POKER PLAYER PROFILES

Doyle Brunson is a legend in the poker world. Although he has won the World Series of Poker twice and has 8 bracelets, most people know him from "Super/System" - the book that he published 25 years ago which explained in detail all of his secrets to winning poker. Some people consider it the Bible for poker players and the book helped popularize the game of poker as well as educate the masses on successful strategies which resulted in the game becoming more difficult (although some people believe that the book is somewhat outdated and that Sklansky has rewritten the Bible for poker). Brunson has said that so many people were using his techniques that he actually had to change his game because so many people knew his tricks. At the time, there were publishing companies that were asking him to write a book and let them publish it, but he was worried that he would never get paid the royalties he would be due so he went out and spent tons of money just to get the book published by purchasing almost an entire publishing company, renting a building, and hiring a staff. When they started selling the book at $100 by running ads in newspapers they found out the market was pretty limited. Although he was planning to publish more books, that didn't happen and he wasn't making enough money to keep the business going, so he decided to close it down. He only recently broke even on the book - after it's 8th or 9th edition.
     Born in 1933 in Longworth, Texas, Brunson grew up in a tiny town of less than 100 people where everyone worked as a farmer. He concentrated most of his time on sports, "When I got to high school in Sweetwater (Texas), I also won the Texas State Championship in the mile run. I decided to attend Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene because it was only forty miles from my hometown and many of my closest friends went there." Later, he was drafted by the Minneapolis Lakers of the NBA but, while in college, he injured his knee and that put an end to his plans of becoming a pro athlete. His injury got progressively worse, which is the reason why he uses crutches today. After his career in sports was over, he started playing poker to support himself and went around to different colleges where he knew people that played poker. During this time, he also earned a Masters Degree in Administrative Education and planned to become a teacher but decided he didn't want to after he found out they didn't get paid much. The only time he had a "regular" job in his life was right after he graduated from college. He went to work as a salesman for the Burroughs Corporation selling bookkeeping equipment. That job lasted only a couple of weeks. When he saw his first paycheck, he figured he just wasn't cut out for that type of work. He saw that he could make more money in one pot than what was in that entire paycheck selling a week of office supplies.
     While playing poker in the underground poker circuit in Texas during the 1950s he gradually worked his way up from very small games at the colleges to bigger private games where you could make a few hundred a night if you were good. He played the games in the roughest part of town where he would have to worry about getting robbed, arrested, or cheated. He was partners with Sailor Roberts and Amarillo Slim and they traveled together. One of the reasons Brunson was so grewat was because back in his day, when there were no compouters, he had to learn strategy manually by dealing out hands thousands of times and him and Slim would stay up for hours talking strategy. Poker is a game where you don't make money from playoing good, you make money from other players playing bad - so the lack of educational material had a huge impact on earnings as so many people didn't know how the fundmaental poker moves to make.      In the early 1960s, Brunson married his sweetheart, Louise. Together, they had four children. The family moved to Las Vegas after Brunson found invitations to poker games increasingly difficult to come by, as he repeatedly won the most money from the games back in Texas. Once he was firmly established in Las Vegas, Brunson won the World Series of Poker twice - in 1976 and 1977. Incredibly, he won both years with the exact same poker hand, a full house - tens full of deuces - giving the hold'em hand "10-2" the rightful nickname, "a Doyle Brunson."
