Fame has always been associated with big concerns, i.e. showbiz, politics and games. Being specific to games, poker stands with a high rank, taking people high in the skies of wealth and fame and also letting them get thrown to the back ends of anonymity. Poker Fame discussion is incomplete if Doyle Brunson is not there.

The famous Texas Dolly, Doyle Brunson has enjoyed the Poker Hall of fame for more than 50 years. His poker career is entitled with two times world champion and the first poker player to earn $1 million in poker tournaments.

Brunson’s poker career is full of achievements; he won ten World Series of Poker bracelets throughout his career. He’s also one the four players to have consecutively won the main event of World Poker Series in 1976 and 1977.

Brunson’s personal and professional life has undergone a variety of ups and downs leading him towards the hall of fame. He was born on August 10, 1933 in Texas. Besides having a good intellect he was an outstanding athlete with deep interest in Basketball. Brunson was in fact in love with basketball, which he had to leave because of a knee injury.

This knee injury was actually the origin of his poker career whereby the injury ended his hopes of becoming a professional basketball player. With reference to education, Brunson had deep involvement here as well. He had got a masters degree in administrative education.

Coming to his professional career, besides the most highlighted one, i.e. Poker, there are some other areas where he’d worked. Soon after obtaining his bachelor’s degree in 1954 he took a job as a business machines salesman. He then had master’s degree following year. He used to play Poker even before the injury, but it was not professional in nature.

Brunson's actual poker career started when, on very first day of his job as a business machines salesman, he was invited to play a seven-card stud game and he earned thirty day’s salary in just three hours. This probably gave him a boost and he soon left the job and entered into the professional poker arena.

Brunson’s professional poker career at its very threshold was based on illegal games in Exchange Street, Fort Worth, and Texas. He, along with some of his friends, was the leading poker player there and later he explored Oklahoma and Louisiana for bigger games.

It’s also said that criminals used to organized most of the illegal games Brunson participated in and he was robbed many times as well. He even accepted before the media that many times his all earnings were looted at gunpoint.

Though Brunson has been successful throughout his career, his professional poker career has known some big failures as well. He spent some six years to make his first attempt in Las Vegas, played there very well along with his playing partners and friends but finally lost a six-figure amount there.

His playing partners decided to stop playing but remained close friends. He, however, decided to stay and get settled in Las Vegas.

Poker seems to be in Brunson’s blood, his son Todd also plays professional poker and has won a bracelet in Omaha High Low at the 2005 WSOP. Brunson’s daughter Pamela also plays poker; she has played in the 2007 World Series of Poker main event.

Brunson has also been involved in legal prosecutions. On December 14, 2005, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed an action against him.

It’s reported that the widespread disclosure of his offer helped to increase the stock prices of WPT Enterprises Inc. but later he and his PR firm stopped responding and when their non-responsiveness was publicly announced there was a drastic decrease in the stock prices. 

Besides poker, the great achievement and a grand success for Brunson is his book ‘Super System’. In 1979, ‘Super System: A Course in Power Poker’, in 2003 ‘Poker Wisdom of a Champion’ and in 2004 ‘Super System II’ made him more famous not only in poker circles abut also in expert poker writers’ arena. His Super Systems is considered to be the most authoritative book in the poker world and Brunson is of the opinion that it cost him a lot.

Brunson in his Super Systems gives the ordinary poker players an insight of the game. It also includes his personal experiences, i.e. how did he lost big amounts and made $1 million. The Super System was originally self published in 1978 but was updated with the passage of time. The latest version was published in 2004.

Ups and downs are the part of normal man’s life but one who deals with these in the best possible ways becomes the winner and Doyle Brunson is one of such men. His life, experiences and expertise are no less than a role model for poker players.