Doyle Brunson

There are few names more synonymous with poker than Doyle Brunson.

The man is a living legend and has done everything there is to do in poker from winning various WPT games and the WSOP (twice) to writing a number of books which are widely regarded as having changed the face of poker forever. Along the way, Mr Brunson has also been voted into the Poker Hall of Fame and found time to start up his own online poker room: Doyles Room.

In short, Doyle Brunson is the man that all professional players look up to and respect no matter where he’s playing.

As with most professional players, Doyle Brunson started gambling when he was young. He use to travel around Texas with a group of friends (including the famous Amarillio Slim) looking for anything to gamble on. It didn’t matter whether it was sport, pool or poker, The Texas Dolly was happy to have a wager on it.

After several years, Mr Brunson moved to Vegas as gambling was easier there and games were much easier to find. It appears that success followed him because before long be became the first player to win the WSOP No Limit Hold Em Event for two consecutive years with the first victory coming in 1976. The year after that, he won two other events aswell: the $5k buy in for 2-7 Lowball (in which he won $80k) and the Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo event (which guaranteed him $63k).

Success was not a short term thing for Doyle Brunson though and he went on to win six more bracelets. In 1978 he picked up $68k for winning a Seven Card Stud event. A year later he paid $600 to enter the Mixed Doubles event and walked away with a cheque for $5k ... and the victories continued to roll. Even the increase of stakes didn’t worry Mr. Brunson – he just saw the bigger prize pools for him to cash in to. In 1991, he paid $2.5k to buy into a No Limit Hold Em event and walked away with $208k. A $1.5k Razz event saw him win $93k in 1998 and a $2k HORSE event in 2003 saw him win $368k.

In all, Doyle Brunson has won 10 bracelets, placing him equal with Johnny Chan in the all time rankings – just one bracelet behind Phil Helmuth Jr. The tournaments are just one aspect of Doyle Brunson though, and no biography would be complete without mentioning “Super System: A Course in Power Poker” a book which he wrote in the mid 1970’s. Thirty years on, it is still considered to be one of the most influential poker books of all time and it is something that the vast majority or pros on the tour today will admit to reading when they were first starting out.

Mr Brunson is the author of a great many other books too. “Poker Wisdom of a Champion” was published in 2003. Two years later “Online Poker: The Guide to Playing Online Poker Safelt and Winning Money” was released and more recently “According to Doyle” and “50 Most Memorable Hands” also hit the bookshelves.

These days Mr Brunson can still be found playing some of the biggest tournaments out there. Recently, he has started his own online poker site, “Doyles Room” which has grown into one of the most popular poker rooms in the US. He is regularly found playing in the cash games there and on most Wednesday evenings he participates in the weekly $50k bounty tournament where new first-timers find their $25 buy-in charge refunded no matter whether they win or lose.