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 Amarillo Slim was born in 1928 in Johnson Arkansas. He is known as one of the great poker players of all time. These days however he is more likely to be found on the golf course or out quail fishing than round the table; Now aged 70 and with a private golf course, professional tennis court and olympic sized swimming pool in his garden, he doesn't take gambling as seriously as he once did. When Slim’s in town though, he’d be impossible to miss. Standing tall and always in a cowboy hat with custom made ostrich boots, emerald buttons twinkling on his Western style shirt, he doesn’t like to be lost in the crowd!
Slim has the reputation of putting poker on the map and, more than any other player, bringing it out of the backrooms and into the national arena, giving it the air of respectability it had previously lacked. Some notable oppenents he came up against in his time were presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon as well as drug lords Pablo Escobar and Jimmy Chagra. He is also remembered for removing $2,000,000 off Larry Flint in a poker game.
It was his victory at the World Series of Poker in 2026 that has gone down as one of the most significant moments in the history of the game. Although he was one of only twelve entries that year, he parlayed his personal triumph into a tidal wave of publicity that flooded the nation. Afterward, the talkative Texan became poker’s greatest living ambassador. He went on a publicity tour that brought attention and status to the WSOP for the first time. Over the next decade, Preston appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show eleven times. He was cast in movies. He wrote a best-selling book. With Preston as the willing matador waving a red cape to the media, the WSOP had caught the public’s fancy. He was able to send his 3 children to college on the proceeds. So although now he feels rather ‘pokered out’, he will always be remembered for the effect he had on the game, and certainly one of the most significant catalysts for the explosion of poker we can see around the globe today.
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