The Greatest Card Player That Ever Lived

Like any good origin story, Stu Ungar’s poker career starts at his home in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Stu was extremely gifted in school and even skipped 7th grade. He was born to Jewish parents, and his father, Ido, was a bookmaker and loan shark. 

Ido would set the odds and back bets that people wanted to make on sports. He saw the effect that gambling had on his customers and attempted to hide the lifestyle from Stu, but it was impossible. Stu had a photographic memory and by the age of 10 he was winning Gin Rummy tournaments.

When he was just 14 years old his father died of a heart attack, leaving Stu with the burden of providing for his family. Stu would drop out of school to pursue cards full-time.

When Stu Ungar first arrived in Las Vegas, Gin Rummy was still his choice of game. He was so dominant that people just flat-out refused to play him. Even casino’s would ask Stu not to play in their gin rummy tournaments because no one would show up to play out of fear of losing to him. He knew that the days of dominating Gin Rummy were over, so he turned to Texas Hold’em. 

Stu looked to the World Series of Poker, a yearly event held for professional poker players to battle it out in a number of competitions, the biggest being the main-event. This main-event consisted of no-limit Texas Hold’em with a $10,000 buy-in. It was the most prestigious poker tournament in the world. In 1980, Ungar would win his first WSOP main-event bracelet with a 5-4 of spades. He would run it back in 1981 and defend his title, becoming the 3rd person in WSOP history to win back-to-back main-events. With the rewards of glory come the perils of addiction. Ungar became heavily entrenched in a cocaine addiction. Anything he won would go straight to his addiction or it would be gambled away on sports. 

In 1990, Stu attempted to reclaim his WSOP main-event bracelet. He was a significant chip-lead at the end of the third day, and it looked as though he would be back atop the mountain. During a routine break between playing sessions, Ungar went to his hotel to relax with a few bumps of cocaine. He would overdose in his hotel room and not finish the tournament. He had such a large lead, however, just by folding him out every hand and paying the blinds, he finished in 9th place.

By 1997 Stu had hit rock bottom. He had divorced from his wife, was unable to regularly see his daughter, was battling a severe cocaine addiction, and was buried in mountains of gambling debt. Long-time poker friend Billy Baxter came to Stu and offered to pay his buy-in for the 97 main-event.

As Baxter and Ungar rushed to the registration, they made it with mere seconds to spare, locking Stu in as the last competitor in the tournament. Ungar was exhausted at the start of play. He had been on a 24-hour cocaine-binge and felt that he didn’t have the stamina to make it past the first day and even fell asleep at the table.

Whenever he felt like giving up, he would look at the picture of his daughter in his wallet. He needed to win this main-event, not to prove to himself how good he was, but to show his daughter what he was really made of. Ungar would win the title, earning the nickname Stu "The Comeback Kid" Ungar and became just the second player to ever win 3 main-event bracelets.

After his big win at the 1997 WSOP, Ungar split the $1 million dollar cash prize with Baxter who paid for his buy-in. Stu would blow his winnings within the next few months on drugs and sports gambling. Baxter would again approach Ungar before the 1998 WSOP, offering to pay the buy-in if Stu defended his title. Ungar was so strung-out from drugs however, he thought it would be more embarrassing to show up like that than to not show up at all. 

Later that year, in a hotel room, he would die of a heart attack caused by years of drug abuse. Ungar won an estimated $30 million at the poker table, but died with just $800 in his pocket. That $800 came from a $25,000 advance Stu had signed for an exchange in future tournament winnings, meaning Stu passed away with negative $24,200. 

It’s mystifying to imagine winning $30 million at the poker tables and not having a single cent to your name when you pass, but that was the lifestyle that Stu lived. He was never enamored with the idea of building a massive bankroll, or riding off into the sunset into retirement. Stu cared about winning and winning only. He wanted to watch his opponents slowly realize the man in-front of them was unbeatable, and he did that everytime he sat down at the table. Stu Ungar was an anomaly at the poker table we will never see replicated.