Continued from Part Two: The Fall & Fall
Introduction: An Icon of the Game
Billy Baxter: “Stuey was a great poker player later, maybe the best ever. But when it came to gin, Stuey was hands down the greatest player that’s ever lived or maybe that ever will live.”
It’s difficult to discuss Stu Ungar without treading over old ground. His drug, gambling and poker exploits have been examined in depth, and his legendary status within the modern generation appears fixated on these three topics. Ask any young poker fan what they know about Stu Ungar’s ability to play cards, and they’ll immediately highlight his aggressive playing style, his three World Series of Poker wins and his celebrated heads-up encounter with Mansour Matloubi. However, what they, and many accounts of Ungar, will criminally exclude, is his mastery of gin.
For years, gin rummy was hugely popular among card players, and before becoming lost in the hysteria of poker, was widely played in clubs and casinos across the country. Despite the presence of poker, gin was the weapon of choice for many a professional gambler, and it was the game that propelled Stuey down the road to stardom. Gin played a major role in the Ungar story, it’s what brought him to the dance, and regardless of his achievements in poker, it was gin that acted as a launchpad for what would ultimately be an infamous and eventful career.
Stuey’s childhood was unique in that he was amid tough company from a very early age. As the son of a mafia bookmaker, Stuey would often utilise his mathematical prowess to assist with the books, and in doing so encountered a sordid mix of gangsters, gamblers, and professional card players. However, encompassed by his father’s passing and his mother’s subsequent neglect, Stuey was able to utilise these early experiences to find a home in the clubs of New York and exude a confidence and independence that would have otherwise been lost. Ungar was very different: he was brash and cocky, he was pale and scrawny, he was 50 years younger than everyone else, but he was still “Ido’s kid”, he was the young lad that Ido brought to the gambler-infested neighbourhood bar, Fox’s Corner, and it was this ‘protection by association’ that enabled him to keep such clouded company.
But it wasn’t just his standout appearance that got him noticed, it was also his ability to play cards. Having turned $20 into $60 playing wiseguy Art Rubello at gin, news soon spread that a kid barely out of diapers had beaten a gin veteran, and people inevitably started taking an interest in Stuey and his incredible talents. With school becoming little more than an afterthought, Stuey spent many an hour in the clubs, either dealing, playing, or discussing strategy with Genovese gangster Victor Romano, a 60-something bookmaker and club owner who had a passion for gin. Romano would later become Stuey’s manager, as well as a father figure of sorts, and, along with offering him protection and standing, arranged games against other gin players. Of course, Ungar slaughtered anyone Romano placed in his path.
But the aim of this article isn’t to provide a history lesson, it’s to ask questions, and now that we’ve established how Stuey became a professional gin player, and that he was indeed a formidable force in the game, the first question that pops into my head is: why was he such a good player? What enabled this skinny, Jewish teenager from Manhattan to become the most feared gin player in the world? Was he naturally the best, or did he become the best?
I think it’s a combination of the two.
There’s a myth surrounding Stuey that he was simply naturally good at cards, but the reality is that he was actually a great student of the game too. He was incredibly observant, and whilst dealing he would analyse every decision that was made. He could pick up reads, spotted where opponents placed a card in their hand and seemed to always know how close they were to making gin. He also discussed the game obsessively with Romano, and the two would run through different scenarios and debate which decisions/moves were the most optimal. Ungar had a passion for games and a desire to win, but he didn’t just pick up a pack of cards and beat people without thinking. He approached gin with a strategy. To quote Nolan Dalla in the biography The Man Behind the Shades, “He became the greatest ‘defensive’ gin player of all time, less intent on completing his own molds than preventing from making gin and winning points.”
However, this isn’t to negate his natural born talents. He was blessed with an incredible memory: a godsend in gin. He had no problem remaining focused over long periods, and thus made few mistakes. But most importantly, he possessed an innate ability to pick up games quicker than anyone else. Gin, poker, klabberjass, pinochle, ziganet – give him any game and he could master it. “I wasn’t a gin rummy player, but I played with him in a similar game,” reminisces Freddy Deeb. “There’s a game in California that still goes on sometimes. We played around 1990 a game called pan. It’s only played in one casino in Vegas at the Plaza. We played 400 condition, which is big, a really big game, you can win or lose $50,000. He was very good at that too and was skilled at a number of games. Being able to play numerous games to a high standard is what makes someone a great card player.”
Is the ability to learn and pick up things quickly something you’re born with? Perhaps this was the “sixth sense” that gin pro Danny Robison was referring to. As Stuey said himself: “People would teach me a card game that I never played and 2 days later I would be better than them at a card game they'd been playing for 30 years. I was a freak of nature… I was like Bobby Fischer in chess. At 15, I was massacring people who had mastered this stuff for 30 years. I made a shambles out of them.”
The second question that needs to be asked is: if he was so good at gin – Chris Bjorin: “I played gin rummy myself and sat behind him a couple of times. He played incredibly well.” – then why didn’t he win more money than he did, which leads us onto the second part of the question: why didn’t he live a constant life of affluence? The answer to the latter will surprise no one: he was an “action freak”. Stuey found boredom in the ease of winning, whatever profits emerged, and so sought challenges elsewhere, namely in the form of sports betting. This wasn’t something he could beat with ease, and thus became an obsession that would ultimately contribute considerably to his downfall.
More intriguingly, perhaps, was that the art of the hustle was completely lost on Stuey. Stuey’s goal first and foremost was to beat people – that was his natural instinct and desire, and so the money ultimately became little more than a bonus. Stuey simply wasn’t a hustler, and feigning weakness or keeping a low profile to increase gross profit was of interest to only those who managed him.
