ATTENTION: DOYLE BRUNSON SIGHTING AT THE 2015 WORLD SERIES OF POKER.
Apologies for the dramatics, but hey, Doyle Brunson playing in a tourney at the WSOP is news (at least I didn’t include the Drudge sirens). The poker legend is not much of a tournament player anymore, so it is a big deal when he decides to suit up once again and give it a go. On Sunday, he tweeted that he was going to play in the 2015 WSOP Super Seniors Event, but for many, the reaction was, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
And see it they did. He strolled into the tournament late, after the dinner break, to a standing ovation, the same type of greeting (and goodbye) that he has gotten for a number of years now at the WSOP. Now 81-years old, he stopped playing in the WSOP Main Event several years ago, now generally limiting himself to the $50,000 Poker Players Championship. While poker is great because people of all ages can play and do well, tournament poker is more of a young man’s game, as it takes a real mental and physical toll to play for a dozen hours straight.
This is the first year the Super Seniors Event has been contested. The traditional Seniors Event is restricted to players 50-years old or older, but the Super Seniors Event raises that floor to 65-years old. Despite cutting off everybody in a 15-year age range, it still drew a great crowd, 1,533 entrants.
PokerNews.com caught up to Brunson and asked him if he was also going to enter the Poker Players Championship, but he was unsure. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m thinking I would like to, but the hours are so late, you know. My wife has been sick, and she don’t go to sleep until I come home, so I probably won’t play it, as much as I’d like to.”
Doyle Brunson has been sticking to cash games, as they give him the opportunity to keep his own hours and still win money, rather than the massive World Series of Poker tournaments in which it takes one and half to two and a half days of continuous play just to min-cash. He said he has been playing cash games every day for the last couple months, except for a few days during which his wife was in the hospital.
Brunson did not cash in the Super Seniors Event, bowing out during the first day. His last WSOP cash was in 2013, when he finished 409th in the Main Event. Not only is that one heck of a feat for anyone, let alone a near-octogenarian, it also gave him the cool distinction of being the only player to cash in the Main Event in four consecutive decades.
Doyle Brunson won two consecutive WSOP Main Events in 1976 and 1977 and for a long while, held more WSOP bracelets than anyone on Earth. He has ten total gold bracelets, the last coming in 2005, when he won the $5,000 Short-Handed Hold’em Event. He is now tied with Johnny Chan and Phil Ivey for second on the all-time bracelet list with Phil Hellmuth, who won his 14th just a couple weeks ago.
