Poker Unclogged

Regular readers of Poker Unclogged may recall a passing mention to the best hand read ever: Stu Ungar called an all in bet of $32k with ten high because he had worked out that his opponent, Mansour Matloubi, had a busted straight draw with 4-5.

This week's post provides more background to the life of Stu Ungar, the only man to win three WSOP main event titles.

He was born in 1953, he had a genius IQ and was a professional gambler at 14. Cards were his forte but horses his weakness: he squandered the millions he won playing at the tables punting at the track.

He started as a gin rummy player - at 15, he borrowed $500 and bought into a tournament and carried away the $10,000 booty - but moved to poker when opponents refused to enter gin tournaments if they knew he was playing.

His style was that of an assassin – after he destroyed a top professional called Harry 'Yonkie' Stein, the latter stopped playing rummy all together. One observer remarked of him: 'he was never the same after than night.'

Ungar himself admitted that he enjoyed watching his opponents crumble over the course of a rummy dust up and offered this insight:

'I suppose someone [could] be a better Hold 'em player than me. But I don't see how anyone could play gin better than me'

For a while, he played blackjack, which at the time was played with a single deck of cards and his ability to forecast the remaining cards led to him being banned from casinos. His card counting ability was incredible – his mathematical brain allowed him to figure out the most amazing odds.

When he was banned from the casinos, he bet any takers that he could count down the last two decks in a six deck shoe, from which games were dealt. Despite offering to wager $10,000 on the feat, no one wanted a piece of the action but Bob Stupak – former owner of Vegas World and designer of the Strosphere Tower – offered him $100,000 to $10,000 if he could do something even more amazing – count the last three decks out of six.

Ungar counted down 156 cards and claimed not only his $100,000 but the friendship of his beaten adversary

His reputation as a card counter stuck and for a while, he couldn't find any poker cash games so he was forced to play tournaments, in which he continued to excel.

However, he was unable to escape from the allure of bad bets and despite winning the WSOP at 25, by 1997, he couldn't find enough money to enter any tournaments and no one took him seriously.

Then a benefactor paid the $10,000 entry and Ungar went on to win 10 of the 30 major no limit tournaments he entered in a four-day extravaganza. Two months later he was broke again and in two days he was dead, in the Oasis Motel, South Las Vegas Boulevard.

He had taken a cocktail of drugs and painkillers which set off an existing heart condition.