Amarillo Slim’s Life: Biggest Profits, Losses, Private Life & Net Worth

Thomas Austin Preston Jr., better known as Amarillo Slim, was an American poker player, gambler, WSOP Main Event champion, prop-bet legend, and Poker Hall of Fame member. He was born on December 31, 1928, and passed away on April 29, 2012.

He is best known for winning the 1972 WSOP Main Event, helping bring Texas Hold’em from Texas to Las Vegas, and building a reputation as one of gambling’s great showmen.

Slim finished his career with four WSOP bracelets and $587,567 in recorded live tournament earnings. His true gambling income is impossible to confirm. Between poker, pool, sports betting, proposition bets, and decades of road gambling, the public tournament numbers only show a small part of the story.

His net worth at the time of his death has never been publicly confirmed. Any exact figure would be guesswork, but Slim’s fame, gambling history, book deals, television appearances, and poker results made him one of the most recognizable gambling figures of his era.

Amarillo Slim | Key Facts

Who Was Amarillo Slim?

Amarillo Slim was one of poker’s original celebrity gamblers.

Before poker had livestreams, player vlogs, and solver charts, Slim understood something very simple: people remember stories. He was a poker player, but he was also a hustler, a talker, a salesman, and a walking headline.

His nickname came from Amarillo, Texas, where he grew up after his parents divorced. The “Slim” part worked because it sat opposite one of his pool-room rivals, Rudolf “Minnesota Fats” Wanderone. One fat, one slim. Poker history was not subtle in those days.

He became part of the famous group of Texas road gamblers that included Doyle Brunson and Crandell Addington. Together, they travelled looking for poker games, gambling action, and opportunity. That group is strongly linked with bringing Texas Hold’em to Las Vegas in the 1960s.

Amarillo Slim Net Worth

Amarillo Slim’s net worth at the time of his death has never been publicly confirmed.

That is important, because Slim’s public tournament earnings do not come close to explaining his full gambling life. He recorded $587,567 in live tournament cashes, but those results are not adjusted for inflation and many games from his era were never tracked properly.

His money came from several places:

• Poker tournaments – He won the 1972 WSOP Main Event and three other WSOP bracelets.
• Cash games – He played for decades as a road gambler before poker results were properly recorded.
• Prop bets – Slim became famous for creative wagers against people who often did not realize the trap until too late.
• Books and media – His autobiography and television appearances helped turn him into a gambling celebrity.
• Super Bowl of Poker – He founded one of the most important tournament series of the pre-poker-boom era.

The safest way to frame Slim’s wealth is this: he made and lost money the old gambling way. Fast, privately, and often without anyone writing down the final number.

Why Was Amarillo Slim Famous?

Amarillo Slim became famous because he won big, talked well, and gave poker a face at the exact moment it needed one.

His 1972 WSOP Main Event victory mattered, but what came after mattered almost as much. Slim appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, told gambling stories to mainstream audiences, and helped present poker as something bigger than a backroom card game.

He had the cowboy-gambler style that television understood. He was tall, sharp-tongued, quotable, and completely comfortable telling the world that he could beat almost anyone at almost anything if the terms were right.

In a different era, Slim would probably have had a podcast, a YouTube channel, a betting app, and a publicist trying to stop him from saying half the things that made him famous.

Amarillo Slim and the Rise of Texas Hold’em

Slim is often mentioned alongside Doyle Brunson and Crandell Addington as part of the Texas road-gambling group that helped bring Texas Hold’em to Las Vegas.

The game was already popular in Texas, but Las Vegas had not yet made it the centre of poker. That changed in the 1960s, when the game began appearing in Vegas cardrooms, including the Golden Nugget.

That change shaped modern poker. Texas Hold’em eventually became the main WSOP format, the main TV poker format, and the game most people now mean when they simply say “poker.”

Slim was not the only reason that happened, but he was part of the group that pushed the game into the place where it could grow.

Amarillo Slim’s WSOP Main Event Win

Amarillo Slim won the 1972 WSOP Main Event.

That year was important because it was the first time the Main Event was held in the classic $10,000 buy-in freezeout no-limit hold’em format. Eight players entered, and Slim won the $80,000 winner-take-all prize.

The result made him poker’s world champion, but the real boost came from what he did with it. Slim became poker’s salesman. He took the title into the media, told stories, promoted the game, and made himself one of the first poker players known outside gambling circles.

Modern poker has had bigger fields and bigger prizes, but Slim’s 1972 win sits close to the roots of what the WSOP Main Event became.

