Doyle Brunson

Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson was known as the “Godfather of Poker”, and he may very well have been the biggest icon the game has produced. Across a lifetime of professional poker he saw all of it, and his life reads like a Hollywood script. Brunson died on 14 May 2023 at the age of 89, leaving behind a career that shaped the modern game. This is his story.

We’ve also made this blog post as a video, if you’d rather watch than read.

Early Life

Doyle F. Brunson was born on August 10, 1933 in Longworth, Fisher County of Texas – a dirt poor, rural town smack in the middle of The Lone Star State. The town had a population of less than 100, and almost all were farmers. His family lived on a cotton farm with no electricity or plumbing. Brunson was the youngest of three children and had a textbook Texas childhood, although often feeling like a bit of an outsider.

He was an active kid, and shaped into a natural athlete who received a spot on the All-State basketball team and also dominated in the statewide track community. This is especially impressive considering that Brunson never actually had a track coach or knew anything about running track. According to a 2018 podcast interview he did with Poker Stories, after baseball practice, Brunson would just go to the track, start running and never let anyone get past him. These performances led to him being offered college scholarships for both basketball and track.

Doyle Brunson was well on his way to realizing his lifelong dream of playing in the NBA. The then-Minneapolis Lakers wanted to sign him, but his basketball career ended before it really began. One fateful day, while working at a local gypsum factory, Brunson was in an accident that shattered his leg. It never fully healed, putting an abrupt end to his athletic dreams – and for the rest of his life he was easy to spot at a poker table by the crutch standing nearby.

But, as Doyle Brunson would prove again and again, no matter what you’re dealt in life, anything can be turned into a winning hand.

Picking Up Poker

Doyle Brunson had always been an observer of people. Perhaps because he grew up feeling like an outsider looking in. Barely able to move around after shattering his leg, he would often just sit and watch people – which would only advance his skills of reading faces. Something that would become his ace in the hole later in life.

Doyle Brunson got his bachelor’s degree in 1954 and a master’s degree split between administrative education and business administration the next year, with a new plan of perhaps becoming a school principal. But he found the pay scale to be too low, so straight out of college he went and got a job as a business machine salesman. Not a dream job to Brunson, but a place to start and a way to make a living. He wouldn’t stick around long though.

The young Brunson had always enjoyed poker, but played a lot more after his injury. So when his co-workers invited him to play with them after his first day, he went along. They played a game of seven-card stud, and Brunson absolutely cleaned up, winning more than a month’s salary that night. Always eager to chase a goal, Brunson soon quit the job and started playing poker professionally.

Calling Death’s Bluff

Doctors felt that a second operation might prolong his life enough for him to witness the birth of his daughter and so they went ahead. After the operation, doctors were stunned to see that the tumor had completely vanished. They found absolutely no trace of the cancer and so Doyle was healthy for the birth of his daughter and back on the road soon after. Like the true gambler he was. This wouldn’t be the last time death came looking for Doyle, and for sixty more years he would call the bluff and watch death fold its cards.

Adventures with the Texas Rounders

After the birth of his daughter, Doyle Brunson went to Fort Worth, Texas, where he and his friend Dwayne Hamilton would play in illegal games. But even Fort Worth soon proved too small for their appetite, and so they took to the road. They met fellow poker players Amarillo Slim and Sailor Roberts and formed what became known as the legendary Texas Rounders. A team of truly elite poker players who completely cleaned Texas dry playing high-stakes poker in the 1950s and 60s. Probably poker’s closest thing to a team like The Avengers.

These illegal games were often run by criminals, so things could get heated. Brunson recalled staring down the barrel of a gun more than a few times, and said he saw two players shot in the head at the table.

Dwayne Hamilton headed back to Fort Worth while the rest of the gang expanded to Oklahoma and Louisiana, playing bigger and bigger games. They would pool their funds for gambling, participating in the biggest games around.

After six years of dominating the southern poker rooms like this, and outrunning the law and the hijackers who preyed on winners of illegal big-money card games, the Texas Rounders had amassed a massive pool of funds. And now they arrived in Las Vegas.

Las Vegas

The Texas Rounders arrived in Sin City as legends, but were about to get a harsh reality check. In fact, they quickly lost everything they had – a six-figure amount. Which was a hell of a lot back in those days. Vegas had chewed them up and spat them back out. They decided to stop playing as partners, but remained friends, always watching each other’s back.

Doyle however, did just fine on his own and was quickly becoming one of the major attractions in Vegas, as audiences would literally gather to see him play.

