Wednesday, April 6, 2005 | 9:24 a.m.
Jeff Haney's sports betting column appears Wednesday. Reach him at (702) 259-4041 or [email protected].
A limited number of autographed copies of "Super System 2" are available at the Gambler's Book Shop, 630 S. 11th St., for the regular cover price of $34.95. For more information call 382-7555.
When Doyle Brunson won his World Series of Poker championships in 1976 and 1977 at Binion's Horseshoe, both years he won the final hand of the tournament after starting with a 10 and a 2 - usually considered a terrible starting hand in Texas Hold 'em.
To this day, a poker hand consisting of a 10 and a 2 is called a "Doyle Brunson."
Source: The Championship Table," by Dana Smith, Tom McEvoy and Ralph Wheeler (Cardsmith Publishing, 2003)
Aspiring world poker champions, take heart. Even Doyle Brunson had a "tell."
In 1974, Brunson was debating whether to give up his signature game, no-limit Texas hold 'em -- which would have been like Jimi Hendrix giving up the electric guitar.
Brunson had been losing lately, and he couldn't figure out why. Then a sympathetic colleague took him aside and informed him of his tell -- a mannerism that reveals the strength of a player's hand to his opponents.
"When I was bluffing I'd push my chips in like this," Brunson said the other day, demonstrating by shoving a neat pile of poker chips forward on the table, as if going "all in."
"But when I had a real hand, I'd put them into smaller stacks first, like this, then stack them up and push them in," Brunson said in his craggy Texas drawl. "I didn't do it every time, but enough that it was a tell. I almost gave up poker."
It was a turning point in Brunson's long and splendid career as a gambler.
Once he corrected the flaw, Brunson went on to win consecutive World Series of Poker championships at Binion's Horseshoe in 1976 and 1977. He has since won millions of dollars in poker tournaments and live-money games, and continues to play high-stakes poker in Las Vegas casinos.
In 1978 he published "Super/System," a how-to book so influential that poker players took to calling it the "Bible of Poker."
And this year, with the poker craze in full bloom across the nation, Brunson has released the long-awaited sequel, "Super System 2" (Cardoza Publishing, $34.95).
Fittingly, they're calling it the "New Testament."
"More people have been asking for this book than for any other in the 26 years I've been here," said Howard Schwartz, marketing director at the Gambler's Book Shop on South 11th Street. "At the time of the highest interest in poker in history, it fills a very important niche."
As he did with the original, for "Super System 2" Brunson recruited an all-star roster of gamblers to write chapters on how to clean up in various forms of poker. Among them are Mike "The Mad Genius" Caro, Jennifer Harman, Daniel Negreanu and Mirage Resorts president Bobby Baldwin, a former poker pro.
Brunson himself handles chapters on online poker, tournaments and no-limit hold 'em, which he once famously called the "Cadillac of poker games."
In a recent appearance at the Gambler's Book Shop, Brunson set the record straight on a long-standing misconception. Since the publication of the original "Super/System," a tale has circulated that Brunson had regrets about his decision to publish such powerful poker information because it made the games much tougher to beat.
"I never said that -- it was Amarillo Slim who said that, and some of the other pros," Brunson said. "I never had any reservations about giving (the information) away. We just did the best job we could.
"And I was right, because look at poker today. That book made a lot of good poker players."
With big tournaments carrying multimillion-dollar prize purses, and with those events in seemingly continual play on ESPN and ESPN2 and the Travel Channel, poker players in the past couple of years have taken on an aura of rock stars.
It's a different world from the one Brunson knew as a younger man working the old Texas circuit as a road gambler in the 1950s and '60s.
"I still haven't gotten used to it," Brunson, 71, said. "It still blows me away. These young kids don't realize how good they have it -- just walk in (to a casino) anytime, find a game. We had to drive 500 miles sometimes just to find a game. You have to come from where I came from to appreciate it."
Brunson said he has no use for the antics some of the younger players display in televised tournaments -- leaping around the cardroom after winning a hand, mugging for the camera.
"That stuff's not part of the game for me, anyway," Brunson said. "It's not my personality."
It might work for someone like star player Phil Hellmuth, Brunson said. In his frequent TV appearances, Hellmuth has cultivated a loudmouth image not unlike a pro wrestling "bad guy."
"It seems like nobody really likes Phil," Brunson said, "but I think he's good for the game."
As the public's interest in poker has skyrocketed, so have tournament purses. The prize pool for main event of the 2005 World Series of Poker -- the world championship no-limit hold 'em tournament -- will likely exceed $60 million.
Brunson plans to compete in that tournament and other World Series events, as long he can resist the lure of the high-stakes cash games that spring up around the World Series, he said.
The World Series of Poker is scheduled for June 2 to July 15 at the Rio, with only the final two days of play to take place at Binion's downtown, where it had been held since 1970. Ownership of Binion's changed hands last year, with Harrah's assuming control of the World Series.
"It's hard to imagine the World Series of Poker being anywhere besides the Horseshoe," Brunson said. "I have so many great memories from that place. ... But just like anything else, time marches on."
There's no deep mystery behind what drives Brunson to keep clashing at the tables with players young enough to be his grandchildren, even after all he has accomplished.
"It's just my passion for the game," Brunson said. "Playing poker keeps me young. It keeps my mind active. A lot of guys my age have lost their mental acuity, but I haven't. I feel like I'm 30 years old."
Or, as he wrote in "Super System 2" on feeling young and healthy: "Maybe that's because blood has flowed very fast through my veins during the pressure situations at poker. Maybe that cleansed me."
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