Amarillo Slim is one of the few old-time poker stars still around along with Doyle Brunson. He started out as a rounder traveling around the country looking for games along with Brunson and Sailor Roberts.
It's hard not to notice Amarillo Slim with his distinctive appearance. At the table, he is tall, thin, wears a cowboy hat, custom made ostrich boots, emerald buttons on his Western shirt and always has a witty one-liner ready to keep players amused at the table.
Born Thomas Austin Preston, Jr. December 31, 1928 in Johnson, Arkansas, he started playing poker at age 25 and won the World Series in 1972, sending his three children to college. In the 1972 WSOP (the 3rd WSOP ever), he won the main event and beat out Walter “Puggy” Pearson (there were 8 entrants) for $60,000 in earnings. He has won 4 World Series of Poker bracelets: 1972 main event; 1974 $1,000 No Limit Hold-Em; 1985 $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha; 1990 $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha. His tournament winnings have totaled almost $600,000.
In addition, he’s written an autobiography - Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People – and several books including, Amarillo Slim's Play Poker to Win. His autobiography is about to be turned into a film, possibly starring Nicolas Cage.
He is also well known for the crazy "proposition" bets he's won - including playing one-pocket pool with Minnesota Fats using a broom handle, golf with Evil Knievel using a carpenter's hammer, ping-pong with Bobby Riggs using an iron skillet, beating Larry Flynt at poker for $2,000,000, and beating Willie Nelson for $300,000 playing dominoes. He has also played poker with presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and drug lords Pablo Escobar and Jimmy Chagra. Always one to be able to spot a sucker, when asked he you could change one thing about the poker world, he replied: "More rich players".
Amarillo Slim has put poker on the map and more than any other player, and has brought respectability to the game by bringing poker out of backrooms - one of the reasons he receives so much respect from other poker players. Now that he is older he doesn't take gambling as seriously as other players. When asked if he enjoys the World Series as much as he used to, he says he enjoys the camaraderie but when he sits down to play he feels "like he's in the electric chair -- I'd rather be anywhere else in the world. I'm pokered out." These days he doesn't play that much poker anymore. Today he likes to golf, go quail hunting, and go to sporting events and he has his own golf course in his back yard, along with a professional tennis court and a king-sized swimming pool.
He is also notorious for supposedly making a comment about women poker players. One year at the World Series of Poker, a lady who wasn't a very popular person had accumulated a good amount of chips and made the comment to Slim that "it's a certainty that I'm gonna win this World Series," and Slim said "If you win the World Series of Poker you can take a dull knife and cut my throat!" but he was quoted as saying "If a woman ever wins the World Series, I'll cut my throat." Slim notes, “I didn't say that, but I caught a lot of heat from the gals, the lesser lady players, although when I told the good ones how it was, they knew Vera and understood what I meant by my remark. To this day, I'm still quoted incorrectly."
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Players
Alan Goehring
