In turn, this is what brought so much misery to his life. Paradoxically, this is part of what made him a great poker player, but it also is what made him so incredibly irresponsible and incompetent with his money away from the poker tables. If you have that attitude, it's nearly impossible to hold on to your money away from the felt. To be fearless, you have to be indifferent to, and even disrespect your own money. The reason for this is simple, and can be read between the lines in this book. To that end, Stu's life is a cautionary tale that it is practically impossible to make money long-term playing poker. Anytime I have a good streak, I like to remind myself that the very best poker player in history - who had won over $30M - died with $800 to his name in a seedy motel across from the Stratosphere. I like to play recreational poker, mostly small buy-in tournaments. In addition to the poker and drugs, he was innocent and naive like a child, generous to a fault and a loving, if flawed, father. This book does a nice job of telling the complex story of who Stu Ungar was. At the same time, it would have been unfair to paint a picture of someone who was great at poker and had a drug problem. I appreciated that the author did not glorify or glamorize Ungar, whose life was cut short and made miserable by drug abuse. This book does a fantastic job of filling in the details of Stu's truly unparalleled life. The basics of Stu Ungar's life are fairly well known: his upbringing in New York, proficiency at gin rummy, transition to poker, drug addiction, 1997 comeback and 1998 ignominious death. He just cared about what he loved and he let himself killed by it. He didn't care about school,family, society standards. Or maybe he was a free man, maybe he got to know the freedom at a level we can't even dream about. He died alone in a hotel room covered in his own vomit, high on crack that he got with borrowed money. Somehow I am thinking that his blessing was his curse at the same time. All that he won, went into another game of poker, blackjack, poolrooms and cocaine. For a person that never had much of a personal life or life goals, money were only means to keep him into the game. It is estimated that he won about 30 mil dollars during his life time.Īnother trait that helped him win, was the fact that he didn't understood the true value of money. ![]() ![]() Then he turned towards poker and he won during his life time 3 WSOP, and I think he still keeps the record for the most titles. At some point he got excluded from gin rummy tournaments because it was impossible to win against him. He became by the age of 18 a brilliant player of gin rummy and poker. And he put his talent to work in casinos and game rooms. I loved the history because it was so different about whatever I read or lived or heard before.īorn to bookmaker father, Stuey Ungar developed from an early age a talent for numbers. He was found dead in a Vegas motel-with $800 in cash on his person, the only money he had left-at the age of forty-five.Īn intimate, authorized biography-Nolan Dalla was commissioned by Stuey in 1998 to pen his story, resulting in hundreds of hours of taped interviews and conversations -One of a Kind illuminates the dark genius of one of poker's most memorable figures.Īn interesting story of a talented man. Though he had won an estimated $30 million in his lifetime, Stuey had no bank account, not even a home address. Whether tossing away his winnings at the racetrack or on a single roll of the dice, Stuey was notorious for gambling every single dollar in his pocket. One of a Kind is the startling tale of a man who won at his game and lost control of his life. ![]() ![]() He would go on to win the World Series of Poker a record three times. Bankrolled by the Genovese crime family, Stuey would soon travel around the country in search of new opponents and opportunities-including poker. Stuey Ungar, the son of a Jewish bookie on Manhattan's Lower East Side, dropped out of high school to become an underground card-table sensation, eventually taking out every top gin-rummy player on the East Coast. He was the Jim Morrison of the casino, a legend before he was of legal age. Now in paperback comes the first and authorized biography of Stuey Ungar, the greatest card player of all time, who was backed by the Mob in New York before moving to Las Vegas where he won the World Series of Poker three times, then died mysteriously in a seedy motel on the Vegas strip at the age of 45.
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