A professional poker league that’s trying to become the PGA Tour of poker is giving card icon Doyle Brunson its first lifetime player card, making him automatically eligible to play all future tournaments.
Epic Poker League Commissioner Annie Duke told The Associated Press that Brunson was a clear choice to be offered the lifetime invitation given his decades of success in the game and contributions to making it more popular and accessible.
Duke and Jeffrey Pollack, executive chairman of the company that owns Epic, say Brunson will be honored Wednesday at the start of a $20,000 regular season no-limit Texas Hold ‘em tournament – the third of four regular-season events for Epic in its inaugural run.
Brunson – who has $6.1 million in lifetime tournament earnings, including nearly $3 million and 10 gold bracelets since 1976 at the World Series of Poker – said he appreciates the honor as a token to remember struggles players made to make poker the game it is today.
"It’s unnecessary but I guess it’s nice to be remembered for what we went through to get poker to this point," Brunson told The Associated Press. "Most people just don’t realize exactly what all transpired ... but we went through some pretty adverse things."
Brunson said that before he and a group of card sharks known as the "Texas Rounders" came to Sin City and spread limit and no-limit Texas Hold ‘em games at the Golden Nugget casino downtown, poker was not very popular.
"Poker had died in Las Vegas," Brunson told the AP. "I think that was probably the turning point - I don’t know if poker would have ever gotten off the ground or not."
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