Amarillo Slim
American poker player (1928–2012)
Thomas Austin Preston Jr. (December 31, 1928 – April 29, 2012), known as Amarillo Slim, was an American professional gambler known for his poker skills and proposition bets. He won the 1972 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event and was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 1992.
Poker career
Before becoming a well-known tournament player, Preston was a rounder, touring the United States looking for gambling action along with Doyle Brunson and Sailor Roberts, effectively introducing Texas hold 'em, the most popular poker type today, to Las Vegas in the 1960s.
Preston participated in the first World Series of Poker in 1970 along with Johnny Moss, Sailor Roberts, Doyle Brunson, Puggy Pearson, Crandell Addington, and Carl Cannon. Following his victory in the 1972 WSOP Main Event, he appeared on several talk shows, including The Tonight Show, and had a small part in the 1974 Robert Altman movie California Split. He appeared on the panel game show I've Got a Secret, where his secret involved losing $190,000 in one night of poker.
He also founded the tournament series called Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl of Poker, which ran annually between 1979 and 1991.
Preston won four WSOP bracelets, including two in Omaha. Preston's final WSOP win was in 1990.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Amarillo Slim” is american poker player (1928–2012). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Amarillo, Slim and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q706504. VIAF identifies the subject as 33839132. The Library of Congress control number is n2003100573. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 2012, 1972 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Amarillo Slim” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.