Professional Poker
Prior to 1949, all poker games were cash games; a player could cash out his chips and leave at any time. Pearson originated the idea of a freezeout tournament and shared his idea with fellow gambler "Nick the Greek" Dandolos in the early 1950s. Dandalos later brought the idea to legendary casino owner Benny Binion. After further urging by Pearson, Amarillo Slim, and Doyle Brunson, all of whom felt that such a tournament would create great side (cash) game action, Binion founded the World Series of Poker in 1970.
Pearson won the 1973 World Series of Poker (WSOP) main event when his A♠ 7♠ defeated Johnny Moss's K♥ J♠. He won four bracelets, two of which were in seven-card stud.
Pearson was known as a man who would always seek out the biggest game in town, whether it was in the poker room or on the golf links. He even owned a RV he called the Roving Gambler, with this painted on the side: "I'll play any man from any land any game he can name for any amount I can count, provided I like it."
Pearson was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1987.
Read more about this topic: Puggy Pearson
Famous quotes containing the words professional and/or poker:
“Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man’s yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!”
—Flora Tristan (1803–1844)
“The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)