An Open Letter to Doyle Brunson - An appeal to lead poker's march into the future

Dear Doyle, About 12 or 13 years ago I wrote a column about meeting you for the first time. I'd been playing poker for a living my whole adult life, and getting to meet you was a major moment. I had read your book According to Doyle, and had bought Super/System – its first edition, How I Made $1,000,000 Playing Poker. We talked some, and I walked away with the sense that I was a lucky man to have met you. Some years later at Mike Caro's request, you provided a blurb for my first book, saying, "Roy Cooke stands out as one of the few experts I find worth reading. You should listen to him." I always have appreciated your kindness and graciousness in doing that for somebody you barely new.

You're not just a big name – you're a legend. Having lived and played the past 25 years in Vegas, I also know that you are a powerful behind-the-scenes force in the brick-and-mortar poker industry – probably the most potent such force. You are the only old-time road warrior who has survived all the changes in the game, from the back alley to the Internet age. I played on the road in my youth in Montana, Idaho, and Alaska, sometimes in games in which I was one of the few at the table not carrying a gun. I've had to deal with out-hustling the hustlers. And my experience was at the end of that era, which was a shadow of what you survived and dealt with in order to get where you are today. I have only a small clue of what it must have been like. To the new players of this modern poker age, that will always be just history, like Wild Bill Hickok and riverboat gamblers, or, for that matter, Vietnam or JFK. You played in a world they can't relate to!

There are two things you should know here: First, I'm not just blowing smoke; I mean every word, because it's just true. Second, my reason at this particular moment for extolling your place in the poker world is that I want something – something that I think nobody else can pull off. I want to ask you to be the man who brings the poker world together, to take it to the next level of development, where it will shine on the world stage with football, soccer, the Olympics, and all of the other premier fields of human competition. Poker's star deserves a place in that firmament. But getting from here to there is not a task for ordinary people. It is a job for a legend.

You know better than I where poker is now. Despite its incredible growth, the game suffers from battles within itself. Everybody's so busy grabbing today's piece of the pie that most just don't give a damn whether there will be any pie tomorrow, and, certainly, nobody's interested in sharing.

In the legal arena, the online poker industry lets the online gaming industry fight its battles, even though its interests are only partially conjoined. European outfits like Ladbrokes won't do business in America. Fear of the Feds blocks banks, credit card companies, Google, Yahoo, and PayPal from doing business with online poker. Major media outlets play one poker interest against the other to generate programming at the lowest possible price. Of all major televised competitions, tournament poker is the only one in which almost none of the corporate and sponsorship money finds its way to the players. It is the only one in which the players pay the administrative costs, in the form of tournament entry fees.

I don't mean to portray only the negative elements of the current environment. This is a great and wonderful time for poker. Lots of people have gotten very rich! There's more money in play than there has ever been, and we have enjoyed gigantic growth. Outfits like the USPA and IPA have made impressive efforts to get the association idea rolling, although so far they lack the clout to make it happen. Poker has a generation of superstar celebrities. But everybody knows all of that, and in focusing on that, they lose sight of the problems and the long-term issues. Somebody needs to talk about this. That's me. Somebody needs to do something about this. That's you.

There are, of course, key players whose participation would greatly increase the chances of such an endeavor: the L.A. and Vegas poker establishments; Ruth Parasol's team at PartyPoker and Dan Goldman at Pokerstars; Lyle Berman and the World Poker Tour; Harrah's World Series of Poker, currently in the person of Howard Greenbaum; and the major poker media, particularly the Shulmans and Card Player. There are others, but those are pretty key beginnings. Who in the world is there that can get all of these people to sit down and agree on anything? Who has the negotiating skills and the stones to pull it off? Only Doyle.

I have written several times over the years that in my view, personal loyalty is the highest ethical imperative. You stand by the people who stand by you, or you're worth nothing. I know that is a view you share. A huge part of who you are is the people around you, and you have always taken care of them to a degree above and beyond what anybody would have a right to expect. In my mind, this is the single most admirable thing about you. In considering what I am asking of you, there is a place for many of those people; after all, what is Doyle without Chip, and vice versa? But the role I am calling upon you to assume requires that you serve not the interests of your comrades, and not your own interests, but the interests of the game. Put your team of incredible minds to work on this. There's a place for them in it. But it's not for them, and it's not for you – it's for poker.

I think it is your destiny to leave us this legacy. It is up to you whether or not you will embrace that destiny.

Sincerely,

Roy Cooke