Customer Reviews

One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey "The Kid" Ungar, The World's Greatest Poker Player

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Stu Ungar's legend transcends poker: he won the world championship three times (the third more than a decade and a half after the second and when he was regarded as a has-been or curiosity) and was supposedly an even BETTER gin player. He had a genius for games that was almost unfathomable. Then, just a year and a half after his greatest triumph, he was dead.

Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson have big-league credentials as researchers and writers of a story about a broken genius of cards. Among other things, Dalla is the media director for the World Series of Poker, can get in touch with ANYONE connected with poker, and interviewed Ungar several times before his death in 1998. Dalla has papered poker publications and web sites with excellent accounts. Alson wrote a highly-acclaimed book about his days as a bookie at Harvard and has written for a writer's wish-list of men's magazines.

Their account is so intimate that it's almost uncomfortable. I say this as a GOOD THING! Ungar was very private, closed even to most people in the poker world, and not a frequent interview subject. This was especially true regarding the two things we'd want to know about: his genius at cards and his self-destruction. Dalla interviewed him before his death and the periodic first-person accounts by Ungar are fascinating and shocking. In addition, the higher echelons of poker (especially where organized crime figures are possibly near, as they were in Ungar's early days and, socially, later on) can be a closed world. Even though men like Mike Sexton and Doyle Brunson are public figures, you would not expect them to be frank about their tragic friend, or about matters potentially at odds with poker's relatively recent, relatively wholesome reputation. But Dalla and Alson got the inside accounts from Stuey's closest friends and even those shadowy mobsters. They also obtained the story from Ungar's ex-wife and daughter; again, invaluable sources you'd expect would be difficult to get.

Stu Ungar's life story is fascinating, no matter how it is told, so the authors are starting with a good hand. From a research perspective, there can be no more authoritative work on the man.

But it is the writing and story telling that REALLY shine. The authors weave together Ungar's first-person accounts with the stories of their many sources in a way that is seamless and compelling. Ungar's essential mystery remains, but the authors allow us to experience the key moments of his bizarre life, always knowing what he's up to and why.

At the risk of mixing metaphors, Ungar lived a roller-coaster life that came to a train-wreck end. The story, ultimately, is a sad one, but it is a thrilling ride for the reader.

I recall that Jim Mcmanus, in his book on the World Series of Poker, mentioned that Stu Ungar was someone with a life truly in need of exploring, so I was pleased to find out about the existence of this book. I ordered it the minute it was released.

I could not be more pleased with the purchase. Its pages flow like frames in a motion picture. I could not put the biography down. This is a tribute both to the professional writer employed, Peter Alson, and also to the ornate texture of the life it documents.

Stu Ungar was a thoroughly compulsive, brilliant man who was given many gifts that he, with unprecedented impatience, smoked away through the tube of a crack pipe. There was no "could have been a champ" with Stuey though. He won The World Series of Poker three times and was victorious in 381 competitions overall. His memory was photographic and his mind a spinning computer, yet it was his ever-present need for instant gratification that finished him. A lack of concern for money was his greatest No Limit characteristic, but it was also his biggest weakness as he blew millions on sports betting, the ponies, and every other proposition put before him.

Ungar was a man of total contradictions. He loved being a father and cared intensely for his daughter and stepson, yet he disappeared for weeks at a time and could often not be reached when they needed him. Stuey lived for competition but allowed drugs to cause him to skip the 1998 WSOP and sleep through the last two days of the 1990 one. He could be charming and entertaining but had few social graces. This genius had parts which canceled out his whole.

The book succeeds at many levels. We feel tremendous sympathy for the main character, but wonder what more any single person could have done to save him. The finest of the poker players are emotionally non-responsive at the table and possess "alligator blood." However, with Stuey, they brought misery upon themselves in the hopes of diverting him from his inevitable destruction. Doyle Brunson let him move in with his family in El Paso, while Mike Sexton, the same cheeseball who provides color for the World Poker Tour, paid Ungar's hotel bills time and again just so his friend would have a place to live. Chip Reese had written him off, but, finally, as Ungar sat in a jail cell, he pulled out 55 C notes to secure his release.

Stuey Ungar had more talent than practically anyone else on this earth, and being rich should have been a sure thing, but his love of life never equaled his lust for action. He died by his own hand even if the coroner's report said otherwise.

