Meet the king of the poker pros

Steven Carroll meets Doyle Brunson, the softly-spoken Texan who has earned his living at the card table for more than 50 years

THE WORLD OF GAMBLING is a mysterious thing. Old friends and new acquaintances will contentedly sit ruffling their chips and telling stories across the felt of a poker table, all the time speculating as to how they can drain as much money as possible from their associates.

In recent times, poker has grown massively to become more than a hobby for many people; it is now a way of life for some, and the concept of being a professional poker player has become a reality for thousands, mainly thanks to the dawn of both televised and internet poker, which together initiated and nourished an explosion in the popularity of the game.

Players have the opportunity to play games for almost any stakes at any time online, an extravagance many of the game's early professionals did not have in their day.

One of these old timers, 74-year-old American professional Doyle Brunson, has overseen this metamorphosis of poker. The wily gambler has been an integral part of an industry that has moved from the backrooms of seedy bars and businesses to the front rooms of millions of households, through the medium of mainstream television.

For some 50 years, Brunson has plied his trade at the poker table. The softly-spoken Texan, who was born into humble farmyard surroundings amid the great US Depression, has succeeded in making himself a millionaire many times over by playing a game he never set out to get involved in.

For a long time, Brunson's exploits on the wood of the basketball court, rather than his prowess over the felt of poker table, looked as if they were going to set him up in life.

"When I was in college, I was never all that interested in playing poker. I was going to be a first-round draft choice one summer for the Minneapolis, now Los Angeles, Lakers, but then I broke my leg and that ended my athletic career. I was on an athletic scholarship to college and, given my background, that was the only way I could afford to go, but luckily for me I found a new way to get by.

"Some of my friends started to play poker, so I joined in and it was obvious right away that I was better than most. I usually won but that might have been because I was a little more focused than the others, because I realised playing poker could be my livelihood."

Once Brunson found he could supplement his education with poker, he enrolled himself in a master's programme in education and, even though the games in his university dried up, Doyle was able to call on his former adversaries from the basketball court for action, which they were more than happy to provide.

When he completed his studies, Brunson tried to settle down by finding his first job, which was as a bookkeeping machine salesman for the Burroughs Corporation.

"As soon as I got through my training period, I started calling to businesses outside Fort Worth Texas and I start seeing poker games, which I started playing and doing quite well in. I then said, what's the use in doing something I don't enjoy when here I have something that I really do like and can make more money from. The next day I quit and never had another job."

At the time when Brunson became a professional poker player, gambling was outlawed in the southern states of the US. As well as having to avoid the long arm of the law, he and his fellow gamblers also had to steer clear of groups of bandits, who went from town to town preying on and holding up poker games.

AS SOON AS HE earned his stripes in the poker community, during the late 1950s, and established a substantial bank roll, Brunson decided there was safety in numbers and, along with a nucleus of renowned Texan gamblers, including "Amarillo Slim" Preston and Brian "Sailor" Roberts, he formed a crew which travelled around the south together looking for action and attempting to avoid the bandits.

"I guess you could say that I had a lot of dangerous years. There used to be a lot of hazards. Anytime there was money around, people were going to be trying to get at it. I was robbed at gunpoint five times. We were shot at, but never hit, which was just one of the hazards of the job.

"I remember one time when we were going to a game in Oklahoma City. We were walking towards the venue and somebody started shouting at us. We looked on top of the building and saw they had put a machine gun on the roof to protect the players from the bandits, which shows how bad things really were back then."

As time went by, poker became more of a mainstream entity. The launch of the annual "poker Olympics", the World Series of Poker, in 1968 provided the game with a platform to build on, and the crowning of a world champion, an accolade Brunson has won twice, gave the poker world a representative face to spur on its growth. This expansion has continued up until more recent times and the event now has thousands of players paying the €10,000 entry fee each year.

The World Series also presented Brunson and the high stakes poker community with an opportunity to get together and gamble on other games, which is something he still relishes today, almost 40 years since it all began.

"Gambling is in my nature now. I'll gamble on almost everything. I was an avid golfer for many years and in the 1960s and 1970s we were gambling more than the guys on the PGA tour were playing for. These poker events gave us a chance to meet more and more people willing to gamble for high stakes.

"We started that back up last year when we had a three-man scramble for €1 million a hole. If you won a hole you got the million, but a third of it was yours. That game worked out perfectly, it was like it was scripted almost, it came down to the last hole and I made about a 20-footer for the loot."

AFTER A WHILE, Brunson saw an opportunity in the poker world to put his masters degree in education to some use. He penned the book Super System, which is regarded as something of a bible in the poker community.

Although many people thought Brunson was insane to offer his poker secrets to the public, the book served as another catalyst in expanding the popularity of the game by creating a series of players who believed they could now gamble like Doyle Brunson.

From that point on, Brunson became known as one of poker's famous faces. He has gone on to publish five further books and shrewdly tapped into the internet poker market at the height of its growth, with his gaming site, Doylesroom.

His success did come at a cost. His way of life meant he was a regular absentee from his wife Louise and their three children back in Texas, which he says is his one regret.

However, his absence did not deter his family from getting involved in the poker world and Brunson believes the game may well be instilled in the Brunson genes, with his son Todd now regarded with much esteem in the professional community, and his daughter Pamela also carving a name for herself in the poker industry.

Even at age 74, with his children carrying on the Brunson name, Doyle continues to search for and play the biggest games he can find a seat in.

This desire was recently highlighted in the television series High Stakes Poker, which saw an elite collection of poker players, some of them a third Brunson's age, buying into a game for at least €500,000.

The elder statesman performed commendably throughout the series and he believes his hunger for poker is something that will never desert him.

"I still love to play poker. How often I do depends on who's in town, but if the right people are around, I'll still play everyday just about and I don't intend to stop that.

"Poker is a part of me now. I think that I will play this game until I die, just like an old friend of mine who just passed away recently. He said 'I'll stop at my funeral and after that, only God knows what I'll be doing'."