Post by mexicanjunior on May 10, 2012 8:29:03 GMT -6
news.yahoo.com/poker-great-thomas-amarillo-slim-preston-dies-141737566--spt.html
Can't believe I missed this one when it happened...one of the biggest names in poker history....IN!
AMARILLO, Texas (AP) — Thomas Austin "Amarillo Slim" Preston Jr., a poker champion whose brash style, fast talking and love of the spotlight helped broaden the professional game's appeal and made him one of its most recognizable characters, has died. He was 83.
Preston's son, Bunky Preston, said he died Sunday of colon cancer while in hospice care in Amarillo, where he lived.
"He was playing poker until the very, very end," Bunky Preston told The Associated Press on Monday.
While Thomas Preston craved the spotlight that his poker fame provided, his public image was sullied eight years ago when he was sentenced to probation on misdemeanor charges that he assaulted a young relative.
He got his "Amarillo Slim" nickname playing pool, according to Preston's son, and with his cowboy hat and southern drawl, he wouldn't have been out of place gambling in an Old West saloon.
Preston would bet on just about anything, and he mastered the art of stretching the truth. Among his many claims laid out on his website are that he played Minnesota Fats in one-pocket billiards using a broomstick; beat Bobby Riggs, of Billie Jean King fame, at ping pong using an iron skillet; and outran "a horse for a hundred yards (no one ever said nothing about the race being straight-away)."
"Look around the table. If you don't see a sucker, get up, because you're the sucker," he said on his website. "... They anticipate losing when they sit down and I try my darndest not to disappoint one of them."
Preston's accomplishments at the poker table were very real, and his 1972 win in the fledgling World Series of Poker in Las Vegas helped make him an unofficial ambassador for the game. Often not the best player at the table, Preston nonetheless sought out the spotlight
Where many of his fellow professional gamblers at that time preferred to lay low, Preston sought out the spotlight by appearing on television shows.
"He was one of the world's most interesting men," Bunky Preston said.
Can't believe I missed this one when it happened...one of the biggest names in poker history....IN!
