Winning the WSOP Main Event brings a huge amount of prestige to every poker player’s career. Winning the world’s most popular poker tournament twice is really a testament to that player’s skills, abilities, and understanding of a game that enjoys growing popularity and influence around the world. And finally, winning the WSOP Main Event three times is a feat that only two people have ever achieved.
“Nobody was quicker, nobody was smarter, and nobody was better!” – this is what poker player and one of the industry’s most influential personalities – Mike Sexton – says at the very beginning of Emmy award-winning documentary One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stu Ungar. Of course, he meant the late (and great) Stu Ungar, who had been a close friend of his.
However, Sexton’s appreciative comment was not solely based on their friendship. Stu Ungar was and still is a big name in the poker community. He was one of two professionals to have ever done the unthinkable – namely to win the WSOP Championship three times. To give an even better understanding of why Ungar is considered one of the best poker players in the world, if not the best one, it should also be noted that he won the Super Bowl of Poker, the second most popular poker festival back in the 80s, three times, as well. There is no other player in history to have emerged victorious three times in each of the two tournaments.
Being the son of a major New York bookmaker, Ungar was introduced to gambling from a very early age and it has always been part of his life. His career as a card player did not start with poker, however. Ungar first mastered gin rummy and then transferred his attention to poker. And the verb “master” is the exact one to describe Ungar’s knowledge of the ways of the game.
Despite his father’s efforts to keep him away from gambling, the player was really young when he learned how to play gin rummy and quickly made a name for himself. It is true that Ungar was mentored by some of the best players in the world at that time but he could not have become what he managed to become if it had not been for his indisputable intelligence. Ungar was described as a gifted student by his teachers at school, with particularly protruding mathematical skills. In other words, his gin rummy achievements (and later on his poker accomplishments) should greatly be attributed to his bright-mindedness.
As mentioned above, Ungar was exposed to the allurement of the New York gambling scene at a tender age. Being introduced to some of the best gin rummy players in the world at that time, he absorbed knowledge about how the game was played and developed his own techniques and strategies, and it was not long before the student eclipsed his teachers. Ungar was quickly acknowledged as the best gin rummy player in New York’s gambling underground. He defeated everyone (or almost everyone) who dared challenge him.
The New York gin rummy scene became too stuffy for the player and he moved to Las Vegas in pursuit for fresh air and fresh faces. His reputation and popularity grew even further in the world’s largest gambling mecca at that time. There he made a name for himself even more quickly, beating up some of the world’s most highly respected gin rummy players.
Reportedly, Ungar defeated Harry “Yonkie” Stein, who was generally recognized as the world’s best gin rummy player of his time, in 86 games within a night. What made his accomplishment even worthier to acknowledge was the fact that Ungar did not lose a single game over that night. According to Stein’s peers, he was not the same player after his confrontation with the much less seasoned Ungar.
It did not take long before the New York-born prodigy was laureled the best gin rummy player who ever lived and he was not be overthrown even after his unfortunate death. After defeating the best of the best multiple times, there were few who wanted to play gin rummy against Ungar. The player himself got tired of not having much competition and transitioned to poker.
And he proved to be equally proficient in that game. Even though Ungar considered himself a better gin rummy player (in fact, he believed that there would not be a person to ever surpass his gin rummy accomplishments), he was better known for his poker achievements, probably because of the game’s better popularity among card players.
Ungar won his first WSOP gold bracelet and WSOP Main Event title in 1980. He defeated none other but living poker legend Doyle Brunson to become the youngest player to have ever won the $10,000 World Championship at that time. He was 27 when he captured his Main Event title. The player defended successfully his title in 1981, this time playing against Perry Green heads-up. During the 1981 edition of the WSOP, Ungar collected yet another gold bracelet for topping the field of the $10,000 No-Limit Deuce-to-Seven Draw tournament.
He captured his fourth gold bracelet in 1983 for winning a $5,000 Limit 7-Card Stud tournament. Ungar won his fifth and last WSOP gold bracelet and third WSOP Main Event title in 1997, only a year before his untimely death. As mentioned above, there were only two players to have ever won three WSOP World Championships in the tournament’s history, with Ungar being one of them and Johnny Moss being the other. However, one of Moss’ titles was awarded to him after a players’ vote and not by winning the actual tournament, so it could be said that Ungar’s accomplishment was and has remained unmatched.
In addition to that, the player scooped three Amarillo Slim’s Super Bowl of Poker titles over the course of his career. Back in the 80s, the Super Bowl of Poker was considered the second largest and most popular poker tournament in the world. No other player has ever won three WSOP World Championships and three Super Bowl of Poker titles. But even without these accomplishments, Ungar had a reputation of an opponent to be feared of, of the world’s best No-Limit Hold’em player to have ever walked on earth.
Similarly to many other people of great intellect and skills in their fields, Ungar, too, had his personal demons to cope with, darkness that burdened his inner self and munched on his willingness to live on and fight for his life. Cocaine turned out to be the player’s inner demon that took his life in a terrible and untimely manner.
Ungar was found lying dead in a cheap hotel room in Las Vegas on November 22, 1998. Later on, medical examiners concluded that his death was caused by a heart disease, resulting from years of drug abuse. Ungar will be remembered with his extremely aggressive poker playing style, his multiple victories in the world’s most prestigious poker tournaments, and with his gin rummy reputation, of course. And it is believed that it will take quite a while before his achievements are outmatched, if ever.
