Unlike Brunson, Alto was an amateur poker player with a day job as a car dealer. Doyle Brunson and Jesse Alto are the last remaining players. The tournament is down to heads-up and, in those days, winner takes all. Yet it would seem to any onlooker, and maybe even to Brunson himself, that some sort of unseen force conspired to make him one of only four players to win the Main Event twice. Clearly, he’s not a player who relies on luck when he sits down at the poker tables. He played professionally for over 50 years, during which time he won 10 WSOP bracelets.

There’s perhaps no stranger occurrence, no clearer example of coincidence or ‘fate’, than the time Doyle Brunson took down the WSOP Main Event two years running – both times winning the heads-up battle with the same hand – a really bad one, 10-2.ĭoyle Brunson is one of the most famous poker players ever. Yet even the professionals who’s career depends on this power of logic have to admit strange and wonderful things can happen at the poker tables. And, if you’re fortunate enough to take down a lifechanging poker tournament, logic explains how all the factors came together to give you the victory, even if it did happen to fall on your birthday.Īrguably, there’s no room for wishy-washy thinking in live or online poker. Logic can explain why it’s possible to experience a hot streak or bad run. Logic can explain, for example, why your pocket Aces sometimes loses to pocket twos (pocket twos still wins 19.5% of the time). The mathematics of odds and variance can help us understand what is happening during play, no matter how unusual the outcomes may seem. So much so, that sometimes it feels like the Universe is conspiring to create moments of serendipity, chance encounters, and fantastical outcomes.Īs poker players, we’re not really supposed to think in this way, at least not while we’re sat at the tables. (background image by Yutaka Seki // CCBY2.0)Ĭoincidence: a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances

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