Doyle Brunson, Poker Champion Known as ‘Texas Dolly,’ Dies at 89
In a lucrative career that began in Texas saloons, he won back-to-back World Series of Poker titles (and 10 in all) and wrote a definitive poker manual.
Doyle Brunson, a champion poker player who, in a long, lucrative and colorful career with a deck of cards, won 10 World Series of Poker events, including two back-to-back titles, and influenced countless players with his definitive guide to Texas hold ’em and other games, died on Sunday in Las Vegas. He was 89.
His death was confirmed by his daughter-in-law, Anjela Brunson.
On his website, Mr. Brunson was once immodestly described as “the Babe Ruth, the Michael Jordan, and the Arnold Palmer of poker.”
The comparisons were apt. The first person to win $1 million in tournament play, Mr. Brunson — nicknamed Texas Dolly — became a star to a new generation when poker became a fixture on television in the 1990s, his cowboy hat and no-nonsense drawl a gentlemanly foil to brash, talkative younger players.
“The testosterone that floods most of today’s games owes its existence to Brunson’s philosophy of attack, the outlaw whiff of his style, the cowboy jingle-jangle of his prose,” Sports Illustrated wrote in 2005.
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Mr. Brunson, whose career in poker began in illegal games in the back rooms of Texas bars, won the World Series of Poker main event, the sport’s most coveted prize, in 1976 and 1977. His total tournament winnings exceeded $6 million.
Since the 1960s, he had presided over a high-stakes private cash game in Las Vegas known as “The Big Game,” reserved for the most fearless and well-financed poker players as well as wealthy amateurs.
Mr. Brunson “bridges the span between the dangerous road games of the 1950s and the safely legitimate mountains of money in the 21st century,” the poker journalist James McManus wrote in “Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker” (2009).
When Mr. Brunson won the World Series of Poker main event, he wrote that people thought of him more as a professional gambler than a poker player. He acknowledged that he had made millions and lost much of it early on betting on other sports, especially golf.
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But he became famous for winning at poker and then teaching it, especially no-limit Texas hold ’em, a variation of the game that he first played in 1958, when it was becoming popular in his home state.
Doyle Frank Brunson was born on Aug. 10, 1933, and grew up in Longworth, in north central Texas, the youngest of three children of John and Mealia Brunson. His father was a farmer and cotton gin manager, his mother a homemaker. Doyle did not learn until his mid-20s that his father had secretly put his first two children through college by playing poker.
Initially an undersize basketball player, Doyle grew about six inches in a year and helped lead Sweetwater High School, in nearby Sweetwater, to the state tournament in Austin. The night before the semifinal game (which his team lost), schoolmates introduced him to poker, which he had seen played only in movies.
He also excelled at baseball and track. After missing the deadline to accept a full scholarship to the University of Texas, he attended the Baptist-affiliated Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene and started playing poker there. Five times he faced a school disciplinary board for gambling but avoided suspension because of his success as an athlete.
After almost leading Hardin-Simmons to the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament, Mr. Brunson landed a summer job at the local gypsum plant. His athletic career was ended when a stack of Sheetrock fell on him, mangling his right leg.
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He earned a master’s degree in education while playing poker for income. But shocked at how little school administrators were paid, he decided against an educator’s career and took a job selling business equipment. While making a sales call on a pool hall in Fort Worth, he stumbled on a poker game, joined it and in three hours equaled his month’s salary. He quit his job and started a life of illegal poker in Texas.
Mr. Brunson soon joined a betting partnership with Thomas Preston Jr., better known as Amarillo Slim, and Brian Roberts, known as Sailor, in which they shared bankrolls until they lost all their money in Las Vegas in 1970. Each of them would eventually win the World Series of Poker main event.
In 1962, Mr. Brunson married Louise Carter, a Fort Worth pharmacist. She survives him, along with their son, Todd; their daughter, Pamela Brunson; a stepdaughter, Cheryl Carter; a grandson; a step-grandson; four step-great-grandchildren; and one step-great-great-grandson. His first child, Doyla Brunson, died in 1982. Mr. Brunson died at a hospital in Las Vegas and had lived in the city for several decades.
