Anyone who says poker players aren’t athletes must not have met Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson.

The Longworth, Tex. native excelled at basketball and track in high school, but shunned scholarship offers from big-name colleges in order to study at Hardin-Simmons University in nearby Abilene.

espite this, Brunson was drafted by the then-Minneapolis Lakers, but a knee injury which bothers him to this day kept him from realizing his NBA dreams.

Not that you’ll find Brunson complaining. He is one of the most successful players of all-time, with a whopping nine World Series of Poker bracelets and WSOP titles in 1976 and 1977. Brunson was the first player to earn $1 million in tournament play.

Perhaps more importantly, Brunson poured his expertise into a book originally called How I Made Over $1,000,000 Playing Poker. It’s since been shortened to the more familiar Super/System (with a sequel released in 2004), and is considered the Bible of poker.

Brunson first honed his knowledge of the game by hitting the road with the likes of fellow Texans Amarillo “Slim” Peterson and Sailor Roberts.

In the age before computers, Brunson painstakingly studied the possibilities of each hand, developing an aggressive style of play in the process.

His WSOP victories in both 1976 and 1977 came on the same hand: 10-2. That combo is now known as a “Doyle Brunson” in his honor. Brunson was also the first to document the value of small pairs in no-limit poker.

“Texas Dolly” continues to play poker and gamble at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. His poker-pro son Todd won a WSOP event in 2005.

 He was named to the Poker Hall of Fame in 1988 at the age of 54.