The Life of Stu Ungar In & Out of Poker
The late Stu Ungar died on November 22, 1998. Yes, it has been a long time ago. Nevertheless, professional poker players and the entire poker industry have not forgotten the exceptional poker skills that he displayed in each of the game he participated in. Had drug addiction not taken a toll on his life, we could have seen more of Stu Ungar's admirable poker abilities.
Born on September 8, 1953 in New York City, Stu Ungar was raised in a Jewish household. He first learned how to play cards when he was only ten years old during a vacation he spent with his family at the Catskills Mountains. He used to play with the staff of the hotel where he and his family stayed in. He loved to play gin rummy then and would even beat the staff until they lost all their nightly tips.
Life had been difficult for Stu Ungar. He was only thirteen years old when his father died of heart attack. After a year, his mother became incapacitated due to stroke. This forced Stu Ungar to drop out of school at such an early age in order to work for his mother and his sister Judy. What happened to his family could also be considered as a blessing in disguise because it had given him the chance to get involved with the gambling industry. First, he worked at a local card club as a dealer. He eventually started playing gin professionally until it came to a point when he started defeating most of the gin giants. However, despite the fact that he was earning large amount of money from playing cards, he was also losing all of them because he was also hooked into racetrack betting. His debts started to accumulate until he had to oblige himself to leave his hometown. This paved the way for him to relocate to Las Vegas, Nevada.
In Las Vegas, Stu Ungar became one of the best professional poker players. His poker contributions have always amazed the poker public. Such poker contributions include his victories at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) events, in which he had the chance to win five WSOP bracelets. He used to be the youngest poker professional to have won in the main event of WSOP but poker professional Phil Hellmuth broke such record in 1989. He was also recognized for being a three-time winner of the main event of WSOP. Poker professional Johnny Moss was also recognized for such achievement but his first victory was earned only by vote and not by defeating poker players in a tournament. Stu Ungar was also recognized for his back-to-back WSOP championship successes in 1980 and 1981. Aside from him, there are only two other poker giants who have achieved such victory, Johnny Chan and Doyle Brunson.
The poker industry was well aware how Stu Ungar's health deteriorated due to drug addiction. His fellow poker professionals even thought that he would not reach forty years old. They also knew that the only reason why Stu Ungar lived a little longer was because of the fact that he wanted to see his daughter grow up.
On November 22, 1998, Stu Ungar's dead body was found in his Oasis Motel room located in Las Vegas, Nevada.