Joan Rivers Calls Poker Players Trash

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The confrontation between Joan Rivers and Annie Duke was taken to a new level on this week’s episode of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice. Joan’s daughter, Melissa Rivers, took the fall as a result of her team’s loss, leading the elder Rivers to label all poker players “trash” and call Duke a Nazi in a profanity-laced tirade. Note that this article contains language that is not suitable for all audiences.

Previous episodes have been highlighted by Joan Rivers comparing Duke to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. This week’s task challenged the teams to create a four-page spread in Sports Illustrated (SI) for Right Guard Fast Break. Each ad would prominently feature New York Knicks Power Forward David Lee, a rising star in the NBA. Because of last week’s loss, Kotu was down to just two members. Show host Donald Trump sent West Coast Choppers CEO Jesse James to the team, which ultimately chose country music star Clint Black to be its Project Manager. Playboy Playmate of the Year Brande Roderick became Project Manager of the all-female team Athena, which featured Duke and the younger Rivers, who is a producer by trade.

Melissa Rivers immediately threw out ideas for the spread, but was given the cold shoulder by Duke and Roderick, who had formed a bond during recent installments of the popular reality series. Duke told NBC cameras, “Melissa came up with some cockamamie idea. This isn’t for Redbook. This isn’t for some women’s magazine. This is for SI. Men read SI. If that’s her main idea she’s going to offer up, she’s going to be cut out of the process.” Duke devised the idea of shooting Lee entirely nude with a basketball covering his private parts. The idea was later tweaked to include only the waist up. The shot would be paired with a tagline reminding readers that Right Guard was the only thing Lee needed to wear.

The younger Rivers’ annoyance with Roderick and Duke continued to build throughout the episode. She explained, “The way Annie talks and the rudeness and the sense of entitlement and thinking that she’s so much better than everybody else – That annoys me. Annie is beyond arrogant.” Meanwhile, her opponents, Kotu, met with Right Guard executives, who emphasized the importance of the “power stripe,” an important branding element. For Athena, this component of the product was not discussed on air.

Duke created a four-page spread showing a typical day in Lee’s life. Each shot showed the NBA star being comfortable and, more importantly, being dry. Melissa Rivers commented, “Brande thinks she’s in charge of the task, but it’s clearly Annie. Annie is totally manipulating Brande.” The tension in Athena paralleled the strife in Kotu, where Black chose to run with his own ideas, as has been the case in previous episodes. James created the concept of showing how Lee, a small-town kid from Missouri, entered the high-pressure New York City NBA market. While Black incorporated parts of James’ vision, he still brushed off others, leading the motorcycle enthusiast to become detached throughout the episode. He could regularly be seen staring at his Apple computer.

Athena went to a local club to shoot images for its spread. Melissa Rivers directed the photography, but Duke commented, “I think Melissa knows she’s the odd man out, but frankly I don’t need to conspire against Melissa. I think Melissa is doing a good job of conspiring against herself.” James was equally unhappy, stating in a side interview during the task, “Clint sucks. The ad’s cheesy. The layout’s cheesy. The photos are cheesy. It’s a bummer.”

Duke attempted to make Melissa Rivers feel more at home on the team. However, she later told NBC cameras, “Brande told me that Melissa was having a paranoid fantasy about us conspiring against her, so I tried to make sure I was pulling her in privately. It absolutely made it seem like I wasn’t on Brande’s side. Playing cards is all about game theory, managing your opponents, and trying to figure out very logical strategies to counteract. There are ways to manipulate your competitors.” Duke then checked in with the Kotu, attempting to gauge her adversaries’ moods. Joan Rivers, who was seated next to James at the time, critiqued, “Annie plays people so brilliantly. She’s so despicable. She’s so duplicitous. I can’t wait for her to get her first facelift because she’s going to need two doctors.”

James’ frustrations finally boiled over. In the waning hours of the night, he told Black that he disapproved of the team’s final project. The conversation was highlighted by James telling the country superstar, “You need to pack your shit and go home.” The star of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” Jim Cramer, who served as Trump’s eyes and ears during the episode, then visited Athena. His stay included Duke pointing out various areas of the task that she was responsible for, which included branding and the team’s presentation. Cramer was impressed by Duke’s positioning: “I think that Annie set it up so that if they lose, Annie doesn’t take the bullet. It’s a rather remarkable position to be able to take credit for the good, but certainly not be hit if they don’t win.” Duke gave Athena’s presentation to the Right Guard executives, while Black explained Kotu’s message. In the end, the executives sided with Kotu, sending Duke and Athena to the boardroom.

