High-end players in Vegas were thrilled by the arrival of Ungar, who was virtually unknown outside New York and more than willing to gamble with anyone at gin rummy. He angled for sky's-the-limit stakes and, in order to attract action, always offered to be in the dealer's position. This meant that opposing players received an extra card and threw out the first discard to begin the game - a huge advantage for them. To hustlers like Amarillo Slim, that setup was irresistible. Slim came into town with a satchel full of cash, ready to break this little freak from the Lower East Side. "I said, 'Don't let him leave. I'm on my way,'" recounts Slim. "Well, I brought enough $100 bills to burn down the whole ******* Horseshoe."
Slim left $40,000 poorer.
According to Ungar, it's his ability to remember past hands, past games, past actions that helped make him so successful at cards. That ability led him to turn poker into a series of complex numerical problems. What made his performance so stunning, though, was that, unlike the mathematically inclined players who came after him - highly educated guys like Chris "Jesus" Ferguson who were aided by computer science and sophisticated theories - he had no access to computers or college professors. Ungar instinctively incorporated a crude version of high-level math without ever formalizing - or even fully understanding - what he was doing.
And he muscled-up his mental game with a steroidal dose of machismo. "When it comes to mano a mano stuff in cards, I take it personally; my ego is at stake," said Ungar. "If somebody challenged me, no matter how nice the guy might be, I'd find a flaw in him. Maybe there'd be something about his eyebrow that I hated. I take it very personal that somebody wants to beat me. I got to hate somebody to play him."
What about Amarillo Slim and his $40,000? What had Ungar found distasteful about Slim? "I hated him for being so ******* tall and lanky," Ungar said. "And he's a cocky guy. He thought he was conning me, and I wanted to wipe that smirk and everything else off his face in the worst way."
As word of Ungar's acumen spread, the gin action in Las Vegas dried up for him. Hotelier Steve Wynn once said, only half jokingly, that Ungar would need to dig up someone who'd been living in a cave in order to uncover an opponent who hadn't yet heard about his talents. Ungar had no choice now but to find a game he could beat without completely turning off the competition. Poker, with its reasonable degree of luck and abundance of weak players who view themselves as losing to the table rather than to an individual, was perfect.
In the early spring of 1980, the 27-year-old Ungar, who had never before played no-limit Texas Hold 'Em, asked Fred "Sarge" Ferris, a high-rolling poker stud, to back him in the upcoming World Series. Sarge, who died of a heart attack in 1989, naturally hesitated. "He figured that I'd be burning up $10,000," said Ungar. "But then Jack Binion said, 'Let him play. I'll put up 25 percent.'" Sarge relented. The young prodigy went on to storm through the tournament and take the title. "Doyle Brunson had laid 100-to-1 odds against my winning that Series, and I beat him heads-up to take the title," Ungar said. "So that was doubly satisfying."
In 1981 Ungar won the World Series for a second time, and became a disruptive force at the no-limit tables. "Back then there were a lot of Texans who were used to dominating the games - and Stuey would put these guys on tilt," says fellow New Yorker Jay Heimowitz. "He would raise an awful lot of pots and play a lot of crap. Then, all of a sudden, he'd totally change his style by tightening up. They couldn't handle the continual adjustments - but I loved it."
While Ungar described himself as a "buzzsaw" and insisted, "They got a skeleton out of the closet when they put me in a no-limit game," the reality is that he was a big sprayer of money in cash contests. "Especially when it was his own money," says Danny Robison, who played a lot of Stud with Ungar. "The consensus is that he did better with other people's money than with his own. Maybe that's because he cared more about his ego than he did about his bankroll."
When people discuss Ungar's drawbacks as a player, the conversation invariably shifts to the very quality that made him successful: the reckless aggression of an amphetamine-crazed pit bull. On a rush, when he was getting cards and making hands, that style of play worked in his favor, allowing him to steamroll the table; when Ungar ran cold, however, this same strategy was a recipe for financial ruin. "The thing you never hear about Stuey is that he made a great laydown," says Barry Greenstein, currently considered the winningest player in poker. "Any time he had top pair, he just moved in. But if he ran into a real hand, he would lose." Reese, who seems to understand Ungar as well as anyone, adds, "Of all the people I've played with over the past 30 years, Stuey could be the best and the worst. But that is no formula for success. What you get when you're the best does not nearly balance the losses you accrue when you're the worst."
Whatever the case - even those who are critical of Ungar's overly aggressive cash-game style describe him as being fearsome, not to mention fearless, in heads-up and tournament play - he appeared to be living every one of his dreams during the early 1980s, taking both his high and low ambitions to their extremes. He married Madelaine in '82, then bought a large Tudor-style home and filled it with fine furnishings. The couple's daughter, Stephanie, was born that same year, and one day his new wife went out and purchased his-and-hers Jaguars - on a whim. However, no amount of domestic perfection could get Ungar to settle down. He routinely blew through massive amounts of cash and spent nights bedding a rotating cast of poker groupies who hung around the high-stakes card rooms with dollar signs in their eyes and bottomless appetites for drugs, sex, and fame.
Though Ungar seemed to be living the life of a rock star, was he happy? "That's a good question," he said. "I think back on those years and I don't know. If I liked it so much, why did I escape reality all the time?"
edited by btd