Brunson settled down in Las Vegas and was a fixture at the World Series of Poker from its very first year in 1970. He mostly played at the Bellagio, which remained his favorite spot for the rest of his life.

Why Is Doyle Brunson Called “Texas Dolly”?

The poker scene is full of nicknames – and players love to name fellow players – probably because it is easier to remember than real names and because it adds an element of fun. And, honestly, why call a guy Thomas Austin Preston, when “Amarillo Slim” sounds so much cooler? There are some legendary nicknames out there, but the most famous nickname in poker of course belongs to the game’s biggest icon. But exactly why is Doyle Brunson called “Texas Dolly”? It’s actually a funny story.

Back in 1973, Doyle Brunson had a well-established relationship with a guy called Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder. Jimmy would later become famous for his part in CBS’s The NFL Today throughout the 1980s, but in 1973 he was still just a gambling columnist for the Las Vegas Sun. Jimmy was covering the WSOP and therefore frequently mentioned Doyle Brunson’s accomplishments. But at the time, gambling was still frowned upon in Texas, and for that reason Brunson asked Snyder to use an alias – and so he would call him “Texas Doyle”.

A member of the Associated Press picked up on an exchange between Brunson and Snyder, but misunderstood the nickname to be “Texas Dolly”, which then made the report and has since then gone down in history as a legendary poker nickname.

Doyle Brunson’s Poker Winnings

Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson is still referred to as the Godfather of Poker, and the title makes sense: he was there from the very beginning and did as much as anyone to make the game what it is today. After a lifetime of professional poker it isn’t really possible to summarize his winnings in one blog post, but here are some of the major ones.

Brunson is believed to have won more than $6,100,000 in live tournaments, more than $3,000,000 of it from 37 cashes at the WSOP. He won the WSOP Main Event two years running and took 10 bracelets in total, which put him among the most decorated players in the tournament’s history. His 10 WSOP bracelets were:

• 1976: $5,000 Deuce to Seven Draw
• 1976: $10,000 No Limit Hold’em World Championship
• 1977: $5,000 Seven-Card Stud
• 1977: $10,000 No Limit Hold’em World Championship
• 1978: $5,000 Seven-Card Stud
• 1979: $600 Mixed Doubles No Limit Hold’em
• 1991: $2,500 No Limit Hold’em
• 1998: $1,500 Seven-Card Razz
• 2003: $2,000 H.O.R.S.E.
• 2005: $5,000 No Limit Shorthanded Texas Hold’em

Super System - The Poker Bible

Brunson gave poker a great deal, but perhaps his biggest contribution came in 1978, when he changed the game forever by writing and publishing Super System – How I Made Over $1,000,000 Playing Poker.

This was right after his back-to-back WSOP win and the book was the first comprehensive book on strategies for various poker games. The book became a huge success and is largely considered the Bible of Poker. Even today it sells about 14,000 copies a month. In October of 2004, a second version was published called Super System 2 - A Course in Power Poker. This version featured updated lingo, new games and strategies as well as insights from, not only Doyle Brunson, but also other players like Daniel Negreanu.

Brunson also wrote an autobiography, The Godfather of Poker. A life like his needed to be told in a book, and it isn’t hard to imagine it becoming a film one day.

Doyle Brunson’s Later Years

Brunson kept playing well into his eighties, scaling back the number of games but never quite stepping away from the table. He and his wife Louise lived in Las Vegas, and for years the lucky ones might catch a glimpse of him in Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio – though sitting down against him was never advisable. He announced his retirement from the WSOP in 2018, played on in cash games regardless, and died on 14 May 2023, aged 89.

Brunson has no fewer than two poker hands named after him. The first is ten-two, so named because it was the exact hand he held when he won both of his WSOP No Limit Hold’em Main Events, in 1976 and 1977 – making a full house on both occasions. The second is ace-queen of any suit, because on page 519 of Super System he famously wrote that he never played it.

Brunson’s son, Todd Brunson, is also a professional poker player. Doyle didn’t teach Todd to play, in fact Todd never knew how to play before going to Texas Tech University and learning on his own – perhaps from reading Super System? Todd left Texas Tech before his senior year and turned professional poker player. In 2005, Todd won a WSOP bracelet in Omaha Hi-Lo, making Doyle and Todd the first father-son combination to win WSOP bracelets.

The Next Doyle Brunson?

Back in the day, Doyle Texas Dolly Brunson and the Texas Rounders had to pretty much risk their lives when playing poker in smoky back rooms against criminals and big time drug dealers.

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