Flush: ** A lot is said about the importance of bankroll management, but many people doubt it and always think that everything will work out in the end. Life shows, however, that even a poker genius can't resist an unregulated career. Get to know (and reflect on) the story of Stu Ungar, the Pele of poker.
Stu Ungar (1980-1981-1997 WSOP Champion)
Ungar was born in New York in 1953 and grew up in the poor eastern suburbs. He became a professional footballer at the age of 14, a year after his father died and his mother suffered an attack of apoplexy. To support his sister and his family, he decided to drop out of school. His intellectual ability and photographic memory had already allowed him to advance several levels in primary education.
Stu was an incredible gin rummy player. At the age of 10, in 1963, he won his first tournament while on vacation with his parents.
He went to watch games with his godfather and sat watching. When he almost ran out of chips, he would ask the other players if they would allow the kid to play, as he was very tired; the other players, not knowing who they were up against, would cordially accept, thinking it would be an easy task to beat the kid. It was then that Stu would take all their money.
At the age of 14, he was playing regularly and beating the best players in New York. At the age of 15, he abandoned his studies without finishing, when a well-known bookie paid him a $500 buy-in for a big gin rummy tournament. Stu won a prize of 10,000 dollars without losing a single hand, a record that has yet to be broken in New York's gambling halls. A week later, after handing his parents 1,000 dollars, he lost the rest at a racetrack.
He started having problems with the mafia because he owed them money and couldn't get anyone to play with him. Stu moved to Miami where the Gin Rummy games were easier.
In 1976 he arrived in Las Vegas with no money. He had to play for advantage to get people to sit down with him; he played for as much money as his opponent wanted and always showed him a card. He won money and entered a 50,000 dollar tournament. In the last few hands he correctly predicted the losing player's cards. This fame caused Stu some problems, made his opponents fear him and soon no one wanted to sit at his table. As a result, it was impossible to play unless he played in tournaments.
He then decided to try his luck at Black Jack. One night, at Caesar Palace in Las Vegas, he won 83,000 dollars but the manager stopped the game. Stu predicted the last 18 cards to come out in a single deck of cards. It was the beginning of the end for the single deck Black Jack tables. They were abandoned by Caesar's and later by other casinos. From then on, in almost every casino in the world, Black Jack is played with at least four decks of cards. Stu's photograph was placed in the security compartments of dozens of casinos. Stu was banned from entering many of them.
On the other hand, he bet 10,000 dollars with anyone interested that he could tell which cards were in the last two decks out of a total of 6. This means that if you mixed six decks of cards, you would tell Stu which were the first four and he would tell you which cards were in the other two that were missing. Nobody paid their bet.
In January 1977 Stu Ungar crossed paths with Bob Stupak. The millionaire bet 10 to 1 (100,000 dollars against Stu's 10,000) that the latter couldn't tell him which cards were in the last three decks, a total of 6. Needless to say, Ungar told him what the remaining 156 cards were without making a single mistake. This bet marked the beginning of a great friendship between these two characters.
In 1980, at the age of 24, Ungar played and won his first WSOP with almost no experience in NL Texas Hold'em Poker. From that moment on, the press called him Stu "The Kid" Ungar.
He played heads up with the well-known Doyle Brunson. In the final hand Stu had 4s5s and Doyle Ah7s. Brunson raised preflop and Stu called... the flop brought Ad7d2c . Brunson raises with two pair and "The Kid", with an inside straight, calls. The turn brings 3h. Stu catches up and raises. Doyle pushes all his chips in. Stu calls. The River helps no one and a legend is born. The great Stu Ungar wins his first WSOP, with a prize of 375,000 dollars.
In 1981 he returned to the WSOP and won it for the second time. He had only played twice, an unbeatable record shared only by Johnny Moss, winner of the first two editions of the WSOP.
Head-up played him against Perry Green. Stu's hand was AhQh and Green's was Tc9d. Pre-flop, Stu raises and Green calls. The flop brought 8h7d4h, giving Stu 9 outs to color plus 6 overcards, and 8 outs to Green's open sequence. Green goes all-in and Stu calls. The turn brought 4d and the river Qd. This card determined the winner of the 1980 WSOP, with a prize of 385,000 dollars. The legend was already a reality.
For the 1997 WSOP in Las Vegas, Stu didn't have the money needed to enter the Championship. However, an hour before the start, an anonymous benefactor paid him the $10,000 entry fee. The betting odds were 1 to 100 for him to win... but two hours after the start, he was already the favorite. Four days later, the greatest comeback in poker history had already taken place and the record of three WSOP victories had been set, a record he still shares with Johnny Moss.
The heads up was played against John Strzemp and the final hand was this:
Stu got Ah4c and his opponent As8c. Stu raised $40,000 and his opponent called. The flop brought Ac5d3h. Strzemp raised to $120,000 and Stu pushed all his chips to the center of the table. His opponent called. The turn brought 3d and the river 2s. Stu completed the straight and took the first prize of $1,000,000.
After the tournament, Ungar said: "I didn't really need the money, but people were saying that I couldn't play anymore and my head was broken. I got tired of it. They hurt my pride. I ate well, slept well and made sure I was in good shape to play. If they ever want to sell videos about how to play poker, they should have filmed me in this championship: it wasn't a card game; it was pure beauty."
Two months later, he abused drugs, which led him to ruin again; he lived in a cheap apartment, partly in ruins.
However, Ungar managed to get the 10,000 dollars to sign up for the 1998 world series. But shortly before the start, the organization announced that the champion would not be able to attend for health reasons. In an apartment in the same building, Stu was staring at the muted television, stretched out on a sofa.
