MATT DAMON: (As Mike McDermott) If you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker.ĬHANG: In 2006, the site Gutshot Poker asked Brunson if he had plans to retire.īRUNSON: No, I'll retire when I can't win any longer. His book, called 'Super/System,' appeared in the opening scenes of the 1998 gambling film 'Rounders,' with Matt Damon pulling a wad of hundred-dollar bills out of the book. He went on to win 10 World Series tournaments, picking up the nickname Texas Dolly, and he became the first player to win a million dollars in tournament play. So everybody laughed about it for years.ĬHANG: Soon, though, Brunson and the game took on a higher stature with the 1970 launch of the World Series of Poker. He said, I said who runs this poker game? I told him, that guy right down there in the green shirt.

And he cocked both of the hammers on his double-barrel shotgun, and he set it right here between my eyes. Once, at a farmhouse in Austin, he says seven guys in ski masks took the players' money and held Brunson at gunpoint.īRUNSON: So he had one of those old-fashioned shotguns where you cock the hammers. He said he got arrested multiple times, got cheated and robbed. SHAPIRO: He did encounter some gangsters while frequenting illegal games. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, 'POKER SUPERSTARS')ĭOYLE BRUNSON: People that you thought were your friends actually looked down on you because they thought you were some kind of a gangster or something because you were a poker player.

It was a reputational risk at the time, as he said on the show, 'Poker Superstars.' Then, he broke his leg, and that injury set him on a different path.ĬHANG: He started out small, playing weekend poker games around Texas. He played college basketball and was on track to join the Minneapolis Lakers in the 1950s. Doyle Brunson's career in many ways parallels the trajectory of the game he played - from an illicit backroom card game to a widely televised sport.īrunson didn't start out as a card player. The man known to some as the godfather of poker has died.

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