the river | profile
100-to-1 against me winning,’ he recounted. ‘I beat him headsup to take the title. So that was doubly satisfying.’ Only a year later, Ungar won his second Main Event bracelet by shifting gears with a kind of speed and efficiency that no one had ever seen before. It was a mind-blowing exhibition that branded Ungar as the poker world equivalent of a rock star. Flush with cash, he moved his wife and kids to an English Tudor mansion and filled it with fine furnishings. Apparently, Ungar signed the papers for his house at the poker table, paying for the place with stacks of hundreds from his bankroll. He and his wife, Madeline, drove matching Jaguars. Ungar had a closet full of slim-size designer finery, and, according to a longtime friend, ‘Money was the cheapest commodity in Stuey’s life.’ He spent wildly, lived outrageously and had to fight off hordes of women. ‘They were poker groupies,’ Ungar said. ‘They wanted to be famous.’ Sounds like a great life, but was he happy? ‘That’s a good question,’ he reflected in an interview, just six months before his death. ‘I think back on those years, and I don’t know. If I was so happy, why did I escape reality all the time?’
photography ulvis alberts
Drugs don’t work
Stu Ungar’s primary vehicle for escape was drugs. He consumed them in heroic quantities. Often under the influence, he made less than sound gambling decisions. He was also a massive sucker on the golf course, losing millions of dollars to other poker players, who were so eager to get him out there that they allowed Ungar to tee up anywhere on the course. Prodded for his own dramatic example of sports-betting excesses, Ungar remembered a two‑week period during which he won $1 million at the card tables. Then, he asked, ‘You know how there are the Thanksgiving [football] games, Thursday through Monday? Well, I had 70
stacked♠
Stu Ungar Born 8 September, 1953 Died 22 November, 1998 All-time tournament winnings $3,501,321 Biggest win $1,000,000 (1st, 1997 WSOP Main Event) WSOP bracelets 5 (including three Main Event titles)
Want more? Do read The Man Behind the Shades by Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson. It’s a searing account of Ungar’s turbulent life, from one of the men who knew him best. Don’t watch High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story. It’s an unforgivably dull film that isn’t saved by a superb cast, that includes Michael Imperioli from The Sopranos.
that million in cash going into the Thanksgiving weekend, and at the end of Monday Night Football, I owed $800,000.’ He lost $1.8 million in a weekend? Ungar nodded. ‘I had no respect for money.’ Despite his great skill at poker, Ungar’s bad habits left him continually in need of funds. ‘Stuey’s money management was a joke,’ remembers Billy Baxter. ‘He had to win every day just to support his lousy habits. Then he’d run bad a couple days in poker and be busted again.’ By the late 1980s, Ungar was divorced and his life a complete shambles. The fancy house was gone; the cool cars just a memory. He spent the next
decade resembling a shadow of his former self, continually searching for new backers, and on the lookout for soft games where he could bully the table.
Triple trouble
Despite his problems, though, Ungar still knew how to win. Between the late 1980s and the late 1990s, he put in some bravura performances. Glimpses of Ungar at his best were very much evident in 1989 and 1990, when he managed amazing back-
to-back wins at Amarillo Slim’s Superbowl of Poker. Nevertheless, by 1997, when Ungar sat down to play in the WSOP Main Event, few people viewed him as a frontrunner. The old Stuey was as distant as the sight of his eyes through his bluelensed granny glasses (which he wore low on his nose in order to hide a collapsed nostril). Slowly, though, Ungar began to make his mark. Indeed, his play was so strong that by day two, local reporters had christened Ungar ‘The Comeback Kid.’ He played the game with such confidence, it was as if he could see the other players’ cards. It seemed that Classic Stuey Ungar, as he was best remembered and feared, had resurfaced. ‘It might have been the greatest performance ever in the World Series of Poker,’ recounts his longtime friend Mike Sexton. ‘He just dominated the tables.’ When play reached heads-up, Ungar’s remaining opponent, John Strzemp, ‘realised that the only chance he had of beating Stuey was to get all his chips in the pot as quickly as possible and gamble with them.’ Strzemp lost, and Ungar made history by winning his third Main Event bracelet. For a while, it seemed as if this win would turn Ungar’s life around and leave him in a prime position to capitalise on the richer poker world that was just emerging. But it was not to be. Eighteen months after winning his third Main Event, in November 1998, Stu Ungar was found dead in a cheap motel room on the nasty end of Las Vegas Boulevard. The death was ruled accidental, though cocaine, methadone, and Percodan were found in his blood. Still sounding sad about the loss of his friend, Sexton says, ‘I guess his little heart just couldn’t take it any more.’ n
I t was a mind-blowing exhibition that branded Ungar as the poker world equivalent of a rock star