Doyle Brunson
Doyle "Texas Dolly" Brunson (born
August 10,
1933 in
Longworth, Texas) is an American
poker player who has played professionally for over 40 years. He is a former world champion of poker and the author of several poker books.
The first player to earn $1 million in poker tournaments, Brunson has won ten
World Series of Poker bracelets throughout his career, tied with
Johnny Chan and
Phil Hellmuth for the record. He is also one of only four players to have won consecutive main events at the World Series of Poker, in
1976 and
1977.
Brunson was born in Longworth, Texas, a town with a population of approximately 100, and was one of three children. Because of Longworth's small size, Brunson frequently ran long distances to other towns, and became a promising athlete. He was part of the All-State
Texas basketball team, and practiced the one-mile run to keep in shape in the off-season. Although he was more interested in basketball than running, he entered the 1950 Texas Interscholastic Track Meet and won the one-mile event with a time of 4:38. Despite receiving offers from many colleges, he attended
Hardin-Simmons University in
Abilene, Texas, because it was close to his home. The
Minneapolis Lakers were interested in Brunson, but a knee injury ended his playing days. He had taken a summer job and was unloading some sheetrock; when the ton of weight shifted, Brunson instinctively tried to stop it, but it landed on his leg, breaking it in two places. He was in a cast for two years, and the injury ended his hopes of becoming a professional basketball player. He still occasionally requires a crutch to get around because of the injury. Brunson changed his focus from athletics to education and obtained a master's degree in administrative education.
Brunson had begun playing poker before his injury, playing
five card draw and finding it "easy". He played more often after being injured and his winnings paid for his expenses. He obtained a bachelor's degree in 1954 and a master's the following year. After graduating, he took a job as a business machines salesman, but on his first day, he was invited to play in a
seven-card stud game and earned over a month's salary in under three hours. He soon left the company and became a professional poker player.
Brunson started off by playing in illegal games in Exchange Street,
Fort Worth, Texas with a friend named Dwayne Hamilton. Eventually they began travelling around Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, playing in bigger games, and met fellow-professionals
Amarillo Slim and
Sailor Roberts. Hamilton moved back to Fort Worth, while the others teamed up and travelled around together, gambling on poker, golf and, in Doyle's words, "just about everything".
They pooled their money together for gambling, but after six years they made their first serious trip to
Las Vegas and lost all of it, a six-figure amount. They decided to stop playing as partners but remain friends.
Brunson finally settled in
Las Vegas,
Nevada.
Other than his poker success, his greatest achievement is probably the book that is considered to be the bible of poker:
Super/System. Originally self-published in 1978,
Super/System was the book that transformed poker by giving ordinary players an insight into the way that the professionals like Brunson played and won, so much so that Brunson believes that it cost him a lot of money. 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.
Brunson continues to play in the biggest poker games in the world, playing $4000/$8000 minimum bets and also at the World Series of Poker. He won his ninth gold bracelet in a mixed games event in
2003, and in
2004 he finished 53rd (in a field of 2576) in the No Limit
Texas hold 'em Championship event. He won the Legends of Poker
World Poker Tour event in 2004 (garnering him a $1.1 Million prize), and 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 - setting a new record - Brunson tied the record by earning his 10th at the
2005 WSOP.
Brunson's
nickname, "Texas Dolly", came from the incorrect reading of his name by
Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder, and it stuck. Snyder was supposed to announce Brunson as "Texas Doyle" (since he was from the state) but incorrectly read Brunson's first name as Dolly when announcing it. Many of Brunson's fellow top pros now simply refer to Brunson as "Dolly".
Brunson has the honor of having two Texas hold'em hands named after him. One hand, a Ten and a Two of any suit, bears his name as he won the No Limit Hold 'Em event at the World Series of Poker two years in a row with them (1976 and 1977), in both cases completing a full house. Doyle has expressed his displeasure at being known for what is a weak starting hand in
Texas Hold 'em; in fact, in both 1976 and 1977, he was the underdog, requiring Brunson to come from behind both times. Another hand known as a "Doyle Brunson," especially in Texas, is the Ace and Queen of any suit because, as he says on page 519 of the Super/System, he "
never plays this hand."
Brunson endorses the
online poker room
Doyle's Room. He is currently appearing in the
GSN series
High Stakes Poker.
As of 2006, his total live tournament winnings exceeded $4,800,000.
Brunson met his future wife Louise in 1960, and they married in August 1962. Louise became pregnant and later that year, he discovered a tumor in his neck. When it was operated on, the surgeons found that the cancer had spread and declared it incurable. They felt that an operation would prolong his life enough for him to see the birth of their baby, so they went ahead with it, but after the operation, no trace of the cancer could be found.
The doctors said that his recovery must have been a miracle, and Brunson has attributed his recovery to the prayers of friends of his wife.
Louise developed a tumor shortly afterwards, but when she went for surgery, her tumor was also found to have disappeared. In 1975, their daughter Doyla was diagnosed with
scoliosis, but her spine straightened completely within three months.
Doyla died at 18 when she took too much
potassium for a heart-valve condition. Over the following year, Brunson read Christian literature and converted to Christianity.
His son
Todd also plays poker professionally. Todd has won a bracelet in
Omaha High Low at the 2005 WSOP, making the Brunsons the first father-son combination to win bracelets at the World Series.
On
December 14 2005, the
Securities and Exchange Commission filed an action [
1] to enforce subpoenas issued to the attorneys of Doyle Brunson regarding his unsolicited offer in July of
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 thereafter, the Commission contends, a public relations firm Brunson hired, and a website he endorses, publicly announced the offer. The Commission asserts that publication of this offer, widely covered in the media, triggered a steep rise in WPT's stock price on record trading volume.
When pressed for details, Brunson and his lawyers immediately stopped responding to the WPT and the media. 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. The offer eventually expired by its terms.
The SEC is formally investigating whether Brunson's offer and its publication violated federal securities laws, including the antifraud provisions of the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934. As part of its investigation, the SEC subpoenaed documents and testimony from Brunson's lawyers. However, Brunson, who has 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 seeks 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. The court has not yet set the Commission's action for hearing.
| Year | Tournament!Prize (US$) | | 1976 | $10,000 No Limit Hold'em World Championship | $230,000 |
| 1977 | $5,000 Deuce to Seven Draw | $80,250 |
| 1977 | $10,000 No Limit Hold'em World Championship | $340,000 |
| 1977 | $1,000 Seven-Card Stud Split | $62,500 |
| 1978 | $5,000 Seven-Card Stud | $68,000 |
| 1979 | $600 Mixed Doubles (with Starla Brodie) | $4,500 |
| 1991 | $2,500 No Limit Hold'em | $208,000 |
| 1998 | $1,500 Seven-Card Razz | $93,000 |
| 2003 | $2,000 H.O.R.S.E. | $84,080 |
| 2005 | $5,000 No Limit Shorthanded Texas Hold'em (6 players per table) | $367,800 |
*
Doyle Brunson's Super System: A Course in Power Poker, Published: 1979
**Doyle Brunson's Super System II, Published: 2004
*According to Doyle, Published: 1984
*Poker Wisdom of a Champion, Published: 2003
*Online Poker: Your Guide to Playing Online Poker Safely & Winning Money, Published: 2005
*
Official site*
World Poker Tour profile*
Poker Babes profile*
Poker Pages interview*
ALL IN Magazine interview*
PokerPlayer magazine interview*
Hendon Mob tournament results
