Goodbye Puggy
Sunday, April 16, 2006
A legend of Poker, Walter "Puggy" Pearson, died Wednesday in Las vegas, aged 77.The 1973 World Series of Poker champion and member of the Poker Hall of Fame, was a fifth-grade dropout from Tennessee who played in the highest-stakes poker games in Las Vegas for more than 25 years.
He is credited with introducing Las Vegas to the "freeze-out" style of playing tournament poker, in which everyone starts with the same amount of chips and, as players are eliminated, the winner winds up with them all. The format has been adopted as the standard format in the World Series of Poker and most other major poker tournaments.
In 1973, Pearson took home $130,000 from a field of 13 players in the $10,000 buy-in, No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em World Championship — the first time the event was recorded for television.
Pearson also was known to show up at major poker tournaments in the 1970s and '80s in full Viking regalia, or costumed as a cowboy or an American Indian, complete with headdress and war paint.
The poker world has lost a colorful character, but he will be forever remembered as a legendary ambassador of the game.
Posted at 12:00 AM Permalink | Talk on the Poker Forum
1 Comments:
What a legend.
I doubt you could turn up to any casino these days dressed in "full Viking regalia" without being promptly met by security.
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Anonymous, at 7:54 PM
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