For years, “Doyle Brunson Dies” has been the default placeholder headline in poker media discussions about how you would handle a super-big story that every news outlet is gonna have, and every player is gonna care about.

By now y’all have presumably heard, Doyle Brunson, the Godfather of Poker, Texas Dolly, Ten-Deuce, died Sunday in a Las Vegas hospital at age 89. We all knew it was inevitable — death and taxes, right? — but in recent years we could hear the clock ticking a bit louder …

Brunson literally wrote the book on how we play the game. Sure, a lot has happened since Super/System, in theory or otherwise. But none of the players in today’s game would’ve existed without Doyle Brunson. (Some of today’s crushers weren’t even born until Brunson already had seven or eight World Series of Poker bracelets.)

His final tally, of course, was 10 bracelets, including two in the WSOP Main Event. Even though those won in 1976 and ’77 were against fields the size of an elementary school classroom, back then there was far less dead money for the taking and the players he beat were among the best in the world.

And that’s part of what made Doyle so special. The when didn’t matter — Brunson was ageless, even as he aged. He held his own year after year, session after session … at the WSOP, on the WPT, in Bobby’s Room, on High Stakes Poker, and sometimes even online. He did it all. He wrestled with the old dogs with quiet bravado and took on the young guns without fear. And even as poker evolved, he adjusted, and never stopped playing a winning game.

It’s just part of why he mattered so much — and will continue to matter — to millions in a world he immeasurably shaped.

There are a few people who stand out in poker because they do things differently than most everyone else — in ways we all know we’d stand to benefit by emulating. Unfortunately, too often we don’t recognize that until these people are gone. Chad Brown will forever be attached to the Summer of 2014 for a bracelet he probably wished he didn’t have to win, and on Sunday is the farewell event open to players who want to remember poker is all about real life and real lives … and that’s what can make it so fun.

More at downtownchadbrown.org.

A Houston-area man got killed this past weekend at a poker game — after a fight broke out at what appears to be a family home game, and hosts ejected a supposedly uninvited player, who then returned with a handgun, police say, and fired wildly at the table, hitting at least three people. One of the shooting victims, Angel Vazquez, 48, returned fire with his own weapon and wounded the alleged attacker, Manuel Morales, 41 … but in the end Vazquez died at the hospital, while Morales, picked up by police at a nearby gas station, is in critical condition and facing murder charges.

Hard to tell if this game in Northeast Harris County was truly a family poker night in a residential neighborhood or underground poker room … but either way, sad as it is in the face of death and painful injury, you gotta believe there is more to this story:

More…

A man who did the hard labor and bucked the odds in a way that greatly affected all of our lives, either directly or indirectly, has passed. Joel Sterns, senior director of Sterns & Weinroth in New Jersey and named a “Super Lawyer” by his peers in 2005 and ’06 … died Monday from medical complications related to heart disease. He was 76 years old.

Though Sterns’ accomplishments were vast, and included many positions in state and federal governments, he was best known for helping give birth to Atlantic City as we know it (or at least knew it until very recently) by setting the regulatory path in the ’70s that allowed for the first licensed American casino outside of Nevada.

According to Roger Gros, publisher of Global Gaming Business and owner of
Casino Connection International:

Joel was a gentleman, but fought hard for his clients, which was very difficult to do in those formative days. Remember, only Nevada had any sort of gaming law, and NJ didn’t want to simply copy that state, so it was like writing an entire book of laws. But Joel was up to the task.