Editor's Note: What started as a straight news piece got more and more opiniated as the story continued. Rather than try to fix that, I think its best I leave it as is.

In this week's Rabbit Hunt, John "JimmyLegs" Wray, Corwin "[vital]myth" Cole, and myself went over the recent interview Daniel Negreanu did with Poker Player Magazine where he had the misfortune of being quoted as calling Annie Duke an "f***ing c***". Of course, that's not the only person he sniped at in the interview (Phil Hellmuth gets some "love" in there as well), but this is by far the most explosive statement of the interview. Whenever you say something like this it is going to start a war of words, and it has. Howard's twitter was probably the first shot across the bow of the USS (or maybe HMS since he's Canadian) Negreanu:

"howardhlederer: Hey Daniel, nice job representing poker and reinforcing that our attitude towards women is still Neanderthal. http://bit.ly/cp5XGT [Link is to the interview]"

He followed it up a day or so later with this:

"howardhlederer: I understand some agree w DN on the ladies poker event issue. Many do. But abusing those you disagree with is never cool."

Now, Howard's gonna protect his sister, so this isn't too much of a surprise. Annie went on a different twitter offensive in comparison, and though it was largely confined to @replies to those that spoke about the issue, it genuinely looks like she was hurt by this. Now, the ToC coverage of this year's main event has made it no secret that the two don't like each other, the body language alone seemed to tell that tale. But some of these tweet's are interesting:

"annieduke: @PokerLawyer Wow. I really appreciate your support. I want debate on the issue, I welcome it. Ad hominum attacks not so much. Thank you!"

"annieduke: @pokerhag @pokerlawyer @writerjen imagine if an NFL player used that word towards a female reporter in print? What would the NFL do?"

Taking the high ground is somewhat useful in this situation because it doesn't validate Daniel's comments, but when your brother has already gone there it tends to not make much of a difference in my opinion. Still, I'm glad she didn't go all Joan Rivers on Daniel, it would have just made things worse.

Now, fast forward to the WPT Legends of Poker event. In an interview with Kimberly Lansing, he stated that, to paraphrase, he didn't think those words going to end up in print and said them off the cuff.

And here is where I take off my journalism hat for a second...here goes...

"THAT IS THE WORST EXCUSE EVER, PEOPLE DO NOT GET TO SAY THAT AND EXPECT A FREE PASS"

In the interest of full disclosure, I disagree with Annie Duke on the ladies event issues by quite a bit. And I think Daniel does have a valid point that you can't have it both ways, saying ladies events are sexist then use your gender as a marketing tool. But you can not, in any way, say that the words you said to a reporter were off-the-record and never meant for publication when you use that kind of term to describe anyone. Its like calling your superior a moron and not expecting the office snitch to rat you out. Its like you are asking to be fired because you don't like some of the policies of your commander-in-chief. I can accept that he didn't expect this to happen, and I am willing to also accept that without total context we may never know the intention of the statement, but you can't expect to say this within earshot of a reporter and think it won't be put in print.

At any rate, this is the point we reached when we recorded the podcast. Words were exchanged, Pokerstars was declared angry at the situation, and all was right in the world.



Well now it appears we've moved on to the next round in this saga.

Annie Duke posted a blog that quotes a Pokerstars correspondence with someone upset at Daniel's words. Rather than paraphrase the ham-handedness, I will merely quote it:

"Daniel and Annie are both passionate about poker, and both aren't afraid to
speak their mind. I think this is a fact people like and appreciate about
both players. When you have two people that are similar in that regard,
there's bound to be friction somewhere along the line.

Although Daniel Negreanu is a Team PokerStarsPro, he is an entity to himself
and as such will always be encouraged to express his views and speak his
mind as he would otherwise do so, PokerStars Pro or not. "

No. Just no. I am trying not to take sides in this issue, and I obviously have a bias toward UB being burnt to the ground, but this is a terrible response. I understand that Pokerstars doesn't want to pretend to hold their pros back on a leash, but when your flagship player says something like this you probably shouldn't say that he is "encouraged" to express such views. Stars doesn't normally have a misstep, but its looking like they may have had one here in how they are handling this whole mess. Daniel certainly does have a right to express his views, but that doesn't mean he should be given a free pass when he says something stupid. Heck, if you took out the "c***" word and replaced it with "idiot" or "moron", it might have been acceptable sniping, instead of sexist garbage.

Is this blown out of proportion amongst the poker media? Yea, probably. Daniel and Annie's bad blood only certainly amplifies the issue, and I'm going to latch onto this like a leech during the slow news days of the summer. But the fact this is probably only getting attention in the inner circles of the poker-dom means its not going to get much airtime for the WSOP-watching causal fan. Those that will respond are either folks in the media or immediate fans of the players involved.

I think the only solution here is to have a debate between Daniel Negreanu and Annie Duke over the merits of ladies events. You could put it on pay-per-view for $30 and the poker media would eat it up.

EDIT:

So I can't help but feel vaguely responsible for drumming this up more than it needed to (wait...that's assuming Daniel reads my twitter...never mind), but he did end up responding to the whole thing here but pulled a vanishing act and deleted the post about 15 minutes after I read it. My comments about the post when it still was up are below.

And I have to say, Daniel, I love you as a player and you are a great guy, but you could have handled it a lot better. If you got to this point on Saturday instead of Tuesday, we'd be saying "good game" to this whole thing, but waiting as long as you did, it was a big oops. I am less annoyed about what you said and who you said it to and more annoyed at the initial response to this and yea, the pokerstars support was just one person, but they should have had a better response than that. It may not be that Pokerstars condones what you had said, in fact its not likely, but perception is everything and when Annie gets to post first, it looks like Stars condoned your statements.

Still think the debate/boxing match should happen though. Imagine the money!

PS: Ladies events are good for poker. Men that play them are bad for poker. Enough said.