stuunger

Stu Unger Story

Courtesy of The Good Gambling Guide

Stu Unger won the World Series of Poker 3 times in his young career. He won back-to-back tournaments in 1980 and 1981 and again in 1997. The ups and downs of a professional gambler often have tragic endings. Such was also the case with Mr. Unger. Truly a gifted card player.Mr. Unger struggled with various drug addictions. He was at times a heavy or binge drug user, and the good Lord finally called in his marker. Mr. Unger cashed in his chips for the last time in a Las Vegas motel on November 22, 1998, he was only 45 years old. Here is a picture of Stu Unger with Jack Binion at a much happier time - May 15, 1997.

JACK BINION, left, co-president and part-owner of Binion's Horseshoe hotel and casino, and Stu Unger look over Unger's $1 million World Series of Poker cash first prize Thursday in Las Vegas. It was the third million dollar win for the 43-year-old Las Vegas professional gambler. Photo by R. MARSH STARKS / LAS VEGAS SUN

"I never wanted to be called a good loser;
if you're a good loser, you're still a loser." Stu Unger.

Stu Unger would bet anyone $10,000 to place 6 decks of cards in a shoe. The bet was that he would correctly identify the final 104 cards (or 2 decks) in the shoe. No one would take the bet. Finally in January 1977, Bob Stupak, former owner of Stupak's Vegas World and Stratosphere Tower, offered Stu $100,000 to identify the final 3 decks in a 6 deck shoe. Without hesitation, Stu counted the final 3 decks (156 cards) and won the $ 100,000 wager. It was the beginning of a life-long friendship.

Ungar, who was born in New York City and raised on the city's Lower East Side, became a professional gambler at age 14, a year after his father, who was a bookmaker and bar operator, had died.

Stu was an incredible gin rummy player. At age 10 in '63, he won his first gin rummy tournament in a Catskill Mountain Resort while vacationing with his parents. At age 14, he was regularly playing and beating the best players in New York. At 15 he dropped out of school when a well known bookie staked Stu to the $500 buy-in at a big gin rummy tournament. Stu won the $10,000 first prize without ever loosing a hand, a record still held in the card rooms of New York City. A week later, after giving his parents $1,000, he lost the rest on horses at the Aqueduct racetrack. It was a sign of things to come.

Ungar moved to Miami where the juiciest Gin games were. He did well but his weakness for sports and track betting drained him of any success. In 1976 Stu reached Las Vegas, broke and just about beaten. Somehow he found the money to enter a $50,000 tournament. On the last two hands he forecast the losing player's cards - correctly. This bravado was another bad career move as it meant other players feared his skills. As a result, he could no longer find any games outside the tournaments.

It wasn't long before he decided to try his luck at blackjack. He'd cleaned up on poker tables from Nevada to New Jersey and the time was right to move on. One night at Caesars Palace he won $83,000 but the manager stopped the play. Stu retaliated by correctly forecasting the last 18 cards left in the single-deck shoe. That was the beginning of the end for single deck blackjack tables. They were removed from Caesars and later from other casinos, and Stu's picture was posted up in the security rooms of dozens of casinos. He was banned for life.

In 1980 at 24, Ungar entered his first world championship. He won and to silence the critics of his "fluke" he won the next year as well. He wasn't done with pure gambling though and he lost $900,000 in RAZZ game in an afternoon, $1m in a craps session and picked up $5m from Larry Flint (the porn king) over many heads-up sessions. Ultimately his fever for action took everything in the physical world and his drug addiction was close to taking his life.

By the 1997 WSOP tournament in Las Vegas, Ungar hadn't been in the frame for over 7 years. He was seen around the gambling Mecca playing in small games but was pretty much written off by the poker world. He didn't have the money to enter the Championship event but an hour before play an anonymous benefactor produced the $10,000 entry. Four days later the greatest comeback in poker history had occurred and the record of three victories established. In all he won 10 major No limit Hold'em tournaments out of the 30 he entered!

Two months later he was broke again. Another year of oblivion and Stu was on the comeback trail again with his old friend Bob Stupak offering to cancel his debts and signing him up for commissioned card play. With $2000 of Stupak's money in his pocket (spending money) he checked into a cheap downtown hotel. Two days later he was dead. He left behind a 15 year old daughter.

He once said although he could conceive of a better poker player than himself, not in the next 50 years of the world would there be a better Gin player.

Nov 22nd, 1998 - Oasis Motel, 1731 S. Las Vegas Blvd. - Stu Ungar found dead.
The Clark County Coroner's office on Monday ruled Ungar's death accidental based on the results of toxicology tests that came back from the lab Friday. A mixture of narcotics and pain killers triggered a heart condition that killed him. The drugs found in Ungar's system were cocaine, methadone and the pain-killer Percodan, Clark County Coroner Ron Flud said. No one drug by itself was enough to cause Ungar's death. "The cause is accidental death by coronary atherosclerosis". "The heart condition developed over a period of time. The attack was brought on by his life-style."

Coronary atherosclerosis occurs when not enough blood can be pumped through the heart muscle. It is not uncommon to find a mixture of cocaine, Percodan and methadone in an autopsy of a drug user. Percodan is often used to bring a person down from his cocaine high so he can sleep. Methadone is given to heroine addicts to get them off the drug. It is not known when Ungar, a three-time world poker champion, took the drugs that contributed to his death. Police investigating the scene said they found no drug paraphernalia at that location.

Thanks to the Good Gambling Guide for their contribution of this story.