A tribute to Doyle Brunson
Barry Carter thanks the late Godfather of Poker, specifically for his contribution to the world of poker content creation.
The passing of Doyle Brunson is, without doubt, the biggest story of the poker year, in a year where there has been plenty to write about. I know this because as a writer, you have always been preparing for this day. You knew it was coming one day, yet it was still a tremendous shock. He just seemed immortal in this industry.
There is so much to potentially write about. The fact that he was consistently one of the best players for over 50 years. He played in the biggest cash games in Las Vegas right up until the end.
His influence on the WSOP needs mentioning, with 10 bracelets including two Main Event titles. More importantly, Brunson helped to popularise No Limit Hold'em as a tournament format. There would have been no poker boom without Doyle Brunson.
Then you have the fact that he started the game playing in illegal road games where you could just as easily get shot as win money. The fact that he witnessed the game he loved boom, to become a family-friendly (kind of) multi-billion dollar televised spectacle must have been remarkable from his perspective.
The original poker book
I was lucky enough to meet him once and I thought the most meaningful thing I could do to pay tribute is by expressing how grateful I am for his contribution to poker book publishing.
There had been poker books written before Super/System, but the fact that a genuine poker celebrity wrote a book sharing his secrets as a professional really changed the industry. It was unheard of for professionals to share their secrets before and for a long time after Super/System. Before solvers, Twitch, and training sites, Super/System was the first popular poker strategy content. So famous, in fact, it even had a cameo in the movie Rounders.
I am fortunate enough to have published seven poker books to date, and I can safely say the poker publishing industry would be very different without Doyle Brunson and SuperSystem. It just so happens that Super/System was the first book I read and it still sells very well to this day. It may not stand to total scrutiny in the solver era, but the ethos and psychology that Brunson espoused certainly does.
Paving the way for content creators
Speaking of solvers, the books that I have written were done so with the aid of solver technology. Brunson did not have the luxury of solvers when Super/System was written in 1979. In fact, at that point, pocket calculators had only been around a short while.
The way that Doyle developed an understanding of the maths of No Limit Texas Hold'em was, in his own words, by 'pure brute force'. He would literally deal runout after runout in hotels to get an understanding of probability in poker.
Modern poker players may scoff at such an impractical way to learn the game, but you can only play the hand you are dealt. He was doing what other poker players were unprepared to do at the time. If Doyle had been coming up in the days of PIOSolver there is no doubt he would have been an unstoppable force in the game today.
Better writers and those who knew him well can do a better job than I to talk about his ability, influence, and character. All I can say is that as an author I am particularly grateful that he paved the way to making writing books about poker a viable path for us to take. I think any poker coach, Twitch streamer, YouTuber, or podcaster probably owes him a debt of gratitude too.
Have you read Super/System? Let us know in the comments:
