Texan-born Jack Straus was one of a band of road gamblers (Doyle Brunson, Amarillo Slim) who travelled across the dusty southern states of America in search of high stakes gambling action in the hazy 1960s and 70s.

First and foremost Straus was a bettor who loved to gamble on sports and horse racing, once lumping $30,000 on a ball game – a hefty packet back then. But he never worried about money – a hallmark of all big gamblers – and was relentlessly optimistic about his life: ‘I have only a limited amount of time on this earth, and I want to live every second,’ he once said.

Like his gambling friends at the time, Jack made his way to several World Championship poker events at Binion’s casino, and won the title in 1982 with the most extraordinary comeback of all time.