Once Stuey had conquered New York, Romano’s nephew, Phil ‘Philly Brush’ Tartoglia, took him to Vegas in search of fresh meat. Initially, Stuey sliced and diced his way through the opposition, but he soon became a marked man as he took on and beat the best. As a result, word quickly filtered its way through Vegas that Stuey was a man to avoid. Inevitably, his action dried up and finding a game became his toughest challenge of all.
Phil Ivey is widely regarded as the world’s best poker player, yet he can still find action and continue to win millions at the poker table. That luxury didn’t exist for Stuey, but he did little to aid his cause, as Mel Judah explains: “At the beginning, when he was a young kid, people would use him to play big matches of [gin] rummy, for big money, but later he was banned from tournaments when they found out how good he was. In those days, if you’re that good, you should keep it to yourself. His temperament often let him down, and his temperament didn’t really improve.”
It’s common consensus between those who played and watched Stuey (Baxter, Judah, Bjorin and co.) that he was the greatest gin player that ever lived, and, despite the heights reached in poker, that this was undoubtedly his best game. In New York, he beat the likes of Teddy Price, Nat ‘Bronx Expresso’ Klein, and Leo ‘The Jap’, before moving to Vegas and defeating players of the ilk of Danny Robison, who was then regarded as the best gin player in Vegas. But what sets Stuey’s achievements apart from those of poker is not just that he toppled anyone who was put in front of him, but that he destroyed them. He showed Robison the bottom card and still took $30,000 off him; he dealt to Stan ‘Jimmy Black’ Silverman, and despite conceding a major edge, still obliterated him; he won 27 games straight off Canadian Harry ‘Yorkie’ Stein; he finished first in virtually every tournament he entered. Stuey was a terminator; nobody could slow him down.
In gin, Stuey was invincible. He just couldn’t be beaten. However, he wasn’t unstoppable. The way to stop him was to simply not play him, which is what most did, and it was for this reason that Stuey was forced to turn his attention to poker. Stuey once said, “Gin is a lot different from any other card game. It’s not like poker. You can’t bluff or put moves on people. Gin is a game of control,” so it’s ironic that it was his lack of “control” that turned a potential goldmine into a minor financial source that would merely be used to supply his many vices.
As the years passed and poker increased in both popularity and profitability, gin held much less relevance to Stuey. In one sense, he was fortunate that poker had come to his rescue, but it’s likely that, at some stage, he would have been able to pick up another card game and master that if need be. This didn’t mean, however, that gin was completely out of his life. If he spotted an opportunity to play someone, he would take it, but even decades later, his reputation and inability to ‘take it quietly’ made this a very difficult task indeed. On that note, I leave you with a story that was recently regaled to me by Jeff Duvall, a veteran poker pro from London. His tale encapsulates not only Stuey’s loss of action as ‘the world’s greatest gin player’, but also his weakness for gambling, which I shall be placing under scrutiny in Part Three.
“I was a blackjack player back in the 70s and 80s, counting cards and lots of things. In the late eighties, a team of us were at the Dunes [Casino] for a few months. The owner at the time was a Japanese fella who brought in some guys to take over the license. This new team didn’t care about profits, just the job, so there were card counters all over the place. The host there was a big shot in Vegas, won a bracelet in 2006 in fact. He said, “I know what you’re doing, but if you give me five percent of the profit, I’ll make sure they don’t bar you. We agreed, because we were winning and didn’t want to stop. We actually ended up winning about $300,000 over three months, which was quite big back then.
Anyhow, this guy started inviting us around to his house. He had a place on the country club, and we were just looking to keep him happy. Tino Lechich was part of our team at the time and he was a top backgammon player. One day, this guy said he had someone Tino could play at backgammon, ‘If you’re here by 11am tomorrow morning,’ he said, ‘I’ll bring him over. He’s my cousin and he’s a very wealthy guy.’
So, we’re around his house the next day when there’s a knock at the door, and who does his cousin turn out to be? Yeah, it’s only Stuey Ungar, who was no more his cousin than I was. What he’s told Stuey though to get him over is that there are some people here who are willing to play him at gin rummy, not backgammon. When I saw Stuey, he was so off his head, he was completely out of it, and it was obvious he hadn’t been to bed. In fact, I didn’t think he was going to live another month he looked so bad. He was just white. ‘Who’s gonna play me at gin rummy?!’ he roared. ‘There’s no one here that’s going to play you at gin rummy,’ I replied. He then turned to the host and shouted, ‘Fucking hell, you got me down here for nothing!’ ‘It’s OK,’ said the host, ‘we’ll play backgammon instead. ‘I know him,’ replied Stuey. ‘I’m not playing him at backgammon.’
It was then suggested that we play both games, one gin rummy and one backgammon. Now, we’re not stupid, and we know that we have no edge in this spot. Stuey was unbeatable at gin rummy, and that’s what we’d heard from everyone, he hadn’t kept it a secret, yet there’s always a chance that he can snatch a win in the backgammon. So, obviously, we declined to do business. However, Stuey’s here now, and the phone’s going off the hook as Stuey lays $20,000 on this game, $20,000 on another - it was ridiculous the money he was throwing around. We decided to start laying him on a basketball game, and he agreed to take us on. Within an hour, he’s $100,000 ahead, even though we’re not giving him good lines! Luckily, we just about got out of it, and he left, upset with us and screaming abuse as he went. That was Stuey. It’s certainly a day I won’t forget.”
Next time, I study the dark, and musky depths of Ungar’s relationship with gambling, the vice that many considered to be his ultimate downfall.