One of a Kind and over 670,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle – Amazon’s new wireless reading device. Learn more

Buy Used
Used - Good See details
$6.19 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
Fulfilled by Amazon

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
   
One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey "The Kid" Ungar, The World's Greatest Poker Player
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book
Start reading One of a Kind on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don’t have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

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

Nolan Dalla (Author), Peter Alson (Creator), Mike Sexton (Foreword)
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)

Available from these sellers.


7 new from $13.98 35 used from $2.19 4 collectible from $5.00

Formats

 Amazon Price New from Used from
Kindle Edition --   $11.99 --
Hardcover --   $13.98 $2.19
Paperback $10.20   $4.49 $2.52
Audible Audio Edition, Unabridged $15.73 or $7.49 with new Audible.com membership

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Mike Matusow: Check-Raising the Devil

Mike Matusow: Check-Raising the Devil

by Mike Matusow
4.6 out of 5 stars (36)  $16.47
The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time

The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time

by Michael Craig
4.4 out of 5 stars (67)  $10.19
The Godfather of Poker: The Doyle Brunson Story

The Godfather of Poker: The Doyle Brunson Story

by Doyle Brunson
4.8 out of 5 stars (16)  $17.79
Deal Me In: Twenty of the World's Top Poker Players Share the Heartbreaking and Inspiring Stories of How They Turned Pro

Deal Me In: Twenty of the World's Top Poker Players Share the Heartbreaking and Inspiring Stories of How They Turned Pro

by Stephen John
4.3 out of 5 stars (13)  $16.47
High Roller - The Stu Ungar Story

High Roller - The Stu Ungar Story

DVD ~ Larry Bartels
2.9 out of 5 stars (23)  $7.99
› Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Begun as an as-told-to by Dalla with Stuey Ungar, this biography tells in painful detail the story of the poker and gin superstar. Ungar is certainly a fascinating subject. He was prodigiously dysfunctional, a manic sports bettor and cocaine addict who won an estimated $30 million during his life, but who, after his death in 1998, needed a collection from his friends to pay for his funeral. Unfortunately, the complexities of Ungar's personality aren't satisfactorily unraveled by the authors. They offer stories from the likes of poker legend Doyle Brunson and Mike Sexton, television's reigning poker guru, of Ungar's fabulous skills as a card player and spectacular need for "action," but few insights into the source of Ungar's self-destructive demons: he died prematurely at age 45 from the ravages of drug abuse. Without any analysis, the repetitious account of years of poker ups and downs, sports gambling losses, manic acts of generosity and descents into drug abuse, as tragic as it is, becomes tedious. Still, without distorting or downplaying Ungar's depredations, this is a heartfelt, respectful and accepting biography.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"A fascinating, cautionary tale."-- Chicago Tribune

"Reader beware the seductive blue flame. To illuminate the triumphant yet scorchingly hideous forty-five years Stuey Ungar spent among us, Dalla and Alson have produced an acetylene torch of a book. There was no other way to write a story like this. One of a Kind is a lesson in no-limit hold'em as well as a terrifying pleasure."-- James McManus, author of Positively Fifth Street

"A standout among this year's bumper crop of poker books."-- New York magazine --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Atria; 1st ed edition (June 28, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0743476581
  • ISBN-13: 978-0743476584
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #457,657 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

More About the Authors

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Peter Alson
Peter Alson
Nolan Dalla
Nolan Dalla

Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:
Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
No one noticed him at first. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Las Vegas, New York, World Series of Poker, Billy Baxter, Doyle Brunson, Amarillo Slim, Mike Sexton, Stuey Ungar, Chip Reese, Los Angeles, Victor Romano, Fox's Corner, Jack Binion, Johnny Moss, Stu Ungar, Coventry Lane, Gabe Kaplan, Caesars Palace, Mike Salem, Perry Green, Philly Brush, Puggy Pearson, Texas Hold'em, Bob Stupak, Four Queens
New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats
Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 8 books:
See all 8 books this book cites

Books on Related Topics (learn more)
 
 

