Texas Road Gamblers: Real Names of Poker's Original Rounders

Before poker was on TV, before online sites and before Las Vegas had a big hold'em scene, the game's best players lived on the road. Doyle Brunson described the Texas Circuit as "thirty or forty towns around Texas and the South where poker games were held regularly" (quoted by PokerNews). The games were illegal. Many were run by criminals, and hijackers and cheats were part of the job. Brunson's autobiography describes a farmhouse game near Austin that was robbed by gunmen in ski masks.

To survive, rounders teamed up. Brunson, Amarillo Slim and Sailor Roberts formed a partnership out of Odessa around 1960. They played off one bankroll, split wins and losses, and watched each other's backs. Brunson later wrote that the three went broke together on an early Las Vegas trip and then stopped playing as partners, though they stayed friends.

Older Texans like Johnny Moss had been on the road since the 1920s, following the oil-boom money. Younger players such as Crandell "Dandy" Addington and Jack "Treetop" Straus joined the Texas games in the 1960s. In 1969 Addington won the Texas Gamblers Reunion in Reno, the event that led to Benny Binion's first World Series of Poker at the Horseshoe in 1970. Players from this circle won eight of the first 13 WSOP Main Events (1970-1982).

This section gives each road gambler's real name, how he got his nickname, what's documented about his career, and which stories are legend. Every profile cites its sources.