Texas Dolly - Doyle Brunson (1976 & 1977)

Nov 13, 2007 The WSOP has been good to Doyle Brunson, and vice versa. An impressive ten bracelets, twenty-nine money finishes to date in 2007 and back to back main event titles (in 76 and 77) has ensured that Brunson will go down as one of the greatest poker players of ALL time.

Born in a small Texan town in 1933, Brunson turned out to be quite the athlete in his formative years, excelling in both basketball and track. Dreams of being a professional were shattered when he suffered a severe leg injury in the workplace that left him in a cast for a couple of years, and still affects him to this day.

Post school, Brunson became a salesman and on his first day was invited to play in a seven-card stud game and earned over a month's wages that day. He had played poker (mostly five card draw) prior to his injury, but this was the first time he saw the financial potential of maybe doing this on a full time basis. With that he left his job to become a professional poker player.

Brunson began playing illegal games in his home state of Texas, eventually crossing paths with Amarillo Slim and Sailor Roberts. For six years 'The Texas Rounders' travelled around together playing poker and gambling on anything that could be gambled on. The threesome's first trip to Las Vegas proved to be quite the disaster when they lost a six-figure amount at the tables. At this point the partnership was over, but the friendships remained.

Doyle, who was also a cancer survivor at this point, moved to Las Vegas and won the 1976 WSOP Main Event collecting just under a quarter of a million dollars. The next year Brunson duplicated his win and picked up a cool $340k in the 1977 WSOP Main Event. Both years Brunson won with full houses, holding a ten and a two - This hand has now been named after him.

Brunson took a risk both financially and professionally self-publishing a book on poker in 1978. The concept of Super System was to gather the greatest professional players in the world to share their closely guarded secrets on how to win at poker. People to this day regard this as the greatest poker book ever written, and you would be hard done to find a WSOP winner who hasn't read this book at some time or other.

Brunson has continued to play in the biggest events in the world winning his 10th WSOP bracelet at 2005's event. An updated version of his book, entitled Super System 2 was published in 2005 complete with more tips and tricks plus a section on online play. Without question, Doyle 'Texas Dolly' Brunson put poker on the map and is the most recognizable name in the game.


Previous heroes:
The Grand Old Man of Poker - Johnny Moss
One of the Original Rounders - Amarillo Slim
The Roving Gambler - Puggy Pearson
The Sailor - Brian Roberts

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