Stu Ungar: What if The Fallen Star Lived?
The spring of 1997 was supposed to be the dawning, or rather redawning, of a new era in poker. Stu Ungar had just won his third World Series of Poker Main Event title and his amazing story had caught the attention of the mainstream media.
Ungar had won back-to-back world championships in 1980 and 1981 but the daily newspapers and six o’clock news paid it no mind. But in 1997 Ungar had practically risen from the dead to win the title — and the $1 million fi rst-place prize.
In between his WSOP titles Ungar amassed $1.6 million in winnings and sadly lost most of it in the pits, the sportsbooks, or to his drug addiction. So when he arrived at Binion’s Horseshoe in April 1997 looking for a stake he found no takers until his old friend Billy Baxter decided to foot the bill. Baxter had been Ungar’s stakehorse in other tournaments over the years and with four WSOP bracelets as well as three wins in Amarillo Slim’s Super Bowl of Poker, the second most prestigious tournament of its time, there were certainly worse players to invest $10,000 in.
Over the next four days Ungar put on a show that left every observer in awe. After struggling to stay awake through Day 1, Ungar showed up on Day 2 refreshed and, in typical Ungar fashion, cruised to the title on Day 4. Newspapers in Las Vegas and across the U.S. blared the story of a seemingly recovered drug addict rising above his past to return to glory. In posttournament interviews Ungar had even dedicated the win to his teenage daughter Stefanie.
Ungar, or Stuey or The Kid or The Comeback Kid or whatever nickname or moniker you wanted to attach to him, was going to be a star. That’s when it all went horribly wrong in the most predictable of ways. As the 1998 WSOP rolled around ESPN cameras were at Binion’s Horseshoe to follow Ungar as he tried to become the fi rst champion to repeat twice.
But on Monday, May 11th as the Main Event was kicking off, then tournament director Jack McClelland took a phone call from Ungar that was an ominous sign of what was to come. After explaining he wasn’t feeling well enough to play Ungar went back to sleep in his hotel room, which he had been doing for nearly three weeks. McClelland then got on the public address system and let the 362 players, numerous railbirds, and ESPN staff know that the reigning champion wasn’t feeling up to defending his title.
Nolan Dalla, who along with Peter Alson chronicled the tragic story of Ungar’s life in the book One Of A Kind, had a conversation with him not long after the Series in which he explained his decision — and admitted regretting it almost instantly while foreshadowing his own demise.
“Jack (Binion) was mad I didn’t show up. I don’t blame him. I was on the front cover of the program. People were counting on me. It was very embarrassing. A humiliating experience. But I still have my pride. I had a choice to make. I didn’t look good. I didn’t feel good. My mind wasn’t right. I showered and got dressed but I looked at myself in the mirror and I looked terrible. So I took the lesser of two evils. I could have shown up looking completely out of it, and people would have pointed at me and laughed. The alternative was not playing at all. So I didn’t play. There’s not many people that would do that, I was being staked. I walked away from a chance to win half a million. All I had to do was show up and play. It was a million-dollar freeroll. There isn’t a player in the world that would have walked away like I did. But after it was over, I realized how wrong I was not to show up. I really want to win another world championship. I want to win a fourth world championship because nobody has done that before. That would really separate me from the rest of them. And I guarantee I will win another championship – if I’m alive.”
Five months later Ungar was back in the news. The man considered by many to be the greatest natural card player of all time was found dead in his room at the Oasis Motel in Las Vegas. The Comeback Kid, and poker’s fi rst real prodigy, was dead at 45. It wasn’t a drug overdose that killed him, but rather the years of constant abuse — mostly cocaine — that had turned his heart into a solid lump of rigid tissue. November 22nd marked the 10th anniversary of Ungar’s death. In those ten years poker has changed dramatically from the world that Ungar knew.
There have been ten different WSOP Main Event winners, many of them amateurs. Field sizes have increased from the record-setting 312 in Ungar’s last Main Event to 6,844 — most of them home-game amateurs — who fl ocked to Las Vegas this past summer hoping to become a poker legend.
Online poker, which was in its infancy when Ungar died, took the game from the back rooms and private clubs to the laptops of thirty million Americans, all the while throwing hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of dollars into the poker economy with endorsement deals for the game’s top players.
Lastly, the creation of the World Poker Tour put the game of No Limit Texas Hold’em in front of millions of viewers every week on the Travel Channel and was the genesis of the poker-on-TV boom that led to the creation of the European Poker Tour, World Series of Poker Circuit, and numerous other made-for-TV poker events.
All of this happened after Ungar’s demons caught up to him and most of today’s poker fans have little understanding of how dominating Ungar was when he was on his game. With all that has happened in the ten years that he has been gone, a lot of people might be curious what The Kid could have accomplished had he not died in a seedy hotel in Las Vegas.
