Things you might not know:
- Brunson was an accomplished athlete, having run a record mile in track and a member on the All-State basketball team.
- Brunson was drafted by the NBA Minneapolis Lakers, but an accident at his summer job at a sheetrock plant broke his leg, keeping him in a cast for two years and preventing him from pursuing his NBA dream.
- On his first day as a business machines salesman, he played in a seven-card stud game and earned over a month's salary in under three hours. He opted to pursue poker instead soon after.
- As poker wasn't established or legal, he played in traveling games around Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.
- Due to the illegal and often lawless environment Brunson played in, he experienced multiple situations where he had guns pulled on him or was robbed and beaten over the years.
- His best poker teacher was likely Johnny Moss, although Amarillo Slim and he would sit up for hours every night in their model room discussing poker before the next days game.
- After six years, he pooled resources with Amarillo Slim and Sailor Roberts, heading to Las Vegas, only to lose it all.
- By 1970, when the WSOP began, Brunson was finally established in Las Vegas.
- Brunson originally self-published his book Super/Sysem - How I made one million dollars playing poker in 1978.
- One of his most famous sayings "You don't stop playing because you get old, you get old because you stop playing"
- In his book My Fifty Most Memorable Hands, he claimed he as seen three people die at the poker table. One man, shot in the head at point blank range in a domestic dispute, sat next to Brunson. Two others died of heart attacks, one seemingly from a mixture of drugs and alcohol; the other appears to have died from the shock of losing a massive pot to him.
- Brunson has been married to his wife Louise for over 50 years.
- Brunson tells the story of his best bluff, which was away from the poker table, where he was confronted in front of his Las Vegas home by robbers. He knew if he delayed them the silent alarm would notify authorities, so he faked a heart attack and successfully delayed and foiled the robbers.
- Brunson owns and endorses DoylesRoom.com.
Doyle Brunson keeps a very active playing and promotional schedule even as he approaches 80. He continue to play in many televised poker shows like High Stakes Poker where he had an incredible record of something like 17 winning sessions in a row. He continues to play the biggest cash games in Bobby's Room at the Bellagio. He is a very affable character beloved by the poker community for being a pioneer before poker joined the mainstream. His competitive spirit remains strong as represented by one of his favorite sayings "A man with money is no match against a man on a mission."
One of the biggest pots ever on High Stakes Poker
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