One of, if not, the best book i've read. A huge fan of poker and Stu Ungar. I enjoyed every minute of this book, cover to cover. To go insdie the life of Stu Ungar from his worst times to his best times only made me want to learn more and turn more pages but it gave a greater perspective on the poker world back in the 80's. Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson did an amazing job on this book and anyone who is a poker fan and knows about Stu Ungar should definitely pick this book up.

This is a tough writing assignment. Two great writers, Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson, are more than up to the task, and solve it brilliantly in a chronological, well-researched, smooth-reading biography of the famous gambler. Most of the things that can go right or wrong in a life happened to Ungar. This book captures the sights and sounds his era in an entertaining fashion, and is likely the best glimpse we will ever have into the mystery of Ungar, one of the great poker players of his age.
Larry W. (Wayno) Phillips, author of "Zen and the Art of Poker"

It seems to be that a person that is the best in the world at one thing often has to pay for that skill by having gross failures in other areas. And that is certainly the case of Stuey Ungar. At card games like gin rummy and poker he was the best of the best. Stuey was the Babe Ruth of high stakes poker. During his life he won perhaps $30,000,000, no one knows for sure.

Yet at the same time he had more than his share of tragedy. In the end, his life style killed him at age 45. Drugs played a major part in his death, not as the killing agent, but as part of what ruined his heart.

This book is a biography, but more that that it is almost a tribute that covers his failures but stresses his successes. It was begun before his death as an authorized biography. Stuey himeslf was interviewed several times, and his ex-wife and daughter likewise assisted in telling the story.

It is amazing, in our world that a life like this can be lived.

This book began as a tell-all biography written by/with Ungar, that turned out to be for tragic but inevitable reasons about Ungar instead. Dalla and Alson weave a riveting tale of Ungar's growing up a bookie's son in New York, falling in as a sort of pet of the mob, finding his true calling in Las Vegas, and reaching, virtually simultaneously, the highest highs and lowest lows one can experience in a gambling career. His transcendent, really almost extrasensory brilliance and feel for cards is obvious.

Unfortunately Ungar's personality was wildly unbalanced, and a genius for cards was matched with a gaping hole where the rest of his personality should have been. Prodigies in other fields equally abstruse - take for example Morphy or Fischer in chess - had something of this, too. The book is anything but a psychological study, but in its sheer repetition of the ups and downs of Ungar's life, shows the cycles of mania and self-destruction getting tigher and tighter like a vise around him. The end was completely predictable and inevitable, from this viewpoint.

Dalla and Alson write well, with a flair for telling dramatic poker stories, and of course they had access to a lot of very colorful people who spent a lot of time with Ungar. In that sense, it is a page-turner, and hard to put down. However, despite the fact that a lot of poker players will tell you they can learn everything about a man through how he plays poker, I came away from the book feeling that while I knew more about Ungar's ultimately tragic life, I didn't really know what drove him.

It's easy to say that hunger for action, a self-destructive willingness and even eagerness to court disaster constantly, and a soft affection for his daughter, and a savant-like talent all resided in the body - well, yes, but why? How did he become that way? In the end he seems to have just grown up an overindulged talent who never did grow to even the maturity of the average 20 year old.

The book does tell a fascinating story of the unique personalities of poker and Las Vegas, and makes great reading.

I was originally going to title my review "The Life & Death Of Stu Ungar" but this book is more about the downfall of the poker legend rather than the highs. He's been called the greatest poker player who ever lived by many people, and whether you believe that others in the past or present are better than "The Kid", there can be no denying that Stuey Ungar certainly knew how to play cards better than 99.99% of other players out there. It seems that the best players have a type of 'sixth sense' that others just do not possess, and this talent led Stu Ungar to heights of success that many can only hope to dream to achieve.

Born into a seedy lifestyle where his father took bets ever day out of his shop for all the sporting events, Stuey knew only one thing in his life: gambling. It was a constant throughout his every day in his childhood and his entire, short life. The book chronicles how Stuey got his early "training" to become the great card player that he was today, but this introduction which planted the seeds for his success also planted the same seeds for his destruction.

Winning 2 World Series of Poker main events soon after he was legal to drink, Stu couldn't help the fact that he wasn't just a card player, he was a GAMBLER. Cards came easy to this legend, it was other challenges like sports handicapping and horse racing that really got him excited. Games like poker and especially gin just didn't have the action that he continuously craved. If Stuey had just played cards and was able to avoid the other demons in his life, no doubt he would be wealthier than players like Chip Reese, Doyle Brunson and the like. Sadly, because of these demons, Stuey would have moments of greatness that just would be few and far between after the early 1980s.