Mr. Brunson was among the three dozen players invited in 1970 to the inaugural World Series of Poker, a name that belied its modest beginnings. The tournament was the brainchild of the casino owner Benny Binion and Jimmy Snyder, then a public relations agent better known as Jimmy the Greek.
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The World Series expanded its roster of poker contests to include several variants of the game, but Texas hold ’em remained the most publicized and lucrative event. Mr. Snyder called Mr. Brunson “Texas Doy-lee,” which reporters mistook for Dolly, and the nickname Texas Dolly stuck, though it seemed incongruous for someone who stood 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighed well over 250 pounds.
After moving to Las Vegas in 1973 for steadier gambling opportunities, Mr. Brunson won the tournament’s main event in 1976 and 1977, widely viewed as the world championship, earning $560,000 in a winner-take-all format. His 10 World Series bracelets are tied for second behind Phil Hellmuth’s 16.
In 1978, he self-published his book “How I Made Over $1,000,000 Playing Poker,” which included chapters by other top pros. Later renamed “Super System: A Course in Power Poker” when it was picked up by B & G Publishing in 2002, the book and its follow-up, “Super System 2,” remain top-selling poker manuals.
“As a postgraduate guide to the intricacies of high-level, high-stakes poker the work has no equal,” wrote the English poet Al Alvarez, who covered the 1981 World Series of Poker for The New Yorker. “The grammar may be shaky in places, the punctuation baroque, but the voice is distinct and the message is clear: aggression, constant aggression.”
Mr. Brunson was inducted into the World Series of Poker Hall of Fame in 1988.
After steady growth, poker had its cultural moment in 1998 with the release of the film “Rounders,” in which Matt Damon’s poker-playing character recites Brunson maxims while wielding a copy of “Super System.” That same year, poker became a late-night and cable television staple, and Mr. Brunson became a familiar figure.
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Competitive into his later years, Mr. Brunson won a 2004 legends event on the World Poker Tour and $1.2 million. In 2005, he won a hold ’em event for his 10th World Series title.
A few days earlier, his son Todd, also a professional player, had captured an event, making them the first father and son to each win at the World Series. Mr. Brunson reached the fourth day of the 2013 Poker Players Championship, though he confessed that the game was taking its toll.
“Sometimes, when I’ve been playing for a couple of days, I get into a position where I’m uncomfortable,” he said. “My leg, say, starts hurting a little bit. But I don’t change position. I’ll sit there and let it hurt, just as a reminder to make myself play good.”
He was still playing poker in Las Vegas in 2022. “Watching Doyle Brunson play poker at the Bellagio is like watching Tiger Woods play Augusta,” Joe Levin wrote in a profile in Texas Monthly last July.
Mr. Brunson thought that his legacy would be “the fact that I’ve played longer at the high levels than anybody else ever did,” he said in 2003. “I mean, I’ve been playing at the high levels — the biggest games I could find — ever since I was 23 years old.”
But he would not milk his age for sympathy.
“Would I like to win the World Series again for the old guys?” he said in 2002. “Nah, I’d like to win it for ol’ Doyle.”
Doyle Brunson, Poker Champion Known as ‘Texas Dolly,’ Dies at 89 - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
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Doyle Frank Brunson (August 10, 1933 – May 14, 2023) was an American poker player who played professionally for over 50 years.[4][5] He was a two-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event champion, a Poker Hall of Fame inductee, and the author of several books on poker.