In the boardroom, Ivanka Trump questioned why Roderick delegated the key elements of the task to Duke. The World Series of Poker bracelet winner told the panel, “I doubt that there’s anyone in this game who wants to win more than I do.” While watching from the team’s suite, Kotu’s Joan Rivers quipped, “You’re damn right. You’ll bury your mother for it.” In the middle of the boardroom, Trump passed a note to Cramer, whispered to him, and then reminded the contestants that raising money for charity would mean a considerable amount in the later stages of Celebrity Apprentice. Duke and Roderick are the number one and two fundraisers on the show to date, respectively, leaving Trump to fire the younger Rivers.

The dismissal ignited a melee among Duke, Roderick, and the Rivers family. Joan Rivers told her team, “You have a Nazi and a follower. I don’t work with scum.” Instead of exiting the building immediately, as is customary, Melissa Rivers instead fled to her mother, telling off Celebrity Apprentice staff in the process. To two producers, she stated, “Fuck you. Fuck you. I’m not doing an interview.” Between the edited profanity, the words “whore” and “pit vipers” were clearly audible. Passing Duke and Roderick in the hallway, Melissa Rivers greeted, “Fuck you both. Goodbye.”

Joan Rivers, who was packing her belongings to leave as well, told Duke and Roderick, respectively, “You are a piece of shit. You are a stupid blonde.” Joan Rivers then fired a shot across the bow of poker players everywhere, stating, “Your people give money with blood on it. I met your people in Las Vegas. None of them have last names. You’re a poker player. A poker player! That’s beyond white trash. Poker players are trash, darling, trash.” Both Rivers entered an elevator and left Trump Towers, with Melissa Rivers shouting, “Lying fucking whores.”

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Poker Industry Reacts

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On Sunday night, the finale of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice Season 2 saw comedy icon Joan Rivers defeat World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner Annie Duke in a complex task featuring a silent auction prior to a performance of Cirque du Soleil’s Wintuk. On Monday, the poker industry reacted to the decision by real estate mogul and show host Donald Trump.

On the online poker community PocketFives.com, the mood was mixed. Many of poker’s faithful sided with Duke, while others noted that Rivers won the show’s featured task. One PocketFiver noted, “Joan did win the final task. Standard TV entertainment. At least some charities benefit.” In fact, Rivers’ charity (God’s Love We Deliver) and Duke’s charity (Refugees International) earned over $1.2 million combined from the reality series. They will also experience residual exposure from Celebrity Apprentice in the future. On the finale, Celebrity Apprentice Season 1 winner Piers Morgan boasted that his charity, the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, was able to construct a $60 million wing at its offices by virtue of the publicity on popular reality program.

Other poker players took exception to the terms used by Rivers and her daughter, Melissa, to describe poker players during the season, which lasted 11 episodes. The Rivers family labeled Duke a “whore,” “pit viper,” and “Nazi” and called poker players “trash.” Duke compared Rivers to a “cancer” in a battle of words. One PocketFives.com poster noted, “Annie deserved to win. And I believe there are a LOT of poker players (who also dabble in the world of business) that may want to b**** slap Joan and Melissa sometime… borderline slanderous statements may come back to bite her.”

Team PokerStars Pro member Daniel Negreanu weighed in on the outcome of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice. In a blog posted on Full Contact Poker, Negreanu noted, “Going into the last task, it was pretty clear that Annie was a huge favorite to win. Of the five criteria, she had one of them in the bag- fund raising.” Negreanu revealed that Duke’s brother, Howard Lederer, donated $100,000 during the silent auction. Ultimate Bet’s Phil Hellmuth told Poker News Daily that he contributed $80,000. In total, the event raised $460,000, which was triple the take of Rivers’ gala. Negreanu questioned Duke selecting ally and Playboy Playmate of the Year Brande Roderick with her first pick: “She could have picked Brande last, as Joan did. I was surprised to see this obvious mistake. Seriously, it was a major tactical error. Herschel ended up being a rock star on the challenge.” The elder Rivers selected her daughter with her third and final pick, knowing that Duke would not draft Melissa Rivers to her team.

