Doyle and the $50 Tip

Doyle Brunson is a gambling man. I first met him about 40 years ago when we were playing $10-limit poker in Dallas at the Red Men's Club on Irving Street. A few years after we met, Doyle and I traveled together to play no-limit poker at the Elks Club in Waco, and we both went broke. We had a car full of gas and headed home to Dallas with just a $50 bill between us. On our way home, we stopped at a small cafe along the road and ordered some breakfast. A cute little gal took our order and I asked, "Honey, how long have you worked here?"

"Oh, 'bout two or three years," she answered.

"You married?"

"No."

"Got any kids?"

"Yeah, I've got three." She was real nice and a good waitress, so when we were through eating, I gave her the $50 bill and told her to keep the change. When we got back in the car, Doyle was madder than a wet rooster, because I'd tipped off our case money.

"What'd you do that for?" he shouted.

"Hell, she can put that money to better use on her kids than we can giving it to any damned poker players!" I alibied.

"If I had a gun, I'd shoot you," he cried.

Doyle eventually moved from Dallas to Las Vegas when Mac McCorquodale took hold'em to the California Club. None of the poker players in Vegas could play a lick of hold'em. If Sid Wyman and the other guys had two fours in the hole, it didn't make any difference what came on the flop – A-K-2 or whatever – they'd put all their money in the pot. I wish I'd gone with Mac when he asked me, but I had just quit rodeoing and was too busy doing nothing, I guess. I'd probably have gotten rich if I'd gone.

Sailor Roberts, Doyle's good friend, went to Vegas with him. I met Sailor in 1954 in Snyder, Texas, where I was living and practicing my roping before I took off for the Denver rodeo in January. Sailor lived in Abilene, and I used to play poker with him there and at a hotel in San Angelo where a lot of the old-timers used to play. One time while I was still rodeoing, I went to San Angelo, but I didn't have enough money to play in the big game, so I walked across the street to the beer joint. Still young and in good shape, I walked into the bar wearing my cowboy duds and hat, and took a stool at the bar. Blackie, the bartender, brought me a cold Bud and I gave him a $50 bill, the only money I had on me. He gave me change for a $5 bill.

"Sir, you've made a mistake," I protested. "I know you didn't mean to, but I gave you a fifty and you only gave me change for a five."

"Oh, hell, they try that here all the time," he snarled.

"Well, that's all the money I've got. Punch your cash register and I'll show you that I gave you a fifty."

"Don't try that old stuff on me," he answered, and came around the bar looking to throw me out. We got into a helluva fight right there in the joint. That sonnagun must've weighed 200-something pounds, but I had been throwing those 300-pound Brahma calves, you know, and I whipped him pretty good. Then I went over to the cash register and got my fifty out of it. Counting the change for the $5 bill that I'd gotten from Blackie, I made about $4 on the fight.

I was kind of skinned up and bloody, so I went back to the hotel where Sailor and the other guys were playing poker to get myself cleaned up.

"Run into some barbed wire?" they laughed.

When I explained the blood, Sailor said, "Boy, Blackie's mean, you better not mess with him."

"I didn't mess with him, I just whipped his tail pretty good," I bragged. "Made four bucks on the deal, too."

Sailor's gone now, but Doyle is still a big name on the poker scene and one of my closest friends. He didn't get rich from it, that's for sure, but one of the things that made Doyle so famous is his book Super/System: How I Won $1,000,000 Playing Poker. By his own account, it took him close to 20 years just to break even on it, but the players who bought the book and used it made money off it right away. A lot of poker players owe Doyle for teaching them how to play no-limit hold'em, but not a one of them I know of has ever learned to play it as well as he can.