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey "The Kid" Ungar, The World's Greatest Poker Player
71% buy the item featured on this page:
One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey "The Kid" Ungar, The World's Greatest Poker Player by Nolan Dalla Hardcover 4.6 out of 5 stars (55)
Mike Matusow: Check-Raising the Devil
8% buy
Mike Matusow: Check-Raising the Devil by Mike Matusow Hardcover 4.6 out of 5 stars (36)
$16.47
Deal Me In: Twenty of the World's Top Poker Players Share the Heartbreaking and Inspiring Stories of How They Turned Pro
7% buy
Deal Me In: Twenty of the World's Top Poker Players Share the Heartbreaking and Inspiring Stories of How They Turned Pro by Stephen John Paperback 4.3 out of 5 stars (13)
$16.47
The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time
7% buy
The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time by Michael Craig Paperback 4.4 out of 5 stars (67)
$10.19
› Explore similar items

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(5)
See all 2 tags...

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags
 

Customer Reviews

55 Reviews
5 star:
 (37)
4 star:
 (14)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (55 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating close-up portrait of a brilliant, damaged card player, June 24, 2005
By Michael Craig (Scottsdale, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey "The Kid" Ungar, The World's Greatest Poker Player (Hardcover)
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Fire that Drives Also Destroys., July 9, 2005
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey "The Kid" Ungar, The World's Greatest Poker Player (Hardcover)
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Riveting and tragically compelling, October 1, 2005
By Konrad Baumeister (Milwaukee, WI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey "The Kid" Ungar, The World's Greatest Poker Player (Hardcover)
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars The house doesn't beat the player. It just gives him the opportunity to beat himself - Nick Dandalos.
Stu "The Kid" Ungar's life story is one of those "only in America" tales. According to many, he was the most-talented card player ever. Read more
Published 3 months ago by stoic

4.0 out of 5 stars Requiem for a gambler
A great read for those interested in the realities of a true gambler's world. Chilling, dark and disturbing, but, for those of who have had exposure to guys that need the... Read more
Published 4 months ago by espnnut

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good book!
Well written book that takes you into the life of one of the best card players ever. While he could learn any card game quickly and be one of the best at it, he could never learn... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Rich Myers

2.0 out of 5 stars I finished the book, but barely
The first few pages read like the fast-paced prose I expect from these types of books. But the momentum quickly fades. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Nicholas Briejer

5.0 out of 5 stars ONE OF A KIND
What a sad waste of a genius mind. A fascinating and often funny read, and yet tragic. A must read for any poker player or gambler.
Published 10 months ago by Bill Thailing

5.0 out of 5 stars Epic Tale of a Gambling Legend
I enjoyed this book immensely. I knew of Stuey Ungar for years and I always thought he was just some good poker player who ruined his life with drugs and that was that. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Michael Chase

5.0 out of 5 stars How Parents can screw kids up it shoukld be titled!
Sad read but very easy read, Stu had either highs or lows and nothing you could call a life! What a great mind when you finish this book you will ask yourself, if only this man... Read more
Published 15 months ago by T. Smallwood

4.0 out of 5 stars Good or great, depending on what you're looking for.
The greatest biographies combine in-depth research with brilliant writing to weave together the facts in a way that creates a story with direction, dynamic, and narrative. Read more
Published 15 months ago by beachcards

5.0 out of 5 stars A fast paced book about a Poker Prodigy
This book about Stuey "The Kid" Ungar is a fast-paced read about a poker prodigy. Before 'Hold 'em hit the scene, Stuey played Gin and became a young expert at card playing. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Diana De Avila

5.0 out of 5 stars What Bobby Fisher was to chess, Stu Unger was to poker.
Stu Unger was, by far, the greatest to ever play the game of poker. At the same time, like Fisher, he was consumed and obsessed by it with no room left in his life for anything... Read more
Published 22 months ago by K.C.

Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   

So You'd Like to...


Create a guide

Look for Similar Items by Category

Look for Similar Items by Subject

Search Books by subject:




















i.e., each book must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...
 

Feedback

If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us.
 Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Is there any other feedback you would like to provide?

Your comments can help make our site better for everyone.



Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.