Career
Before becoming a well-known tournament player, Preston was a rounder, touring the United States looking for gambling action along with Doyle Brunson and Sailor Roberts.
Following his WSOP victory he appeared on several talk shows, including The Tonight Show, and had a bit part in the 1974 Robert Altman movie California Split. He appeared on I've Got a Secret, where his secret involved losing $190,000 in one night of poker.
Preston won four WSOP bracelets including two in Omaha. Preston's final WSOP win was in 1990. In the $2500 pot limit Omaha event at the 2000 he came in second to Phil Ivey. Preston's tournament earnings total more than $587,000.
In January/February 1980 Amarillo Slim hosted the Second Annual Poker Classic which was the second most prestigious poker tournament of its time. This series eventually came to be called the Super Bowl of Poker and continued until 1991. Gabe Kaplan became the first winner of this tournament series and Stu Ungar won the title three times.
Read more about this topic: Amarillo Slim
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)