The Godfather of Poker, Doyle Brunson

Doyle Brunson was born on August 10th 1933 and was an outstanding athlete during his youth, particularly excelling in basketball. A horrific leg injury ended his career just before he was drafted by the the Minneapolis Lakers, the team that would eventually become the L.A. Lakers in the NBA. Needing a new direction in life, Doyle discovered he had a talent for cards and after a short spell as a salesman, he decided to take up poker full time and become a professional.

Back in the 1960s and 70s, playing poker was not as culturally accepted as it is today. Doyle managed to win the WSOP Main Event in 1976 and 1977. He recalls those days as a professional as dangerous and travelled with Sailor Roberts and Amarillo Slim playing in cash games around the United States. They shared a bankroll and watched each others' backs. Eventually they split as poker partners but remained good friends.

In 1979 Doyle wrote his poker book “Super System” which became known as the “Bible of Poker” and sold lots of copies. It was the first time any professional had released poker secrets and Doyle persuaded many other stars of the time to contribute chapters including Chip Reese, Bobby Baldwin and David Sklansky. After the poker boom in 2003 “Super System 2” was updated and re-released in 2004 and enjoyed similar success.

Throughout his life Doyle has remained active in the highest stakes cash games played in “Bobby’s Room” at the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas. He has won a total of 10 WSOP Bracelets which for a spell was the most bracelets ever won by any player, until Phil Hellmuth overtook him in 2009. As well as playing high stakes poker he owned an online poker room for a time and regularly blogs about poker and has hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter.

Doyle Brunson is one of the greats in poker history.

The image of Doyle Brunson at the 2006 World Series of Poker is by flipchip / LasVegasVegas.com and used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

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