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Every poker player must go through certain initiations or rites of passage – getting a dirty look from the cocktail waitress, letting you know your ‘free’ drink isn’t free at all; being named after the city you’re from; getting the chips to weave with one hand for the first time… Without the big things, there is no game. Without the little things, it wouldn’t be the game we know.
When a hand has a nickname, there’s a reason. Aces and eights are the Dead Man’s Hand because they were what Wild Bill Hickok was holding when he was shot. Pocket queens are simply ”Ladies,” or to a racier crowd, “Siegfried and Roy.” Amongst these nicknames, the most universally acknowledged is the one attributed to 10-2. That hand will always be The Brunson.
Doyle Brunson is a legend. If you’re reading this, you already know that; but you may not know why. He wrote the definitive poker book, Super System, at a time when there wasn’t much demand for it, taking on its publication himself. He’s been among the most successful players in the world for five decades. He’s nurtured the game and bridged the past to the present. In the process, he has become a living, breathing piece of Americana. None of this would have been possible if not for his two back-to-back world championships.
Brunson was a fixture well before the wins. Doyle, Amarillo Slim, and Sailor Roberts earned their reputations by playing and thriving on the road, with survival away from the table as tough as at it. He was present for the first World Series in 1970. He dropped out of the 1972 event with three players left, avoiding what his Christian family might see as a dubious title and the tax repercussions that would come with it. He was also one of the best cash players in the world; it was the side action that kept him coming back to the World Series every year.
By the time the 1976 World Series of Poker came around, Brunson was as respected as any player in the game. Debates about the best in the world centered on him and three-time world champion Johnny Moss, who had started losing a step to time as he neared the end of his seventh decade. Doyle’s peers had started referring to A-Q as “The Brunson” because of his notorious distaste for the hand and because he obviously deserved the recognition. It was a sign of respect.
That year, Binion’s Horseshoe Casino was essentially a home for wayward Texans. Twenty-two men entered that year, with nine of the fourteen who advanced to day two hailing from the Lone Star State. “There were as many jokes as hands played,” according to All In, the Jonathon Grotenstein/Storms Reback tome detailing Series’ past. The table had a fraternity feel to it, with everyone joining in on the fun, except for Jesse Alto.
Alto’s is a name that would likely have been better remembered by history if any of half a dozen rivers had come differently than they did. A world traveler who’d landed in Texas by nineteen, Alto’s record in the World Championship between 1976 and 1988 was remarkable; he earned a second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth place finish during that span, but failed to take the title home to Corpus Christi. Jesse entered the ’76 final table with the chip lead, and as the challengers started dropping out of contention, a showdown between him and Doyle loomed.
Tremendously skilled, with the constitution of an ox, Alto’s weakness was the steam factor. The slightest injustice would set him off, and the frustration would linger. Doyle knew this and waited to leap on the selfdestruct. Finally, Jesse got robbed of a pot he could claim was rightfully his, and Brunson knew it was time to strike.
Brunson had more than three-quarters of the chips when he called Alto’s pre-flop raise with Ts 2s. If the flop missed him, he’d still have the chip lead and the psychological edge. If it hit, there could be huge dividends. This may have been the opportunity to take the tournament before Jesse calmed down or knew what hit him.
The flop came Ah Js 10h and Alto checked. Doyle went all in on the combined strength of his pair and Alto’s apparent weakness. It was a reasonable play in that the big stack generally wants to keep the pressure on small-stacked opponents, but this time he’d fallen into a trap. Alto called, turned over As Jh, good for top two pair, and started the victory celebration immediately. Jesse barely winced when Doyle hit his second pair when a two hit the turn. The fortuitous card still left Brunson with just four outs in the deck. One of them was the 10d that hit on the river.
The tournament was over. This was a defining moment for the Brunson legend. Doyle received $220K for his efforts and his second WSOP bracelet, having taken a win in Deuce-to-Seven Draw earlier in the week. It was the crowning achievement of a career that had stretched beyond twenty years.
When Doyle arrived at the 1977 World Series, the debates had ended. The championship had made official what the whispers of railbirds had suggested the year before; he was the best player in the game. Still, with thirty-four of the best players in the world (there were notably few amateurs playing in The Big One then), his odds at a repeat were long.
Doyle played what may have been the best poker of his life that year. As he had the year before, he’d won a bracelet in a preliminary event, but this time around he decimated the Main Event. He held the chip lead going into and through final table play, and when Gary “Bones” Berland knocked Milo Jacobson out in third place, Doyle was again looking at a final pairing with a chip lead against an upand- comer of the game.
Bones Berland, all of 140 pounds, would joke that “I used to be skinny” when asked about his colorful nickname, but his game was no joke. No lesser authority than David Sklansky rated him among the top five players in the world. Like Doyle, he’d already won a bracelet that year. By the end of the seventies, he’d have four more. Still, the softspoken ex-dealer, with a small stack and rising blinds catching up to him, was a considerable underdog against Brunson.
Doyle held 10-2 and better than 80% of the chips on the big blind when Bones called pre-flop with 8-5. Doyle checked, and the juiciest of flops hit the table 10-8-5 giving him top pair and Berland two pair. With both players looking to trap and gain a little more information, the flop checked through. That’s when lightning struck twice.
The turn brought the 2c, which had to be looking pretty good to Berland. He’d flopped two pair and seen a seemingly innocuous card hit the turn, so when Brunson bet out, he had a no-brainer on his hands: All-in was the only way to go. He shoved what remained of his chips into the middle and Brunson quickly called. Bones had been trapped by the deck.
Berland needed one of the two remaining eights or two remaining fives to make it to the next hand, but for the second year in a row, the river was a ten, giving Doyle a full house and the championship. It was his fourth bracelet and made him only the second player to win twice in a row; a feat that to this day has only been duplicated by Stu Ungar, Johnny Chan, and the aforementioned Moss. Odds are that it will never happen again.
With the same hand winning the championship for the same guy twice in a row, its place in nickname history was fixed. Brunson won a combined $560,000 for his twin victories, chump change in today’s poker world. Still, it was a huge accomplishment that cemented Doyle’s place on the throne. It propelled him to publish Super System, which showed the world that there was more to the game than the cards. It was a landmark moment for poker and its greatest star.
Observers knew lightning had struck twice when Doyle repeated his victory dance on the back of one of the worst hands in poker. Coincidence or not, the affiliation was an obvious one and the name was born. To this day, when he’s on TV, Doyle will try to sneak 10-2 through on occasion. When he gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he happily shows the goods with that toothy, grandfatherly grin of his. Considering his history with the hand, you can’t really blame him.
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