Bio on Stuey Ungar reveals that poker champ didnt play all his cards right
Poker has so permeated the national consciousness in recent years - with games on TV, bestselling books and even a weekly column in The New York Times - its easy to forget that the game long dwelled in a dark corner of the American psyche.
Played in smoky back rooms and dingy casinos a world away from the glitz of modern-day Las Vegas, poker was favoured by cowboys, gangsters and professional gamblers.
That changed several years ago, when Internet-savvy players flooded the major poker tournaments, turning them from the turf of the outlaw to the home of the accountant, the business manager, the mathematics doctorate student. Poker is no longer defined by its position outside the mainstream of society, though it still holds that, but by the money it offers and the seemingly easy ways to get it.
Colourful characters still abound, but stories about first-time players who qualify for big tournaments through satellite competitions and go on to beat the pros are becoming the rule rather than the exception.
Poker, in other words, has become a venue for the amateur.
Set against this backdrop is One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey The Kid Ungar, the Worlds Greatest Poker Player.
Nolan Dalla and Peter Alsons authorized biography of a man whose name, when mentioned in gambling circles, evokes a stream of anecdotes about his gutsiness and his out-of-control lifestyle plays out in two ways. One is a straightforward account of Ungars remarkable career, which saw him rise from New Yorks Lower East Side to become one of the best professional card players.
Mixed into that story line, however, is the cautionary tale that is Ungars life - and his lonely death at 45 in a motel room. Ungar loved the "action," betting on anything and everything, resulting in jaw-dropping wins and losses. He was also a severe drug addict, a man whose considerable career earnings - he won the lucrative World Series of Poker a record three times - often went up his nose or were gambled away.
Dalla (a professional handicapper and media director for the World Series of Poker) and Alson (author of the memoir Confessions of an Ivy League Bookie) do an admirable job of not attempting to minimize Ungars many faults. Besides being a drug addict and a gambling fiend, he was a philanderer, a sometimes absentee father and socially awkward. The real trick Dalla and Alson pull off is showing just how magnetic Ungar was despite all of that.
Without resorting to the kind of hyperbole that dooms many sports biographies, One of a Kind shows what made Ungar so special to so many. A master of almost every card game he played, Ungar was also hopelessly out of touch with the real world. Later in life, he had trouble cashing in his winnings because he didnt have any identification or bank account. In the timeless world of Las Vegas, he didnt even have a watch.
But he was a genius with cards in his hands.
Perhaps his signature moment came at the 1997 World Series of Poker. By then, drugs had ravaged Ungar. He was frail and looked sickly, with a nasal cavity that had collapsed from so much cocaine abuse. But he got into the tournament, made his way through the competition and eventually won his unprecedented third title.
Afterward, clutching a picture of his daughter Stefanie, he told an interviewer that he hoped he had learned from his past mistakes. He died the following year.
With this biography, Dalla and Alson have provided a fitting epitaph.
One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey The Kid Ungar, the Worlds Greatest Poker Player
2005-09-12
