Doyle Brunson | Texas Holdem Professional

Doyle Brunson, the father figure of poker, helped almost singlehandedly to shape the future of the game and give it an air of respectability that it never previously had.

Born in Longworth, Texas on August 10, 1933 Doyle Brunson become one of the world's most successful gamblers. He was very athletic in his youth and was picked up by basketball giants the Minneapolis Lakers but an injury to his knee forced him to quit.

The only "real job" he ever had was as a salesman for the Burroughs Corporation selling bookkeeping equipment, straight after he graduated from college. The job only lasted a couple of weeks, until he saw his first paycheck! Doyle quickly realized that there was more money to be made in poker and concentrated his efforts on that instead.

He has nine gold bracelets from the World Series of Poker and has won the tournament twice, in 1976 and 1977.

Doyle co-wrote the book "Super System: How I Made Over $1,000,000 Playing Poker," which despite being written 25 years ago, is still widely regarded as the "Bible" of poker. The book caused outrage at the time among Brunson's fellow professionals for him revealing what were considered closely guarded secrets.