The great ones can’t stay away. And Doyle Brunson, one of the best poker players of all time, showed an old professional-sports rule of thumb also applies to card games: Retirements never stick, not with legends.

Doyle vowed he was done playing in the World Series of Poker in May. He had softened the stance by June, stating he “hadn’t ruled it out.”

With one day left before July, the 79-year-old smashed the idea all together. Brunson was one of 111 entrants through two levels of play Sunday in the $50,000 buy-in Poker Player’s Championship.

“I give him a lot of credit,” said 32-year-old professional Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi. “That’s a man with a lot of endurance for sure. It’s great to see someone at that age still have passion and love for the game.”

Mizrachi didn’t mind that Brunson’s presence shifted some of the attention away from him. “The Grinder” accomplished something many felt was impossible in this event last year by winning it for the second time in three years. The event features some the world’s best players competing in eight different poker variants.

Mizrachi is the only player to twice have his name etched into the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy, earning more than $3 million in this tournament alone.

But no one in poker boasts credentials that can match Brunson’s. “Tex Dolly” started his career long before poker gained social acceptance, toiling in illegal Texas underground games in the 1950s and 1960s where gunpoint robberies and crooked hosts were the norm.

Doyle Brunson went on to write “Super/System”, poker’s definitive strategy book in 1979, the same year he won his fifth WSOP bracelet. Brunson currently holds 10 WSOP championships, which is tied for second all-time. Read more at the Las Vegas Sun.