Stu Ungar: The Greatest Poker Player Ever Seen?

This article is a brief bibliography of the once great poker player, whose name has now been forgotten. In part this is because he died 10 years ago. We believe, nonetheless, that Stu Ungar was a king in the poker world, and thus hugely worthy of an article. In fact, Stu Ungar was an extraordinary player who had everything up until one day in 1998:

One afternoon in 1998 police found Stu Ungar dead in a motel in the downtown area of Las Vegas. An obscene film was playing in the background and there was vomit all over the floor. Ungar was caught up in hard drugs, and the police did not feel it necessary to investigate the scene. There was no money, neither in the hotel room nor in his account- if he even had an account; his life had been a mess.

The death of the best poker player in history thus concluded. It is estimated that he had won a total of around $90 million during his lifetime, a short 38 years. His IQ was measured at 185, and Ungar used it for poker and Gin Rummy. He won the non-official world championship of poker three times- he is still the only player to have managed this feat. And only his death, at the Oasis Motel in Las Vegas, got in the way of his winning for a fourth time.

Parent of the mafia:
With his superior intelligence, Ungar could have chosen any profession he wanted, but he chose to play cards- it became his passion, but also his downfall. Because of his social environment, a respectable profession was not a realistic aspiration.

His family were Jewish, arriving in the US before WWII. He lived and breathed the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where he hung around in his father's gangster house. Mixing with the gangsters and the criminals of the Jewish quarter in New-York. He was a skinny boy who loved listening to the adults conversations. His father also worked in the lending and borrowing money industry, this job was soon taken over by Stu, due to his exceptional mathematical abilities.

His environment was relatively miserable. Ungar has told stories of his bar mitzvah, the first communion for a Jewish boy, the police were interested in the guest list because of the number of suspicious characters who had been invited. When his father died a year on, the gangsters became Stu's friends, taking him under their wing.

At the time, Stu had a reputation as an accomplished magician, especially when it came to card tricks. He was subsequently recruited into the gangster family "the Genoveses". A member of the mafia, called Victor Romano, who had been in trouble with the police, had several illegal card clubs in Manhattan for members of the mafia. It was Romano who allowed Stu Ungar to play, and he gave him the protection of the mafia at the same time.

He quickly got the nickname "the Kamikaze Kid" because he played cards without fear. But he was equally referred to simply as "the Kid" because he was so little, skinny and had the air of a child. He never weighed more than 50kg. He ran everywhere instead of walking, and he spoke very fast, using the jargon typical of Lower New York, that you can still see in the old Superman comics.

He started to play Gin Rummy, but almost instantly, his fellow opponents became too scared to play against him, because he was so good, and so he was forced to give it up in favour of poker. Nobody wanted to play against Stu. When playing he drew on his exceptional intelligence and his memorable ability to be perceived as the person in control of any poker game, even appearing to control the play of his opponents. His opponents talked of him as if he had a sixth sense. But in terms of his invincibility, his true power lays in his prowess at maths and his incredible memory.

Stu the person:
How was Stu as a person? He was considered to be extremely generous towards others, and especially his wife. But he was drug dependent and also addicted to gambling- although I'm not sure the latter is really an issue as he did manage to make a living out of it. But, even though he did when a lot of money at cards, he did manage to lose a lot of it on other gambling games such as the horses. Although gentle and kind in his private life, he was brutal at the poker table, taking no-prisoners and having no mercy.

He said himself "they used to call me a monster because when I was only 15 years old I was massacring players who had been professionals for the past 30 years. Yes, maybe I was a monster".

The champion of the world:
When Stu Ungar died in 1998, the popularity of poker was nothing like it is today. Nonetheless, the game was popular enough, and there was a lot of money to be won. The non-official world championship took [place in Las Vegas, he won in 1980, but he was not able to claim his winnings because he did not have a social security card to confirm his identity. The following year he won again, but this time he lost all his winnings gambling on the horses.

The following years, his life was full of cards and drugs. His drug consumption turned out to be tantamount to suicide. He took drugs in the same fashion in which he ate, fast and without blinking.

In 1997 he reappeared on the Las Vegas scene in order to once again participate at the world championship of poker. He had the air of, and he smelt like, a tramp, and he did not have the $10, 000 which was needed in order to enter the competition. He borrowed the money, and then went on to win the title; he gave half of the $1 million to the man who lent him the money, and the other half he spent on the horses.

Since the death of Ungar, poker has become exceedingly popular, more so than could have been predicted. Millions of players participate in online poker and watch televised matches on the TV, today Ungar could have become a billionaire, if he hadn't played his last hand in a hotel room in downtown Las Vegas.

Ungar never blamed his environment or his mafia connections for his downfalls, he said: "a proverb in poker is that you r worst enemy is yourself. When it comes to me, this is the truth. I have a god given talent, and no other person received such a talent. Maybe I didn't use it enough, this talent. I'm not a great man, but the hurt that I've caused has principally been aimed at me. But I know that I also hurt other people, particularly those ones that I love".

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