Amarillo Slim – A Legendary Pro Gambler

Amarillo Slim was one of the most important personalities in early professional poker.

His tournament record was strong rather than overwhelming by modern standards: four World Series of Poker titles, including the 1972 Main Event, and induction into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1992.

What made Thomas Austin Preston Jr. famous was something bigger than results alone.

He could tell a gambling story, sell a proposition bet and turn poker into entertainment for people who had never sat in an underground card game.

Amarillo Slim’s real legacy was not simply that he won at poker. He helped turn the professional gambler into a public character.

Who Was Amarillo Slim?

Amarillo Slim was born Thomas Austin Preston Jr. on December 31, 1928, in Johnson, Arkansas.

His family moved to Turkey, Texas, while he was young. After his parents separated, his father settled in Amarillo, the city that eventually supplied the nickname by which Preston became famous.

Slim later joked that “Amarillo Slim” sounded considerably better than the alternatives his childhood geography might have produced.

Before poker made him famous, gambling was already central to his life.

How Did Amarillo Slim Become a Gambler?

Slim began hustling pool while still young and developed a reputation for finding bets where the conditions favored him.

That idea became central to the way he later described gambling.

He was not simply interested in accepting whatever contest somebody offered. He became famous for changing the equipment, location or terms until a seemingly strange bet contained an advantage he understood better than his opponent.

This philosophy shaped both his poker career and the countless proposition-bet stories later attached to him.

Who Did Amarillo Slim Travel With?

Before casino poker became a major tournament business, Slim travelled through the American South playing high-stakes cash games with Doyle Brunson and Brian “Sailor” Roberts.

These travelling gamblers operated in a very different environment from modern poker.

Many games were private or illegal. Players carried large amounts of cash, and simply leaving a profitable game safely could be as important as winning it.

Brunson, Roberts and Slim became part of the generation that later helped establish the culture surrounding the early World Series of Poker.

Was Amarillo Slim at the First World Series of Poker?

Yes. Slim was one of the players invited to Binion’s Horseshoe for the inaugural World Series of Poker in 1970.

That first event did not use the modern Main Event tournament format. The participants played a cash game and then voted on who they considered the best player.

Johnny Moss was eventually selected as the first champion.

The WSOP evolved quickly after that, and Slim’s defining poker result came two years later.

How Did Amarillo Slim Win the 1972 WSOP?

The 1972 WSOP Main Event was the first to use the $10,000 buy-in freezeout structure that became the foundation of the modern championship.

Only eight players entered.

Benny Binion subsidized part of the buy-in, and Slim eventually won the event for $60,000.

The field was tiny compared with modern Main Events, but the victory gave Slim something poker badly needed at the time: a champion willing and able to sell the game to the public.

Why Was the 1972 Win So Important?

Because Slim understood publicity.

He appeared on national television, including The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and proved that a poker champion could entertain an audience that knew almost nothing about poker strategy.

His stories, cowboy hat, Texas drawl and endless gambling anecdotes made him far easier to promote than an anonymous card-room professional.

This is why his importance cannot be measured only by tournament winnings.

The 1972 title gave Slim credibility. Television gave him reach.

How Many WSOP Bracelets Did Amarillo Slim Win?

Four.

He remained competitive long after his most famous years and finished second to Phil Ivey in a Pot-Limit Omaha event at the 2000 WSOP.

Was Amarillo Slim One of the Greatest Tournament Players Ever?

Not if you measure greatness purely by modern tournament totals.

Later generations accumulated far more bracelets, cashes and prize money as tournament poker expanded.

Slim’s importance comes from when he won and what he did with the attention afterward.

He emerged when poker still had strong associations with private games, hustlers and smoky back rooms. He then carried that world onto mainstream television without losing the colorful personality that made it interesting.

That combination made him historically important even though later players built much larger statistical records.

What Was Amarillo Slim’s Super Bowl of Poker?

Slim did more than play tournaments. He also promoted them.

Beginning around the end of the 1970s, he established the Super Bowl of Poker, sometimes called Amarillo Slim’s Super Bowl of Poker.

It became one of the major professional poker series of the 1980s and attracted many of the strongest players of the era.

The event followed the broad idea of the WSOP with multiple tournaments and a major Main Event, but its prize structures were often more concentrated among the top finishers.

This is another reason Slim’s influence extended beyond his own results. He helped create places for professional poker players to compete when the tournament calendar was still tiny.

Why Are There So Many Amarillo Slim Gambling Stories?

Because Slim deliberately built his reputation around unusual bets.

Some are well documented in interviews, obituaries and his memoir. Others are essentially stories told by Slim himself and should be understood in that context.

That is part of the difficulty in writing about him.