Brunson was the first player to win $1 million in poker tournaments.[6] He won ten WSOP bracelets throughout his career, tied with Johnny Chan and Phil Ivey for second all time, behind Phil Hellmuth's sixteen bracelets. He is also one of only four players to have won the Main Event at the World Series of Poker multiple times, which he did in 1976 and 1977. He is also one of only three players, along with Bill Boyd and Loren Klein, to have won WSOP tournaments in four consecutive years. In addition, he is the first of six players to win both the WSOP Main Event and a World Poker Tour title. In January 2006, Bluff Magazine voted Brunson the most influential force in the world of poker.[7]
On June 11, 2018, Brunson announced he was retiring from tournament poker that summer.[8] That day, he entered the $10,000 2–7 Single Draw at the 2018 WSOP. He made the final table and finished in sixth place, earning $43,963.[1]
Doyle Frank Brunson was born in Longworth, Texas, on August 10, 1933,[9][10] as one of three children. He went to Sweetwater High School where he excelled at athletics.[11] In the 1950 Texas Interscholastic Track Meet, he won the one-mile event with a time of 4:43.[12] After receiving offers from many colleges, he attended Hardin–Simmons University in Abilene, Texas.[13]
The Minneapolis Lakers of the NBA showed interest in Brunson, but a knee injury ended his hopes of becoming a professional basketball player.[12] He occasionally required a crutch because of the injury and had said that breaking his leg ruined his lifetime dream of playing in the NBA.[14] Brunson obtained a bachelor's degree in 1954 and a master's degree in administrative education the following year with plans to become a school principal.[15][16]
Brunson had begun playing poker before his injury, playing five-card draw. He played more often after being injured, and his winnings paid for his expenses. After graduating, he took a job with Burroughs Corporation as a salesman for their business machines. On his first day, he was invited to play in a seven-card stud game and won more than a month's salary. He soon left the company and became a professional poker player.[17]
Brunson started by playing in illegal games on Exchange Street in Fort Worth with friend Dwayne Hamilton. Eventually, they began traveling around Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, playing in bigger games, and meeting fellow professionals Amarillo Slim and Sailor Roberts. The illegal games Brunson played in during this time were usually run by criminals who were often members of organized crime, so rules were not always enforced. Brunson had recounted the violence and criminality of that era, such as the time a player at another table was shot and killed during a game.[11]
Hamilton moved back to Fort Worth while the others teamed up and traveled together, gambling on poker, golf, and, in Doyle's words, "just about everything".[18] They pooled their money for gambling. After six years, they made their first serious trip to Las Vegas and lost all of it, almost six figures. They decided to stop playing as partners but remained friends.[19]
Brunson finally settled in Las Vegas. He has been a regular player at the World Series of Poker since its inception in 1970, playing in the Main Event nearly every year since then, in addition to many of the other preceding bracelet-awarding events.[20] He made some WSOP championship event final tables before his back-to-back wins, but since this was when the event was winner-take-all, they are not counted as cashes. Besides his two championship wins in 1976 and 1977, Brunson's other Main Event cashes are: 1972 (3rd), 1980 (runner-up to three-time Main Event winner Stu Ungar), 1982 (4th), 1983 (3rd), 1997 (16th), 2004 (53rd), and 2013 (409th).[1]
Brunson authored Super/System, which is widely considered one of the most authoritative books on poker.[11][21] Originally self-published in 1978, Super/System was the book credited with transforming poker by giving ordinary players insight into how professionals such as Brunson played and won, so much so that Brunson believed that it cost him a lot of money.[22] An updated revision, Super/System 2, was published in 2004. Besides Brunson, several top poker players contributed chapters to Super/System including Bobby Baldwin, Mike Caro, David Sklansky, Chip Reese, and Joey Hawthorne. The book is subtitled "How I made one million dollars playing poker" by Doyle Brunson. Brunson is also the author of Poker Wisdom of a Champion, originally published as According to Doyle by Lyle Stuart in 1984.[23]