     Brunson still plays in the World Series of Poker but he makes his real money in ultra-high stakes cash games. The fact that he is such a good cash game and tournament player is one of his most amazing accomplishments and one of his defining characteristics because most players agree that there are different sets of skills needed to succeed in those vastly different environments. "There's just such a difference between tournament players and money game players, you know. You look at some of the finest tournament players and when they get into money games, they have trouble winning. People just lick their chops when they see a couple of the top tournament players sit down in their ring game. I don't understand why a player can't win at tournaments and in ring games, too. There's a difference in tournament play and ring games, of course, but how can it be so much that the best tournament players in the world can't sit down and win in a money game? The question I've been asked the most over the years is, "What does it take to make a good poker player?" Who knows what it takes? I don't know. It's an innate ability that you can't describe ... you just can't explain it. People have tried, but they can't do it. It's something inside you that causes you to pull away from the field. I do know that with just the knowledge and ability to play, you can play at a certain level, but you have to have that "something" inside you to pull away. It's a sixth sense, or an inclination to win, or something. How can you say, for instance, that I am a better player than David Sklansky or Mike Caro? I think that obviously I probably am, but the two of them are the foremost authorities on poker. They know everything ... the situations and what you're supposed to do... yet when it comes time to perform them, they can't do it. They chill up or something happens."
     "The explanation I wrote in the book is the best one that I've ever thought of. And it's one that I had never thought about before I wrote the book (that's one reason why I'm glad I wrote it). It's a sense of recall that great players have. You recall what happened the last time you were in this same situation with a player of that caliber. Starting off, you put players in categories by watching their table mannerisms, the way they handle their chips, the way they handle their cards, and so on. You say to yourself that this guy's a certain kind of player, and that guy's a certain kind of player, and then when you get in a pot with them, you recall - subconsciously - the last time you were playing with a guy like that and a similar situation came up. So, you play according to the way the guy played previously. And that's the best way I can explain it."
     Although he left the dangerous days in his past he suffered from a robbery during a recent World Series of Poker. He went home after a tournament and drove into his driveway and two guys wearing black clothes and black ski masks and carrying guns dragged him inside. After he was able to call the security company the robbers left but Brunson and his wife were never comfortable at the house afterward and stayed for only two more nights and soon after they moved to a spacious new home where the security guards follow him to the door every time he comes through the gates. He also has gotten a permit to carry a gun.
     In the 1980s, Brunson became just as well known for his antics out on the golf course, as at the poker table. He played golf for huge sums of money (up to $300,000-$400,000 matches sometimes). He once commented: "The guys out on the pro golf tour don't compete for the amount of money we bet on a single round." Brunson is also into sports handicapping bet huge sums in the sportsbooks and works on the computer on the baseball statistics and study them a lot. He frequently bet five-figures or more on a single sporting event. It is not uncommon for Brunson to have a quarter of a million dollars in wagers "in action" on the day's games.
     When asked if he still loves to play poker he says: "Not like I did. I liked it at Binion's, but there aren't that many games anymore. Somebody told me that you have to play to where it hurts if you lose, and I think there's a certain element of truth in that. The stakes have to be high enough that it really hurts you if you lose - the amount could be $100 for some people and $100,000 for others - that's what makes the game interesting. And when asked if the World Series is tougher to beat these days he says: "Oh, sure. The players are so good ... I mean, those kids have learned all the tournament moves, they know how to play." When asked what players he respects in the poker world today he says: "Anybody who puts their feet under the table! I don't mind playing with just about anybody. I really consider myself lucky to have the ability to play because for most people it seems like about 50 years of age is the cutoff point. That's when their game starts going down. The other day, somebody said to me, "You've lost 10 percent of your game." I said, "'Well, yeah, but fortunately I was 30 percent ahead of everybody else to start with.'" As far as advice for someone starting in poker today he says: "It's a different thing than it used to be, but I can't imagine a better life. My son, Todd, is a pretty good example. I didn't want him to be a poker player, but he has become one. You're your own boss, you make your own hours, and you should make plenty of money. And in Nevada at least, it's respectable. Back where I come from, they still turn up their nose at you. My college won't put me in its Hall of Fame because I'm a professional gambler. (It's a little Baptist college, Hardin-Simmons University.) That aggravated me at first, but if they don't want to, it's not that big a deal to me. A lot of my friends petitioned them to put me in it, but there's somebody there that's really an objector." Brunson has pioneered higher virtues as one of the first respected voices in gambling to discuss the importance of honor and trust amongst his peers. Brunson came to personify the notion that gambling could be a respectable profession.