Stu Ungar

Stu Ungar biography

Stu Ungar was born on September 8, 1953, in Manhattan, New York, and grew up immersed in the world of underground card games. He proved himself a gin rummy prodigy almost immediately, winning a local tournament at age 10 and going on to be widely regarded as the greatest gin rummy player who ever lived, famously defeating Harry "Yonkie" Stein 86 hands to 0 in a Hollywood Gin match and eventually running out of opponents willing to play him.

Ungar transitioned that card-reading brilliance to poker, and his run of dominance became the stuff of legend: he won the WSOP Main Event in both 1980 and 1981, defeating Doyle Brunson and Perry Green respectively, becoming one of only two players in history to win the title three times when he completed a stunning comeback victory in 1997 for $1,000,000, split with his longtime backer Billy Baxter.

Across his career he won ten of the thirty major no-limit hold'em tournaments he entered, an unmatched winning percentage, and captured Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl of Poker three times.

Ungar's brilliance at the table was matched by a devastating personal struggle: he began using cocaine around 1979, initially to sustain marathon poker sessions, and descended into a severe addiction that friends believed would prevent him from living past 40, one he was never able to overcome despite repeated intervention attempts, including during his celebrated 1997 comeback.

He died on November 22, 1998, in Las Vegas at age 45; medical examiners attributed his death to a heart condition brought on by years of drug abuse. Despite earning an estimated $30 million over his career, Ungar died with no assets.

He was posthumously inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2001, and his life was later dramatized in the 2003 film "High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story." Longtime friend and fellow player Mike Sexton later reflected, "In the game of life, Stu Ungar was a loser," a poignant summary of a career defined by unmatched genius at the table and profound personal tragedy away from it.

Stu Ungar playing style

Ungar is remembered as possessing an almost supernatural intuitive card sense, particularly in no-limit hold'em and gin rummy, with an unmatched ability to read opponents that made him nearly unbeatable in his prime.