A recent tweet from Doyle Brunson “The Texas Dolly” summed up what many skeptics had to say when they learned the 10-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner has taken to the microblogging site Twitter: “Can it be that you guys really like the blonde jokes? My followers are going up at an alarming rate…never thought I’d be a tweeeter:-)”
If the parenthetical smiley face is any indication, Brunson, also known as @TexDolly on Twitter, not only uses the popular social networking site, but also is down with the Twitter lingo. Brunson has been known to tweet at fellow users, bust out acronyms typically seen on internet poker forums, and even drop smiley faces from time to time, especially when doling out a stream of dumb blonde jokes.
As he alluded to in the aforementioned tweet, Brunson has seen a major spike in followers over the past month, jumping from 16,000 less than two weeks ago to nearly 45,000 as of Friday morning. The recent jump puts Brunson ahead of other big name players like Phil Hellmuth and Daniel Negreanu and suggests that the “old timer” of the poker world still has a big influence on the industry. In a statement from DoylesRoom, Brunson’s online poker site, the longtime pro suggested that his deep run in the WSOP Europe Main Event and an appearance at an affiliate convention in Budapest are to blame for the spike, but there may be more to Brunson’s popularity in the Twitterverse than just a heightened profile.
There are plenty of celebrities from Hollywood, the sports world, and the poker community on Twitter, but not all of them pick up huge followings. Some suggest that the hit and miss nature of celebrity Twitter accounts depends on the types of things a person elects to tweet about. If celebrities tweet infrequently or only post mundane details about their lives, they are less likely to have a large following, even if they are on the “A List.” Brunson’s account has its fair share of run-of-the-mill fare like when cash games are running on DoylesRoom, but he also includes his thoughts on current events, responses to other people’s tweets, and jokes (lots of jokes).
The recent stream of blonde jokes is the result of Brunson losing a bet on a recent Monday Night Football game. He explained his reasoning with a tweet from Tuesday that read, “Lost the Monday night football game. I’m gonna tell dumb blonde jokes until I finally win one!! ya, that’s right, suffer along with me.” Since then, he’s posted seven blonde jokes, but has found time to respond to the tweets of others, including socialite Nicky Hilton, who is one of Brunson’s many followers.
While Twitter and Texas Dolly may seem like an unusual combination, it makes sense when you consider how long he has been posting in his popular personal blog. Past posts have proven that Brunson does not bite his tongue on issues, as he has spoken out on everything from politics to poker and it seems that people are paying attention. A recent blog in which Brunson proposed candidates for a “Poker Hall of Shame” criticized several of his fellow old school gamblers for their bad poker behavior was picked up by several poker media outlets as a newsworthy event. His blog endorsing World Poker Tour (WPT) host Mike Sexton for the 2009 Poker Hall of Fame class has made its way into poker print as well.
Some of the other old school pros like Amarillo Slim prefer to lay low now that poker is part of the mainstream media, but the 76 year-old Brunson has elected to remain in the spotlight. DoylesRoom’s team of online pros, dubbed the Brunson 10, are just another example of how the man who got his start playing cards in backrooms across the South keeps adapting and changing with the times. The Brunson 10, which currently consists of Amit “amak316” Makhija, Alec “traheho” Torelli, Zachary “CrazyZachary” Clark, and Chris “Moorman1” Moorman, will feature online pros supposedly hand-picked by Brunson to represent his site. The divide between live and online pros has been a major theme in the post-Moneymaker era of poker, but the Brunson 10 is the poker legend’s attempt to bridge the gap between the old and new guard of players.
Be it the Brunson 10, his blog, or his increasingly popular Twitter account, Brunson seems to have tapped into the younger generation of poker players and has become an unexpected new media success story. While he still has a ways to go to catch some of Twitter’s most popular accounts, which possess more than one million followers, it seems as though Brunson may be onto something with those blonde jokes.