After speaking to some of the people who knew him best, we’ve created this alternative version of what we might have seen from one of poker’s greatest and, at the same time, most tragic legends.
Binion’s Horseshoe Casino, Las Vegas, NV – May 11, 1998
“Ladies and gentlemen, the 1997 World Series of Poker champion, Mr. Stu Ungar!” Jack McClelland’s familiar Midwest accent came over the P.A. system fi fteen minutes into 1998 Main Event. Ungar walked into the room and took his seat, noticing that his stack had been blinded off just one big and small blind.
Ungar looked anything like a champion and over the fi rst four hours of the tournament his play refl ected his image. Having been hunkered down in his hotel room for three weeks the 45-year-old should have been well rested and ready to make poker history. But his fatigue caught up to him and the defending world champ barely survived the day with only 1,500 chips over the starting stack of 10,000.
Day 2 started and Ungar was still fatigued. His play was erratic and just before the end of the second level his tournament came to an end when his trademark aggressive check-raise with a fl ush draw was called by a player with top pair. Ungar missed his draw and headed back to his room distraught, yet aware of a change in the quality of players in the game’s most prestigious event.
“They’re getting worse all the time, Billy,” Ungar told his backer, Billy Baxter, before heading upstairs. “If they’re going to be this bad, we’re going to get fi lthy rich together.” Baxter watched his horse step into the elevator and wondered how serious he was about getting fi lthy rich. Poker wasn’t just a Las Vegas thing anymore and Ungar detested traveling.
“I think he would have put that aside. I think he would have liked the limelight more than worrying about the travel too much. Everywhere he went they would have given him the biggest suite in the house. He’d have been the star and he’d have been the icon,” said Mike Sexton, one of Ungar’s closest friends. “When he walked into the poker room it would have been “Oh god, there’s Stu Ungar!” and he would have loved that.”
Foxwoods Resort Casino, Ledyard, CT – December 1998
“Where the fuck are we, Mike?” Ungar asked as he sat in the passenger seat of the rental car the pair had picked up after landing in Hartford via a connection through New York City. “And why the hell didn’t we just stay in the city and play there? Lotsa suckers in the city, Mike.”
“There’s even more here, Stu. You told me to fi nd you a place to get back into it, well, here’s the place,” reasoned Sexton as the car wove its way through the forest-lined highway in southeastern Connecticut. “This is Foxwoods. Once we’re done here we’ll head to Atlantic City for the big one down there.”
The World Poker Finals had been running for about ten days with smaller buy-in tournaments. The only No Limit Hold’em event on the schedule had long since passed but the main attraction was a $3,000 buy-in Seven-card Stud event. It wasn’t Ungar’s best game, but it most certainly was not his worst. “Good evening Mr. Ungar, Mr. Sexton,” sang the young lady working the registration desk with a typical Boston accent. “I hope you will enjoy our VIP suites during your stay.”
The next morning the two friends awoke and ate breakfast at the café. Ungar appeared to have gained back some weight since the Series. He wolfed down the meal and the pair made their way to the poker room where Sexton paid his $3,000 entry to the tournament. The Kid was just the 96th player to enter and the $288,000 prize pool was nothing compared to the riches of the WSOP. It was simply meant to be yet another second chance for Ungar to restart the most promising poker career ever.
Over the next three days Ungar laid waste to the rest of the fi eld as if he was the 21-yearold version of himself. The aggression he displayed, in Stud no less, left others confused and short-stacked. The only other recognizable name at the fi nal table was Kirk Morrison. Having just won his fi rst bracelet in this very same game only a few months ago, Morrison was the whiz kid.
“He’s the only one with any heart, Mike. The rest of ‘em are just in my way,” Ungar told Sexton during a break at the fi nal table. “How long of a drive to the Taj?” During the fi ve hour drive to Atlantic City Ungar drifted to sleep, happy that he’d managed to take down the tournament and prove to his friend and backer, not to mention the rest of the poker world, that he was on his way back.
“He really did thrive on his performance and being a winner, being a champion. When you think about his achievements, it’s just uncanny. He only entered 35 big-time poker tournaments in his entire lifetime, and he won 10 of them,” said Sexton. “Beating the toughest players in the world to win is not easy and he did it just so many times it was scary.”
In 1998, the Trump Taj Mahal was the place to be and play in Atlantic City. With fl amboyant owner Donald Trump not afraid to spend money to make the Taj a success, it was the jewel of the East Coast poker world. A recent cameo appearance in Rounders had elevated its status and with the second U.S. Poker Championship in December it was now on the tournament poker map with a major event that had the pros coming east from Vegas.
“Only $5,000? Why not make it $10,000 like the rest of the big ones?” Ungar asked Sexton as if his friend had some control over setting the buy-in. “I guess it’ll attract a few more fi sh for us to feast on.” For Ungar, the kid raised on the streets of Manhattan, this was the closest he’d come to having home fi eld advantage and the New York media were waiting for him even before the tournament started.