In the final boardroom, which played out in front of a live studio audience in New York City, the two finalists from Season 1, Morgan and country music star Trace Adkins, were asked for their opinion on who should be the next Celebrity Apprentice. Both favored Rivers, with Morgan claiming that she deserved to win after taking down three of the five criteria on the final task. Adkins’ answer was more cryptic; the singer merely said that Rivers “had that charitable thing.” Negreanu hypothesized, “His vote, and this is all speculation, I think had a little bit to do with the charity chosen. That’s just a total guess on my part, but I think with him being a full-blooded American, he preferred a charity that would benefit people in the U.S.” Duke was playing for Refugees International, an organization that she works closely with as part of Ante Up for Africa.

World Series of Poker (WSOP) Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack extended his congratulations to Duke even though she did not win the reality program’s second celebrity installment. In his Twitter feed, Pollack commented, “Proud of [Duke] 4 an incredible season on C.A. + representing the poker community w/smarts, style + grace! U r our champion + hero!”

The Celebrity Apprentice will return in early 2010 for Season 3, the ninth installment of the show overall.

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Poker Million and Late Night Poker Qualifiers

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Recently, Full Tilt Poker, the world’s second largest online poker room, introduced qualifiers for two highly popular television shows: Poker Million and Late Night Poker. The site is also in the midst of its 12th Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS), which concludes in one week.

Poker Million was formerly sponsored by Ladbrokes, which is owned by the publicly traded company on the London Stock Exchange of the same name. Poker Million debuted in 2000, when it was won by John Duthie, who finished 487th in the 2007 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event in Las Vegas. Other past Poker Million winners have included Jimmy White, Donnacha O’Dea, Tony Jones, Rajesh Modha, Hendon Mob member Joe Beevers, and Boyle Poker pro Marty Smyth. Full Tilt Poker is running a $535 buy-in direct qualifier for Poker Million on August 2nd. Real money qualifiers will also be held on August 30th, September 6th, September 13th, September 20th, and September 27th.

Each Poker Million prize package is worth $22,000, which consists of the $20,000 Poker Million buy-in plus an additional $2,000 in spending money. All players must be at least 18 years-old to be eligible. Qualifiers for the Poker Million direct satellite will also be held, although a schedule was not available at press time. Last year’s running of the Poker Million was shown on Sky Sports. Besides the winners, other final table members during past seasons have included Barny Boatman, David “Devilfish” Ulliott, Andreas Hoivold, Mel Judah, Liam Flood, and Full Tilt Poker’s Howard Lederer.

Late Night Poker fans can satellite into the televised poker event on June 7th on Full Tilt. The qualifier boasts a buy-in of $322. Additional satellites will take place on June 21st, July 5th, and July 19th; each tournament will issue the traditional “Shuffle up and deal” command at 19:30 GMT. Prize package winners will take home the $10,000 buy-in to Late Night Poker plus an additional $2,000 to use for travel and accommodations.

Ulliott, who defeated Peter Evans heads-up, won Season 1 of Late Night Poker. Season 2 concluded with British poker player Simon Trumper defeating Ross Boatman. To finish off Season 3, Ultimate Bet pro and 11-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth defeated Adam Heller, while Hemish Shah beat Trumper to end Season 4. Irish poker player Padraig Parkinson took down Season 5, outlasting Korosh Nejad. Peter Costa was the champion of Season 6, besting Jin Cai Lin. Late Night Poker aired in the United States on Fox Sports Net, which is also home to the seventh and eighth seasons of the World Poker Tour.

Both Late Night Poker and Poker Million offer participants the opportunity to earn a share of over $1 million in prize money. A total of $18 million is up for grabs as part of FTOPS XII, which kicked off on Wednesday on the world’s second largest online poker site. The series started off in a big way, with a total of 6,275 players turning out for a $216 buy-in No Limit Hold’em Six-Max tournament. “URBEHIND” bested the enormous field, taking home the $191,000 first place prize. A total of 6,275 players also turned out for the inaugural tournament during FTOPS XI; consequently, Wednesday’s kick-off tournament tied for the third largest FTOPS event ever held.

In similar style to the recently-completed PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP), each FTOPS event has a MiniFTOPS counterpart. The first MiniFTOPS XII event attracted a massive field of 14,059 players in a $22 buy-in No Limit Hold’em Six-Max tournament. The winner of that contest was “LHBrazilll,” who earned $42,000 from the $281,000 total prize pool. Both the FTOPS and MiniFTOPS conclude next Sunday (May 17th) with $535 buy-in and $55 buy-in Main Events, respectively.

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