Brunson continued to play in the biggest poker games in the world, including a $4,000/$8,000 limit mixed poker game in "Bobby's Room" at the Bellagio. He also played in many of the biggest poker tournaments around the world. He won his ninth gold bracelet in a mixed games event in 2003, and in 2004, he finished 53rd (in a field of 2,576) in the No Limit Texas hold 'em Championship event. He won the Legends of Poker World Poker Tour (WPT) event in 2004 (garnering him a $1.1 million prize). He finished fourth in the WPT's first championship event. Early in the morning on July 1, 2005, less than a week after Chan had won his 10th gold bracelet (presented to each WSOP tournament winner) – setting a new record – Brunson tied him at the 2005 WSOP by winning the $5,000 No Limit Shorthanded Texas Hold'em event. He was six bracelets behind Phil Hellmuth, who earned his 16th bracelet at the 2021 World Series of Poker. He cashed in the 2013 World Series of Poker $10,000 No Limit Hold'em Championship event, marking the fifth decade he has cashed in the event.[24] Doyle temporarily came out of retirement from tournament play to participate in the 2021 WSOP No-Limit Hold-Em Master of Ceremonies Invitational, placing 5th behind Phil Hellmuth (4th), Norman Chad (3rd), Lon McEachern (2nd), and Vince Vaughn (1st).[25]
As of 2018, his total live tournament winnings exceed $6,100,000.[3] He has totaled over $3,000,000 in earnings from his 37 cashes at the WSOP.[1]
Brunson has two Texas hold'em hands named after him. The holding of ten-deuce bears his name because he won the No Limit Hold 'Em event at the World Series of Poker two years in a row with a ten and a two (1976 and 1977), in both cases completing a full house as an underdog in the final hand.[26] The other hand known as a "Doyle Brunson", especially in Texas, is the ace and queen of any suit because, in his words, he "[tries] never to play this hand".[27]
Brunson met his future wife, Louise, in 1959 and married her in August 1962. Louise became pregnant, but a tumor was discovered in Doyle's neck later that year. The surgeons found that the cancer had spread when it was operated on. They felt that an operation would prolong his life enough for him to see the baby's birth, so they went ahead. After the operation, no trace of the cancer could be found.[29]
Brunson attributed his cure to the prayers of friends of his wife and their correspondence with Kathryn Kuhlman, a self-proclaimed Christian faith healer.[30] Louise developed a tumor shortly afterward, and when she went for surgery, her tumor was also found to have disappeared. In 1975, their daughter Doyla was diagnosed with scoliosis, yet her spine straightened completely within three months. Doyla died at 18 of a heart-valve condition.[31]
His son, Todd, also plays poker professionally. Todd has won a bracelet in the $2,500 Omaha Hi-Lo at the 2005 World Series of Poker, making Doyle and Todd the first father-son combination to win World Series bracelets.[32] His daughter Pamela played in the 2007 World Series of Poker, outlasting Todd.[33]
Doyle Brunson died in Las Vegas on May 14, 2023, at the age of 89.[34]
On December 14, 2005, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed an action[35] to enforce subpoenas issued to the attorneys of Doyle Brunson regarding his unsolicited offer in July 2005 to buy WPT Enterprises, Inc., the publicly traded owner of the World Poker Tour, at a high premium over its then-market value. Shortly after that, the Commission contended, a public relations firm Brunson hired, and a website he endorsed, publicly announced the offer. The Commission asserted that the publication of this offer, widely covered in the media, triggered a steep rise in WPT's stock price on record trading volume. Brunson and his lawyers immediately stopped responding to the WPT and the media when pressed for details. Instead, after delivering the offer, Brunson withdrew from the engagement. When the WPT publicly disclosed Brunson and his law firm's unresponsiveness, its stock price sharply declined, costing investors tens of millions of dollars in lost market value.[36]
The SEC formally investigated whether Brunson's offer and its publication violated federal securities laws, including the anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The SEC subpoenaed documents and testimony from Brunson's lawyers as part of its investigation. However, Brunson, who invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and declined to testify in the investigation, directed his lawyers to withhold certain documents and not to testify on critical aspects of the offer, under the attorney–client privilege and work-product doctrine. The subpoena enforcement action sought to set aside these privileges on various legal grounds, including the crime-fraud exception, and to compel Brunson's firm to provide the requested documents and testimony.[37] The case was dropped by the SEC in 2007.[38]
Doyles Room was an online poker room established in 2004. Originally on the Tribeca Poker Network (now part of the Playtech iPoker network), Doyles Room moved to the Microgaming (Prima) Poker Network in 2007, then to the Cake Poker Network in January 2009, and most recently to the Yatahay Network in January 2011. On May 26, 2011, Doyles Room was seized in accordance with an investigation into the violation of online gambling laws. Following the events of April 15, Brunson cut ties with Doyles Room.[39] In October 2011, Doyles Room was acquired by Americas Cardroom.
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