Sunday, April 20, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

COLUMN: John L. Smith

Trimmed-down Texas Dolly plans to keep winning at cards, weight


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Heavyweight poker legend Doyle Brunson had said a mouthful.

As he sat two years ago with some of the best hold'em players to ever grace the green felt, the 398-pound card king tossed out a proposition: Given two years, what were the odds he would lose the nearly 100 pounds it would take to slip beneath the 300-pound mark?

Gastronomically astronomical, some said.

Fat chance, others snickered.

There was only one way to find out.

And so a bet was made with the dean of the decks: More than $100,000 at 10-to-1 odds. It was a classic weight bet with $1.1 million on the table for Brunson if he prevailed.

But if past performance was any indicator of the true odds of his success, Brunson was more likely to flap his arms and fly to China than he was to cut the calculator-crushing number of calories needed to collect on that bet.

You see, Doyle Brunson has tried this sort of thing before. Many times. Through the years, he's lost enough money on weight bets to buy the population of Nevada a cheeseburger and send half of Las Vegas to cooking school. He long ago mastered the most intimate nuances of cards, but like many of us he had a helluva time controlling the common dinner fork.

Brunson lived in Fat City, literally and metaphorically, but he was determined to beat the odds.

His pal Dave Gray was less than encouraging.

"I've got as much chance of being president as you have of getting under 300 pounds," Gray cracked.

Want the definition of a serious weight bet? Here it is. Brunson recalls, "They said if I had anything amputated or taken out of me, I had to weigh it."

You might say Brunson started slowly.

He lost no weight the first year.

Not a troy ounce.

The second year, Brunson went on the Atkins Diet, occasionally augmented with the Weight Watchers program, and began shedding the suet. He dropped to 298 and beat the deadline by a few days. His friends offered to chauffeur him to the nearest buffet, but beneath their sarcasm they were rooting for him.

Nobody bucks obesity over the long haul, and the man known throughout the poker world as "Texas Dolly" is pushing 70. He'd once been the swiftest schoolboy miler in the Lone Star State and hustled golf for high stakes, but a bum right leg slowed him down. The gourmand in him did the rest.

Brunson's poker skills are positively Ruthian. Alas, so is his appetite. He's 6-3, but doesn't blame big bones, his bad leg, a slow metabolism, or faulty glands. As with all things in his life, he cuts to the bottom line.

"I just like to eat," he says, his eyes smiling behind glasses that have seen every imaginable poker hand and watched countless millions flow through his fingers. "The food is so good, and they bring it right to the table."

Brunson made the final table at last week's No Limit Hold'em championship at Bellagio's Five-Star World Poker Classic. In a ceremony captured by Travel Channel cameras for its World Poker Tour series, he waved off a tray of pastries and gorged on a pile of cash. In reality, Texas Dolly's weight loss coincided with a rough run of cards that he figures cost him that $1 million. He was so frustrated that at one point he went off the diet to snap out of the dry spell.

Winning hands come and go, but he hasn't had a losing year in half a century. He won back to back Binion's World Series of Poker championships in 1976 and 1977. A year later, he published "Super/System," a book that changed the poker world.

Losing left a bad taste in his mouth.

"Once I started eating, I started winning again," he says. "But I plan on making this a lifelong thing."

Although still a big man, he swears the world has seen the last of a supersized Texas Dolly. He knows his days of endless grazing are over.

That's bad news for a generation of players who dream of elbowing him aside on the way to the final table. The good news is, his cholesterol and blood pressure have never been better.

And as those who have challenged him know, the amazing Mr. Brunson has no pulse at all.

With his cards and calories right, Texas Dolly is sitting pretty in Fat City.





</B>John L. Smith's column appears Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. E-mail him at Smith~reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.