Ulvis Alberts, Who Captured Poker’s Soul at Binion’s Horseshoe, Dies at 83

^{Photographor Ulvis Alberts standing in front of one of the shots that made him a legend. (Photo: courtesy of Discogs.com)}

In the 1970s, before poker had agents or TV deals or online sponsorships, it had Ulvis Alberts, a quiet man with a camera who lingered in the corners of Binion’s Horseshoe, turning the clatter of casino chips and the haze of cigarette smoke into some of the most enduring images the game has ever known.

Alberts, who first made his name photographing rock legends such as Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and Elton John, would eventually turn his lens toward the tables at the World Series of Poker. There, in a grungy downtown Las Vegas casino, he defined the early visual culture of the WSOP and introduced players like Doyle Brunson, “Amarillo Slim” Preston, Puggy Pearson, and a skinny kid named Stu Ungar to the wider world.

He died on Tuesday of undisclosed causes. He was 83. 

His death was announced, fittingly, in quiet and unassuming tones. “Today, on November 18, a beautiful life has come to an end,” an unattributed statement on his personal Facebook page began. “Photographer Ulvis Alberts has set off on a distant journey through the galaxies of the world. We extend our condolences to all who admired the artist’s talent and to everyone for whom Ulvis was important. Information about the farewell ceremony will follow.”

From War-Torn Latvia to the Casino Floors of Las Vegas

To say Alberts started in a challenging environment and made the most of life would be an understatement. Born in Latvia in 1942 during World War II, Alberts emigrated with his family to the United States in 1949 and later earned a degree in radio and television from the University of Washington in Seattle. From there he ventured out to photograph rising musical talents of the 1960s, among them Dylan, Hendrix, Tina Turner, Cher, and Jerry Garcia. His 1968 Hendrix portraits — stark, intimate, and emotionally unvarnished — became some of the most sought-after rock images of the era. 

Alberts’ epic black-and-white portrait photography would eventually end up in the collection of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and his photos are preserved for posterity in Seattle’s Experience Music Project.

Before poker, Alberts cut his photographic teeth shooting rock legends like Jimi Hendrix. (Photo: Ulvis Alberts / courtesy of UlvisAlberts.eu)

After some success in short- and documentary filmmaking, Alberts would move to Southern California, working with the American Film Institute. Through that outlet, Alberts would add more notable names to his portfolio, including Jack Nicholson, John Wayne, John Barrymore, and Paul Newman. That body of work would be captured in both a book and a photo exhibit called Camera as Passport. 

But it was his iconic work with the WSOP where Alberts truly found his calling. 

A Photographer Finds His Game

In 1977, Alberts walked into Binion’s Horseshoe, then the beating heart of tournament poker, and saw something worth preserving.

For the next five years, often working alone with a single camera and natural light, he chronicled the WSOP with a documentarian’s patience and an artist’s eye. His photographs of historic figures and historic moments, like Brunson sitting next to a young Ungar moments after winning his first world championship, are now part of poker’s visual canon. 

The winner’s shot from the 1980 WSOP Main Event, featuring (left to right) Doyle Brunson, Stu Ungar and Jack Binion, helped usher in what the next generation of casino poker would look like. (Photo: Ulvis Alberts / courtesy of the WSOP)

PokerNews once called Alberts “the Ansel Adams of the poker table,” a man who understood that the game’s soul lived not in the cards but in the faces studying them.

In 1981, Alberts compiled his impressive body of work in a book, Poker Face, which is a time capsule of the game at that moment; copies of the book, when they can be found, can be worth up to $2,500.

Alberts returned to Las Vegas during the lead-up to the poker boom to photograph a new generation. “In 2002, I returned to the WSOP, still at Binion's (it would move to the Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino in 2005), but the scene was not the same,” Alberts recalled on his website. “The characters I met at Binion's Horseshoe casino were dead. The only remaining legend was Doyle Brunson.”

His follow-up volume, Poker Face 2, released in 2006, became a bridge between the poker pioneers of the 1970s and the 21st century phenoms who turned poker into a television spectacle.

Vegas Casino Legend

Alberts wasn’t just a photographer. He was the man who first thought to show the world that casino poker as part-sport, part-mythology. 

He spent his later years between the US and Latvia, continuing to exhibit his work, grant interviews to poker historians, and preserve the memories of players who didn’t live long enough to tell their own stories. To many pros, Alberts was one of the last living witnesses to the downtown Horseshoe’s golden years — a chronicler of the game before fame, sponsorships, and bright lights of the Strip washed out what would later be streamed.

Alberts' work has been on display at the Global Center for Latvian Art in Cēsis, Latvia, since July, where his Camera as a Passport show is slated to run through the end of December.