He was both the subject and one of the main authors of the Amarillo Slim legend.

Did Amarillo Slim Really Win $300,000 From Willie Nelson?

Slim said he did.

The story appears in accounts of his life and in material promoting his autobiography. According to Slim, he beat country singer Willie Nelson for around $300,000 playing dominoes.

It is one of the stories most closely associated with him, but the safest way to present it is as Slim’s account rather than as an independently audited gambling result.

Did He Win Millions From Larry Flynt?

Slim also claimed huge poker wins against Hustler publisher Larry Flynt.

His memoir gives the figure as about $2 million, while other contemporary accounts put the amount closer to $1.7 million.

The disagreement itself tells us something useful about these stories.

Cash-game results from private gambling sessions are not recorded like modern tournament payouts. Much of what survives comes from the participants themselves.

What Were Amarillo Slim’s Famous Proposition Bets?

Slim’s proposition bets became almost as famous as his poker career.

He told stories of beating pool champion Minnesota Fats using a broom as a cue, challenging tennis great Bobby Riggs to table tennis with unusual paddles and playing golf against Evel Knievel with carpenter’s hammers.

The trick was often in choosing the terms.

Slim looked for an opponent who was obviously superior at the normal activity, then changed the activity enough that the opponent’s conventional skill no longer translated perfectly.

He was not trying to prove he was the best athlete. He was trying to be the person who understood the unusual contest better.

Was Amarillo Slim Really Kidnapped in Colombia?

Slim told a famous story about being kidnapped in Colombia during one of his gambling trips.

Versions of the story have often connected the incident directly with Pablo Escobar, and Slim later told elaborate tales involving Escobar and exchanged gifts.

The kidnapping story became part of his mythology, but the more extraordinary details rely heavily on Slim’s own telling and should not be presented with the same certainty as his WSOP record.

This is a recurring problem with biographies of professional gamblers from that era: the best stories often happened away from cameras, tournament records and independent documentation.

Why Was Amarillo Slim So Good at Proposition Betting?

Because he focused on conditions rather than appearances.

A world-class table tennis player should destroy an ordinary gambler at table tennis.

But change the paddles to something neither player normally uses and part of that professional advantage disappears.

The same logic appears throughout gambling and advantage play.

The question is not simply “Who is better?” It is “Who benefits from these exact rules?”

This is one reason Slim fits naturally into the history of the professional gambler. His edge often came from selecting the contest before playing it.

When Was Amarillo Slim Inducted Into the Poker Hall of Fame?

In 1992.

The Poker Hall of Fame recognizes players and other figures who have had a major influence on the game.

Slim’s induction reflected more than his four WSOP wins. By then, his role in promoting poker and building its public image was already firmly established.

Did Amarillo Slim Appear in Movies and Television?

Yes. His public profile took him well beyond poker tournaments.

He appeared on television talk shows and played himself in Robert Altman’s 1974 gambling film California Split.

That crossover helped establish a model later poker personalities would follow: successful player, storyteller and recognizable media figure all at once.

What Happened in Amarillo Slim’s Later Life?

Slim’s reputation suffered badly after a criminal case involving allegations of inappropriate contact with his granddaughter.

He denied the allegation.

The case did not end with him simply being “cleared,” as older versions of this biography have claimed. He ultimately accepted a reduced misdemeanor disposition while continuing to maintain his innocence.

The case damaged his public standing and remained part of accounts of his later life.

This period should be described carefully because two facts can be true at the same time: Slim denied the underlying accusation, and the legal case nevertheless ended with a reduced criminal disposition rather than complete exoneration.

When Did Amarillo Slim Die?

Amarillo Slim died on April 29, 2012, aged 83.

He had been suffering from colon cancer.

By then poker had become almost unrecognizable compared with the world in which he began.

The WSOP attracted thousands of players, televised poker had become mainstream entertainment and online poker had produced a completely new generation of professionals.

What Is Amarillo Slim’s Autobiography?

His memoir is Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People: The Memoirs of the Greatest Gambler Who Ever Lived, written with Greg Dinkin.

It contains many of the stories that built the Amarillo Slim legend, including his private gambling matches and proposition bets.

It is an important source for understanding how Slim saw his own life.

It should also be read for what it is: a memoir by one of gambling’s greatest storytellers, not an independent record verifying every extraordinary bet he described.

Why Does Amarillo Slim Still Matter to Poker?

Poker eventually produced players with more bracelets, larger tournament winnings and deeper modern strategic records than Amarillo Slim.

But very few had his position in the game’s development.

He came from the road-gambler era, won the WSOP just as its modern tournament format was taking shape, understood how to entertain television audiences and then used his fame to promote another major poker series.

The wild proposition bets helped build the legend, but they were not the whole legacy.