 3rd, 2009 at 1:40 pm

   What you described as a “dick-out hand” is a classic example of brinkmanship. The results can be disastrous which is why most people avoid it if at all possible and find anyone instigating it to be very distasteful. Everyone smiles when the maniac gets busted.

2. RoPkrPlr Says:
   March 4th, 2009 at 1:43 pm

   well, i thought Annie was great! She had a plan and wanted to win. The bimbos on the other hand just wanted to look good. One more thing, i don’t know how you do things in USA, but in EU, we don’t let scary creatures loose on the streets, some kids may be scared for life! Guess you know to whom i’m referring…

3. NoMetal Says:
   March 7th, 2009 at 1:59 pm

   Well Annie must be doing something right because rumor has it that she makes it to the final two, according to Pokernews.com.

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