Add to that the fact that ESPN had decided that the biggest tournament on the East Coast was worth a one-hour timeslot. The fi - nal table would be broadcast just like his 1997 WSOP win. With the lights on Ungar felt and thrived on the additional pressure of the event becoming a spectacle. As more and more of the biggest names in poker – Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, and reigning world champion Scotty Nguyen – took their seats, they were all in awe of the re-emerging Ungar.
“Stuey, you and I are the only players in this joint,” cracked Hellmuth loud enough for the rest of the players and the omnipresent ESPN camera crews to catch. “Maybe I’ll see you at the fi nal table in a couple of days.”
Ungar was coming off of a win – his fi rst since the 1997 Main Event – and was brimming with confi dence. He fi red back. “If you’re at the fi nal table Phil, I’ll shave my head. Ya know what? I’ll let you shave it. You can even get these camera people to fi lm it,” joked Ungar, keeping his voice at the same octave as Hellmuth’s. “But when I make it I get to shave your head. You might wanna keep that hat of yours around, something tells me you’re not any better looking as a bald guy.”
The barb didn’t sit well with Hellmuth and it may have rattled him as he failed to make the fi nal table. He didn’t make good on the head-shaving bargain either, claiming he hadn’t agreed to do it. It would, however, inspire him in a post-bust tirade years later against Robert Varkonyi.
As Ungar’s game was beginning to shine his confi dence and ego were growing in stride. He continued his second improbable comeback with another title. His reputation for being able to close down tournaments was growing, but the poker community was quickly noticing that he was fi nally healthy, happy, and, best of all, playing to win.
“Oh, he had a tremendous ego. He had as big an ego as anybody, maybe bigger than Phil Hellmuth’s, if you can believe that. He certainly had an ego and believed he was the best player and when he got to the fi nal table… he won most of the time he got there, believe it or not, winning was everything to him,” said Sexton, refl ecting on Ungar’s career that saw him make 21 fi nal tables and record 13 wins (10 of them coming in major events). “Had he come in second back in 1997 it wouldn’t have shocked me if the guy had committed suicide. That’s how intent he was on winning that event, nothing else mattered to him, he was obsessed with winning that tournament and proving to the world that he could do it again. And anything short of that would have been a total, complete failure to him.”
Following the two wins at the end of 1998 Ungar returned to Vegas and continued to fi nd ways to keep himself in action and out of trouble. Encouraged by his play and his return to health Billy Baxter agreed to back The Kid in the Carnivale of Poker at the Rio Hotel. He didn’t make a single fi nal table but recorded three cashes; one in Pot Limit Omaha and two in No Limit Hold’em, including the $5,000 Championship Event. “Billy, some of those guys don’t belong in these tournaments. I should have won all three of those.”
Over the next three years Ungar did his fair share of winning tournaments. At the 1999 WSOP he captured two bracelets, both in No Limit Hold’em, and had the poker world eating out of his hand. Bigger buy-in tournaments were now popping up across the country and ESPN seemed to be re-running poker events – including Stu’s 1997 win – almost every night.
At the 2002 WSOP Ungar collected his eighth bracelet but didn’t last through the fi rst day of play in the Main Event. He appeared distracted and almost uninterested in the event that he’d won three times. Whispers began to circulate that Ungar had fallen off the wagon and was using again. In post-tournament interviews with ESPN he admitted to being distracted by other things in his life. “My daughter Stefanie is going to graduate from high school this weekend,” said Ungar. “I’m alive to see it and no poker tournament, not even this one, is bigger than that. For a kid from New York City who didn’t do so well in school, this is a big deal for me. I’m so proud of her. That kid’s my life.”
Ungar would be asked by ESPN to work as a color man on the fi nal table broadcast. Wishing to focus on his daughter he declined but he did return to the Horseshoe to watch Robert Varkonyi win the event and enjoyed every minute of Phil Hellmuth’s humiliating head shaving. Asked for his thoughts on an amateur winning poker’s biggest event, Ungar was unimpressed.
“Some of these guys couldn’t beat home games. I heard that Varkonyi even has a coach. This isn’t football; this is about one man battling another. I busted out of this one too early, next year will be different. Hopefully this Varkonyi guy makes every schmuck think they can win it and they all come here next year. I’ll be waiting.”
“In truth, in all honesty, I believe the players today as a group are far better than of yesteryear, especially in terms of being aggressive at the table,” said Sexton. “Well, nowadays players are good, really good and they’re not afraid to come back over the top and run you out of a pot, especially the aggressive players. That would have been an issue for Stuey that he would have had to contend with. That takes place more these days than it did back in those days.