Shortly afterwards he said: "I was eager to get going, I'd showered and I was already dressed, but when I looked in the mirror, I noticed that I looked terrible: I looked like I'd just come out of the Auschwitz camp. I thought I wasn't going to be able to play ten hours for four days in a row, performing like the gods."
In total, he won 10 Texas NL tournaments with a buy-in of more than 5,000 dollars out of the 30 or so he played! We're talking about the best Texas NL poker player of all time. To give you an idea, for many years, the 2nd. Most important tournament in the world was Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl. The biggest tournament in this Super Bowl had a buy-in of 10,000 dollars, just like the WSOP. The best players in the world competed in it for many years and Stu Ungar won it three times, just like the WSOP.
Flush: ** Continued **
Some stories about this legendary figure
- The first time he set foot on a golf course he lost 80,000 dollars.
- During his life he lost several million dollars on a golf course, a sport he wasn't very good at.
- Once in Palm Springs he went with three other friends to a place that had been recommended to them as the best in town for food. When they entered, they were asked if they had reservations and Stu said no; the waiter informed them that it was impossible to get a seat if they hadn't requested one in advance; Stu took 100 dollars out of his pocket and said that if anyone didn't have a reservation, he would be waiting at the counter. When they settled down, they decided to order a drink and when Ungar ordered his, the barman asked him for his ID. Stu, disgusted, replied: "But... I'm 35". They kindly replied that this might be true, but as he looked young he would have to show his ID or he wouldn't be served alcohol. Stu pulled out a wad of 10,000 dollar bills from each pocket and said: "This is my ID! What teenager would walk around with that much money in his pockets?".
- He played ping-pong matches against Chinese champions for 5,000 dollars.
- He destroyed a Mercedes Benz and five Jaguars to have a reason to buy others...
- He didn't go to the White House when Reagan invited him because he didn't know what cutlery to use at the table.
- The only time they programmed a machine to beat Gin Rummy, he beat it. "The damn machine seemed to be spasming. It was hysterical. It only knew how to do calculations, so it had no chance."
- His daughter says that her father used to give her 100 dollars for 50.
- Won $ 5,000,000 from Larry Flint in a heads up Texas Hold'em Poker NL.
A few phrases from the great Stu.
- "Have you ever seen the movie directed by Robert De Niro in which a Bronx boy is sponsored by a mobster? Well, I was like that. When I was fourteen, someone started sponsoring me. My father was a big-time bookie. He worked at Fox's Corner, a bar on 2nd and 7th in New York. I was born in 1953 and grew up surrounded by mafia guys."
- "If I had to rank it, I'd say gin-rummy is the game that depends more on the player than on luck. Poker and backgammon would follow."
- "What did I do with what I earned? I went to the races. Whoever said that money burned their pockets was talking about me. They say I'm a compulsive gambler. For me, it's all about the action and not the money. In Lake Tahoe, I played pingpong matches against Chinese champions for five thousand dollars. In Italy I learned a game called Ziganet, in which you bet more heavily than in any other game. At a racecourse I met a bookie who would let me bet on a horse to see if it was the last one to arrive. I'm a fan of action. I'd even bet on a cockroach race".
- "Las Vegas is a paradise for any degenerate. You can gamble for twenty-four hours. When I was still a newcomer and ran out of chips, do you want to know who financed me? Tony Spilotro, the guy Joe Pesci supposedly plays in the movie Casino."
- "I didn't even need my own money to play. I could always get someone to lend it to me. It was a safer business for them. With limit bets it was more difficult, but when they let me play without a limit, a monster appeared: I have more 'balls' than any other player, and I have no respect for the value of plastic chips. When someone challenges me, I don't care who it is: I'm going to hate them. I have to hate someone to beat them.
- "At first I used cocaine to keep playing. But when you have a hundred thousand they chase you home to offer it to you."
- "I used to bet on everything: in which round, and with which hand, Holyfield would knock Tyson out; how many points difference and how many players would be sent off in an American soccer match. What I didn't bet on, I aspired to. It's easy to lose fortunes this way. I must have the record for destroyed television sets. Even now I think that, in reality, I wanted to lose everything so that I would have a reason to play poker again".
- "I spend my money on women... not women because I'm not a playboy anymore. I spend it on horses, sports... I spend it on anything."
- "I really don't know if there will be life beyond gambling. If there is, I don't think I can enjoy it. The only time I have any respect for money is when I don't have it... but I always get someone to finance me. The problem is that poker doesn't stimulate me as much anymore. I spend most of my time doing nothing. I only play when I need some money and I don't like losing. I don't want anyone to say that I'm a good loser. Because anyone who is a good loser, no matter how good they are, is just a loser."
Your step towards immortality
On November 22, 1998, at the Oasis Motel in Las Vegas, Stu was found lifeless. The investigation concluded that he had ingested cocaine, methadone and Percodan. Officially it was said that the death had been accidental, caused by coronary insufficiency. The doses of cocaine in his body were not high; Percodan is a painkiller used to sleep when you are addicted to consumption.
He was bankrupt again; his friend Bob Stupak, the 10-to-1 betting man, had offered him a job as a croupier, the cancellation of all his debts and an advance of 2,000 dollars... They found 800 in his pockets.
Source: [url]//pokerpt.com/stu_ungar.html[/url]
Dieisonstein: Stu Ungar was a genius. But his addiction drove him into the ground.
Minored: [QUOTE=Dieisonstein;65947]Stu Ungar foi um gênio. Mas o vicio dele levou ele pro buraco.[/QUOTE]
gênio no poker, donkey na vida
Petrillo: * Faça gestão da banca e será vencedor no longo prazo, se for dedicado e conseguir aprender um pouquinho com cada mão.
* Não faça gestão da banca e serás um perdedor, independente de quão bem você jogue.
Valeu Flush!
Autor original: Flush.
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