Amarillo Slim’s WSOP Career

Slim won four WSOP bracelets during his career.

His first came in the 1972 Main Event. His second came in 1974, when he won the $1,000 No Limit Hold’em event for $11,100. He later added two Pot Limit Omaha bracelets, winning the $5,000 PLO event in 1985 and again in 1990.

His biggest recorded tournament cash came from that 1990 WSOP victory, when he earned $142,000.

He also came close to another bracelet in 2000, finishing second in the $2,500 Pot Limit Omaha event for $97,500. He lost heads-up to Phil Ivey, who was still early in what would become one of poker’s greatest careers.

Amarillo Slim WSOP Bracelet Wins

Amarillo Slim’s Biggest Tournament Results

Slim’s recorded tournament earnings are modest by modern standards, but the numbers need context.

His biggest wins came in an era before poker had massive fields, seven-figure first prizes, global tracking databases, or modern sponsorship money. A $80,000 score in 1972 had far more weight than it looks like on a modern results page.

Major Live Tournament Scores

Amarillo Slim’s Super Bowl of Poker

One of Slim’s biggest contributions to poker was not a hand he played. It was a tournament series he created.

In 1979, he founded Amarillo Slim’s Super Bowl of Poker. For much of the 1980s, it was considered the second most important poker festival in the world behind the World Series of Poker.

The first edition took place at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The series featured multiple events, including high buy-in championship tournaments at a time when the poker calendar was nowhere near as crowded as it is today.

The Super Bowl of Poker helped give elite players another major annual series to target. It also produced important results for several of the game’s greats, including Stu Ungar , who won the $10,000 No Limit Hold’em Main Event at the series three times.

The series ran annually between 1979 and 1991, with one final edition held in 1996 at the Bicycle Casino in California.

Amarillo Slim and Prop Betting

Amarillo Slim’s gambling reputation was built on more than poker.

He was famous for proposition bets, especially the kind where the trick was hidden in the conditions. The point was not always to be better at the obvious thing. The point was to choose the game, shape the rules, and make the other person think they had the edge.

His most famous story involves tennis champion Bobby Riggs. As the story goes, Slim bet Riggs that he could beat him at table tennis, but only if Slim could choose the paddles. Slim arrived with frying pans, having practiced with them beforehand, and won the match.

Another famous story involved pool legend Minnesota Fats. Slim claimed he could sink four balls with a broom faster than Fats could sink eight with a cue. Again, Slim had practiced the strange version of the game. That was the pattern.

Some Amarillo Slim stories have the shine of legend around them, and not every detail is easy to verify. But the broader point is clear: Slim understood gambling psychology. He did not need the fairest game. He needed the game that looked fair enough for someone else to say yes.

Amarillo Slim’s Book and Media Career

Slim released his autobiography, Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People, in 2001.

The book leaned into exactly what people expected from him: gambling stories, big personalities, famous opponents, poker rooms, pool halls, and road action. In it, Slim claimed he won $2 million in a poker game against publisher Larry Flynt, and said he had played poker with US presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon.

He also appeared in the film California Split and became a regular type of guest for mainstream media whenever poker or gambling needed a colorful voice.

That was part of his skill set. Slim knew how to turn gambling into storytelling.

Amarillo Slim’s Legal Case

The darkest part of Amarillo Slim’s public story came in 2003.

He was indicted in Texas on charges involving indecency with a child. As part of a plea deal, he pleaded no contest to a reduced misdemeanor assault charge. He was fined $4,000 and sentenced to two years of probation.

That case remains part of his biography and should not be brushed aside. Slim’s place in poker history is real, but so is this chapter of his life.

Amarillo Slim Career Timeline

How Is Amarillo Slim Remembered Today?

Amarillo Slim is remembered as one of poker’s first true showmen.

He was a WSOP Main Event champion, a four-time bracelet winner, a Hall of Famer, a road gambler, a prop-bet artist, and the founder of an important poker festival. That is the bright side of the ledger.

He is also remembered with complication because of his 2003 legal case. Any honest modern profile has to hold both things at once. Slim was important to poker history, but his story is not clean.

On the poker side, his influence is hard to ignore. He helped bring Texas Hold’em into Las Vegas, helped sell poker to the wider public after his 1972 WSOP win, and gave the game one of its earliest mainstream personalities.

Modern poker is more polished now. Slim belonged to a rougher, louder, stranger gambling world. Not everything from that world aged well. But the game’s history still runs through it.

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