Doyle Frank Brunson (August 10, 1933 – May 14, 2023) was an American poker player who played professionally for over 50 years. He was a two-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event champion, a Poker Hall of Fame inductee, and the author of several books on poker.
Brunson was the first player to win $1 million in poker tournaments. He won ten WSOP bracelets throughout his career, tied with Johnny Chan and Phil Ivey for second all time, behind Phil Hellmuth's seventeen bracelets. He is also one of only three players to have won the Main Event at the World Series of Poker multiple times, which he did in 1976 and 1977. He is also one of only three players, along with Bill Boyd and Loren Klein, to have won WSOP tournaments in four consecutive years. In addition, he is the first of six players to win both the WSOP Main Event and a World Poker Tour title. In January 2006, Bluff magazine voted Brunson the most influential force in the world of poker.
On June 11, 2018, Brunson announced he was retiring from tournament poker that summer. That day, he entered the $10,000 2–7 Single Draw at the 2018 WSOP. He made the final table and finished in sixth place, earning $43,963.
Early life
Doyle Frank Brunson was born in Longworth, Texas, on August 10, 1933, as one of three children. He went to Sweetwater High School where he excelled at athletics. In the 1950 Texas Interscholastic Track Meet, he won the one-mile event with a time of 4:43. After receiving offers from many colleges, he attended Hardin–Simmons University in Abilene, Texas.
The Minneapolis Lakers of the NBA showed interest in Brunson, but a knee injury ended his hopes of becoming a professional basketball player. He occasionally required a crutch because of the injury and had said that breaking his leg ruined his lifetime dream of playing in the NBA. Brunson obtained a bachelor's degree in 1954 and a master's degree in administrative education the following year with plans to become a school principal.
Brunson had begun playing poker before his injury, playing five-card draw. He played more often after being injured, and his winnings paid for his expenses. After graduating, he took a job with Burroughs Corporation as a salesman for their business machines. On his first day, he was invited to play in a seven-card stud game and won more than a month's salary. He soon left the company and became a professional poker player.
Poker career
Brunson started by playing in illegal games on Exchange Street in Fort Worth with friend Dwayne Hamilton. Eventually, they began traveling around Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, playing in bigger games, and meeting fellow professionals Amarillo Slim and Sailor Roberts. The illegal games Brunson played in during this time were usually run by criminals who were often members of organized crime, so rules were not always enforced. Brunson had recounted the violence and criminality of that era, such as the time a player at another table was shot and killed during a game.
Hamilton moved back to Fort Worth while the others teamed up and traveled together, gambling on poker, golf, and, in Doyle's words, "just about everything". They pooled their money for gambling. After six years, they made their first serious trip to Las Vegas and lost all of it, almost six figures. They decided to stop playing as partners but remained friends.
Brunson finally settled in Las Vegas. He was a regular player at the World Series of Poker since its inception in 1970, playing in the Main Event nearly every year since then, in addition to many of the other preceding bracelet-awarding events. He made some WSOP championship event final tables before his back-to-back wins, but since this was when the event was winner-take-all, they are not counted as cashes. Besides his two championship wins in 1976 and 1977, Brunson's other Main Event cashes are: 1972 (3rd), 1980 (runner-up to three-time Main Event winner Stu Ungar), 1982 (4th), 1983 (3rd), 1997 (16th), 2004 (53rd), and 2013 (409th).