Whatever Ungar's problems, it seemed to be a given that he'd put in a good effort to defend his World Series crown. He checked into Binion's Horseshoe on April 17, intending to rest up and get acclimated for the championship event three and a half weeks later. Billy Baxter, who once again funded Ungar's $10,000 entry fee, suggested he get himself warmed up with a couple preliminary tournaments. But Ungar waved him away and said, "I don't need that shit."
On the morning of May 11, the day the Series was slated to begin, Ungar's cocaine addiction was in full fl are, leaving him emotionally depressed, strung out, and physically wrecked. His right nostril was practically flush against his face. The tips of his fingers had been burned black from handling the hot end of a glass crack pipe. Bob Stupak, casino entrepreneur and occasional backer of Ungar's, had offered to provide a hairdresser and makeup artist to ensure that the drug addled star would look presentable, but Ungar never green-lighted them to come upstairs.
Just minutes before the tournament's starting time, Ungar remembered, "I got showered and dressed. I put my clothes on. And then I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked terrible. I looked like I came from Auschwitz. That's when I knew I couldn't sit there and play for four days, for 10 hours a day, and put in a good performance. I wasn't geared up. I was physically out of it. The year took a toll on me." As the opening hand was being dealt, Ungar remained sequestered in his 12th floor room at the Horseshoe. Baxter managed to get back his $10,000 and the game went on without its defending champion.
Ungar stopped speaking for a moment, maybe to replay the World Series nightmare in his mind. "Listen, not coming down to play in that tournament was criminal. I honestly think I could have won back-to-back if I was in decent shape. But I thought it would have been more embarrassing to have shown up looking the way I did than for me to stay in my room and not play. In the end, though, I disappointed everyone and, what's worse, I made everybody who's jealous of me happy."
But maybe the horrible experience had given him perspective. If he walked away from the Horseshoe with a realization that some things are more important than the primitive act of winning money - like not letting down the very people who care about you - then it all could be worth it in the long run, couldn't it? Ungar considered the theory for a split second. "If there is more to life than gambling," he said, "I don't know that I'm able to enjoy it. And what I'm afraid of is that gambling ain't stimulating me lately. That's a bad sign."
Several days after opening up at Arizona Charlie's, Ungar was having dinner with his ex-wife, Madelaine, and daughter Stephanie at the Sahara Casino and Hotel, a mid-level place on the Strip with a low-stakes poker room. Stephanie, 16 at the time, was a lovely, intelligent girl who had endured a lot of disappointment and heartache from her father. At that moment, though, she was thrilled to be with him. "We've spent a whole week together," she gushed. Most importantly, he appeared to be completely straight. "People introduce themselves to my dad and say that it's a pleasure to meet him. We walk around holding hands, and everybody is so happy to see my dad with me."
When they strolled into the Sahara's poker room, Ungar's dentist was there, messing around in a low-stakes, 30-person freeze-out with a $22 buy-in and a first prize of a few hundred dollars. Just for kicks, maybe showing off his star patient, the dentist requested that Ungar pull up a chair and enter the event. Considering that Ungar's more obvious poker milieu would have been the Horseshoe or the Mirage, where, at the time, games ranked among the highest in town, this was a bit of a comedown. But, as a favor to the man who had built a bridge for the front of his mouth, Ungar dispatched his ex-wife to the blackjack pit and accepted the invitation.
He wound up signing 40 autographs, and a crowd of some 200 railbirds formed around a tournament that would ordinarily have generated no interest whatsoever.
Goosed by the crowd and glad to be back in action, Ungar played aggressively and hard, as if psychologically making up for the World Series he had missed. "It came down to me and this old man," Ungar recalled. "I had $12,000 in tournament chips in front of me. He had $400. Then he outdrew me for seven pots in a row and won the thing."
Ungar was initially upset about losing. Then the man told him, "You made my life, Mr. Ungar. I can tell my children, my grandchildren, and everybody else that I beat you."
After shaking the man's hand, Ungar said to him, "If I can make your life, I'm tickled that I lost."