“He was just ahead of his time in terms of aggressiveness and taking the bull by the horns and gathering chips like you see the top players doing today.”
Those players, including the likes of Daniel Negreanu, Gus Hansen, and Erick Lindgren, all play a style similar to Ungar’s. Be aggressive, accumulate chips early, and put your opponents to a decision for their tournament life. After Varkonyi’s win the World Poker Tour was born with an event at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
“I get asked all the time ‘if he were around today how do you think he would do?’ and truthfully I honestly believe he would not only be the greatest star player out there, but he would be so far above the next guy that it would be scary,” said Sexton. “That’s how good I think he was and how he would be. Unfortunately, back when he played there was only one real major event a year, the World Series of Poker, and once that event went by he was depressed and went into the drug world and all that, because he had to wait a another whole year to get back in the limelight.
“Now with the $10,000 buy-in tournaments and they’re all televised about every other week, I truly believe that if he was around today he wouldn’t be in the drug world because he thrived on the limelight, loved to have people patting him on the back telling him how great he was,” recalled Sexton. “And I believe that the World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker and all these other events would have just kept him where he wouldn’t have needed the drug world. I believe he would have shined above all others.”
One hundred and forty seven players plunked down the $10,000 buy-in at the 2002 Five Diamond World Poker Classic and Ungar was among them.
“Billy, this is great. Where’d they fi nd so many suckers with $10,000?” screamed Ungar across the Bellagio poker room to Baxter who was checking out his bets in the sportsbook. Over the fi rst season of the WPT Ungar played seven tournaments, cashing in six of them, leading up to the $25,000 buy-in WPT World Championship. There he put on a show in the biggest buy-in tournament on the schedule.
At a fi nal table that included Doyle Brunson and Phil Ivey, Ungar was the star. When the cameras and lights came on at the fi nal table Ungar had the chip lead. Only seven hours later he had all the chips and the $1,011,886 fi rst place prize. Ungar had captured the biggest cash of his career and by the time the episode aired on the Travel Channel six months later, he’d become one of the most well known professional poker players on the planet.
As great as Ungar was, even he wasn’t capable of denying fate its hand in shaping poker history. After bemoaning Varkonyi’s win as an amateur getting lucky in a lightning-in-abottle way, Chris Moneymaker proved Ungar wrong. The accountant from Tennessee walked into Binion’s with his just-happy-to-be-here attitude and left with a world championship and hero status to millions of amateur poker players across the United States.
Ungar had high hopes for the 2003 Main Event after capturing bracelet number nine in a preliminary event. When he busted shortly after the bubble burst in the largest Main Event in history, Ungar thought his game, and his life, were better than they’d ever been. And then it just got better. “Stu, I’d like you to meet somebody,” said Nolan Dalla, media director for the WSOP. “This is Dan Goldman, he’s the marketing director for PokerStars.com.”
Over the next hour Goldman and Ungar talked poker, gin rummy, and, most importantly, business. “And all I have to do is wear a hat or a T-shirt in the tournaments?” asked Ungar. “Seems too good to be true my friend.”
“Well, if one of our online satellite winners comes through here in the next few days, we think this might be a big year for us,” explained Goldman. “And all you’d need to do is represent our brand when you play in tournaments and play in some of our tournaments online.”
“On the computer? That might be a problem… I don’t own a computer,” said Ungar. “Well, we’ll get you one and get you set up,” replied Goldman. “Alright then, if it’s that easy, sign me up,” said Ungar, turning to see Dalla standing at the back of the room. “Hey Nolan, I’m going to be a poker star!”
The laughable irony of Ungar’s statement wasn’t lost on anybody. He already was a poker star of the highest order. With nine bracelets before 2004, Ungar was alone atop the leader board for most bracelets won as well as live tournament winnings. He was the only player in history with two $1 million cashes on his resume.
Ungar’s life in this alternative version would certainly have been different. But according to those who knew him best, it probably wouldn’t have improved the legacy he left on the game because he was already the best of all time.
“Truthfully his legacy in the poker world I believe is as the greatest No Limit Hold’em player of all time. And certainly he deserves that moniker. He’s the only player in history that has won so many titles – big time events I’m talking about – in the poker world,” said Sexton. “Back in the ’80s there were only two events really in poker. There was the World Series of Poker and Amarillo Slim’s Super Bowl of Poker. They’re both big-time events and there’s only one player in the world that’s won both of those events and that player is Stu Ungar and he won them three times each. So that alone should tell you just how great a player this guy was.”
Since Ungar’s death his daughter Stefanie and ex-wife Madeline have formed The Ungar Foundation, a not-for-profi t organization based in Las Vegas. The Foundation is dedicated to offering hope and awareness to those affected by addictive behaviors and to providing funds for established organizations that provide treatment to those battling addiction. For more information visit www.ungarfoundation. org