And then there were the drugs.

Cocaine and later crack after his nasal membranes were burnt away, Stu Ungar's story is that of a drug addict who could never escape the mistakes that he made. You've heard the warning your whole life: don't do drugs. Mr. Ungar's story is just one example of millions that could be used to show why doing drugs can ruin everything you strive for in life. Stuey made a mistake, the same mistake that anyone could make, and he wasn't strong enough to overcome this mistake, dying at the young age of 44 years old. To die so young just shows the amount of abuse that he did to his body, a tragic loss for the poker world, and his young daughter that he loved so much.

This is a great book that took a long time to come out, due mainly to the fact that Stuey died only 3 months after the agreement was signed for this book to be written. Probably another 100 pages or more could have been added to this biography if Stu had been alive to share more of his experiences. No doubt readers would have learned of more big games, and more insight into the drug problems that plagued Stu his entire life. Because of the limited quotes that could be obtained, it feels like the book can't go into the amount of detail that the author would love to share, but that's life.

If you play poker and want to learn about possibly the greatest player to ever grace the felt, you owe it to yourself to read 'One Of A Kind'. If you know nothing about poker and want to read about how drugs can ruin your life, you might get more out of this than the seasoned poker professional.

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

It wouldn't end well. I knew that when I purchased this book. How could a man succeed so well in poker -- a game that requires heart, stamina, incredible focus, uncanny ability to read people, discipline and intense mathematical analysis -- and fail so badly at life? Nolan Dalla captures Unger so well that I felt as if I was another of Unger's friends, watching his life unravel. Dalla skillfully peels away Unger's layers, until beneath all the bravado, genius, and generosity we see not a man, but a little boy; probably a traumatized boy desperately trying to outrun his demons. When he could no longer outrun them by chasing escalating gambling highs, he escapes into drug addiction. Knowing how the book would end, I couldn't help but root for Unger. But Dalla does not stop with Unger, we experience the frustrations, disappointments and horror of Unger's friends and family, whom Dalla thoroughly interviewed. Like any child, Unger is singularly insensitive to the needs of those around him. As exhaustive and painful as this book was proving to be, I couldn't put it down. That's a great credit to Dalla.

This book read like a fast paced movie. I also saw the movie "Stuey" which was based on this book, but the book was much better. It had great details, especially about Stuey's early days when he was primarily a high stakes gin rummy player, who crushed everyone else in the world so badly he couldn't find a game anymore. Thats why he first got into poker. Its amazing how the last 20 years of Stuey's life played out. He went from the peak of his career in the early 80's, to relative obscurity in the drug-hazed late 80's and early 90's, and then resurfaced one last time winning the 1997 WSOP, before he left us for good. Its almost as if he knew he wasn't going to be around much longer and he wanted to remind us one more that he really was the greatest ever. He was truly brilliant. But the light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. Dalla and Alson did a terrific job, but I still craved more, especially about those lost years from 1985-1995. The final days and weeks when Stuey tried to pawn off a piece of colored glass as a ruby to buy crack had me in tears. I highly recommend this book to any poker player or even a person fascinated by a great human interest story.

This is a very interesting and tragic book about perhaps the greatest no limit hold em player of all time. "The Kid" was unique; a hard living aggressive maniac whose skills were perfect for the cutthhroat tables of high stakes poker. Unfortunately, those same traits basically destroyed his personal relationships, turned him to drugs, and ultimately destroyed it. What is simply unreal is how a man who won an estimated 30 miilion bucks in his life managed to die totally broke, even trying to borrow money from anyone who would talk to him. Still, Dalla and Alston paint a picture of man who seemed to want people around him, was frequently kind and gentle, yet always fail back into the deep hole of drugs and gambling.

The only knock I have (and it's small) is the portrayal of mafia goons Romano and Tartaglia as kind and refined.. I have a hard time imagining a man like Victor Romano, who spent over 20 years in jail )for crimes including armed robbery and shooting a cop) as being a father figure. More likely, the authors are simply romanticizing over Stuie's reflections of a tough life. BAsically, these guys took a percentage of everything Stuie made, and were looking to protect their investment.

Overall, though, this is a book thats tough to put down!