This encounter provided a rare glimpse at Ungar's sentimental side, but, sadly, it didn't augur long-term change. A couple of weeks later, he convinced a doctor to prescribe narcotic painkillers and found himself backsliding into drug dependency. Following a disagreement with his girlfriend, he bashed her in the face with a telephone. She kicked him out of her house and called the police. He went to stay with a friend, someone said, but nobody seemed able to find nd him.
Mike Sexton hinted that Puggy Pearson might have a lead. Puggy had met Ungar two days before at Sam's Town Hotel and Casino, and had lent him $500. "He didn't look too damned good," Puggy said. "Stuey was sitting there on the bench, next to a guy who claimed to be his plumber. Stu gave me his word, on his daughter's life, that he would pay me back $500 in two days, which is today. I lay 100-to-1 that I don't hear from him until he needs me again. But that's okay." Puggy sighed. Then he added, "Stuey's all right."
A day later, Ungar was back at Binion's Horseshoe, registered on someone else's credit card. Speaking over the phone and sounding lucid, he said, "I'm gonna start playing. I'm waiting to see a friend of mine who's got money for me. Then I go to the Mirage."
Despite vows to resume his once brilliant career, Ungar maintained a ghostly poker-room presence during the summer and into the fall of 1998. Billy Baxter lent him 25 grand and he used it to play $30/$60 Hold 'Em. But his heart was no longer in it. Inferior players beat him in headsup matches, and cocaine retook its place at the center of Ungar's life. He continually phoned the Mirage poker room, trying to scare up money from old friends, but nobody would take his calls.
Then, in November 1998, things seemed ready to turn around yet again. Ungar signed a contract with hotelier Bob Stupak, agreeing that Stupak would pay off Ungar's debts and finance tournament-play in exchange for a piece of Ungar's future winnings. Stupak even assigned a bodyguard named Dave to look after Ungar and make sure he stayed away from drugs. However, on November 20th, Ungar convinced Dave that he had to take his daughter to a birthday dinner.
Dave cut him loose on that Friday afternoon, and Ungar checked into the Oasis Motel, a notorious short time sex joint on the northern end of Las Vegas Boulevard. He paid cash for a single night and claimed the Mirage as his permanent residence on the check-in form. Earlier in the day Stupak had given him a $10,000 advance, as "walking-around money."
The next morning, after Ungar failed to check out of his room on time, an Oasis employee knocked on the door, entered the room, and found him lying face down in bed, shaking. Apparently in no condition to leave, Ungar asked to see the hotel manager, then slipped the manager a $100 bill for a second night. "Can you close the window?" Ungar asked. "I'm cold." The manager looked up and noticed that the window was tightly shut.
Twenty-four hours later, on November 22nd, Stu "The Kid" Ungar was found lying in the same faced own position on the mattress - but this time he was dead. Eight hundred eighty-two dollars, all that Ungar had to his name, was in his pants pockets. Police found the room to be clean of drugs and paraphernalia.
According to a Clark County spokesman, the official cause of Ungar's death was coronary arterial sclerosis brought on by his lifestyle. Essentially, the arteries around his heart hardened and would not allow blood to circulate. Ungar's passing was ruled accidental, even though cocaine, Percodan, and methadone were found in his blood.
Maybe the dope in Ungar's system reflected a final binge before he checked into the motel with the intention of kicking his habit for good. Maybe he sensed that the end was near and wanted to die alone, in peace. Or maybe something more nefarious transpired.
A longtime friend of Ungar's claims to know what happened. "Stuey bought a bunch of crack and picked up two hookers who like to troll near the Oasis," says the friend. "Once they found out how much money Stuey had on him" - presumably a good chunk of Stupak's $10,000 - "he was as good as dead. They pushed him to smoke enough so that he went into convulsions - which Stuey was prone to do. The convulsions came, they took most of the money, and left Stuey for dead."
Ungar's funeral was presided over by a rabbi and financed by Bob Stupak. The ceremony was a who's who of no-limit players, and Stupak reportedly hit them up for donations to help cover the burial costs.
Days later, at the big-money tables around town, cards were dealt, millions were won and lost, and the games rolled on unabated by the passing of poker's ultimate supernova. ♠
the end
...edited by btd
below Jack Binion and Stu Unger..World Champion of Poker 1997