Stu Ungar, Anybody Ever Play With Him

[gmcarroll33]

From everything I've heard about Stu Ungar, he's made out to be like a child prodigy for cards. Everything I've read says that nobody was ever on his level, but that drugs prevented him from ever dominating his competition like he could have. My question is, has anyone here ever actually sat down and played with Stu? If so, how can you describe his instincts and ability to play cards? How tough was he to play against? Was he as good as he was made out to be, or just good in tourneys and not so good in cash games? I just think he's a fascinating poker legend and just wondered if he really was the once in a lifetime player like he's made out to be, or if he was just a good player.

[benfranklin]

Stuey died in 1998. Most posters here were in grade school at the time. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[timex]

Poker is one of those games where so much information is being discovered, and shared, and as information is being shared more willingly now, players are getting better, I think there are probably several hundred players on this board, who if they could go back in time, would have been more successful than him, and almost anyone who poasts on this board would be a winning player back in his days.

[J_V]

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I think there are probably several hundred players on this board, who if they could go back in time, would have been more successful than him, and almost anyone who poasts on this board would be a winning player back in his days.

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Lol. Yeah, except we'd have the same problem everyone else did, no information on how to play correctly. So 99.99% of us would suck into mediocreness.

[Dementia]

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Poker is one of those games where so much information is being discovered, and shared, and as information is being shared more willingly now, players are getting better, I think there are probably several hundred players on this board, who if they could go back in time, <u>would have been more successful than him</u>, and almost anyone who poasts on this board would be a winning player back in his days.

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No, you can't say that. That's like saying with all the new information out about composing music, that several hundred people can out-perform the Sinatras, the Presleys etc. He was so good at his game that this comparison doesn't even do it justice.

I know, 'online winrates, lots n lots of poker books' - Stuey, when on his best game, could absolutely crush anybody on this forum hands down. He had something different than most players, he had an amazing card sense. More so than any piece of literature could ever illustrate. Even guys like Mike Sexton, who have seen the poker explosion more than anybody including the influx of good young players, has been quoted as saying that to this day he believes Stuey was the greatest poker player of all time.

[goodsamaritan]

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Poker is one of those games where so much information is being discovered, and shared, and as information is being shared more willingly now, players are getting better, I think there are probably several hundred players on this board, who if they could go back in time, <u>would have been more successful than him</u>, and almost anyone who poasts on this board would be a winning player back in his days.

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No, you can't say that. That's like saying with all the new information out about composing music, that several hundred people can out-perform the Sinatras, the Presleys etc. He was so good at his game that this comparison doesn't even do it justice.

I know, 'online winrates, lots n lots of poker books' - Stuey, when on his best game, could absolutely crush anybody on this forum hands down. He had something different than most players, he had an amazing card sense. More so than any piece of literature could ever illustrate. Even guys like Mike Sexton, who have seen the poker explosion more than anybody including the influx of good young players, has been quoted as saying that to this day he believes Stuey was the greatest poker player of all time.

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Lol, Mike Sexton is a talking head. Many respectable pros who don't care about being PC about a dead guy have stated that Stuey was a donator in cash games. According to Barry G: "Stuey was a hopeless steamer. Over his playing career he may not have been an overall winner in the side games and he often needed to be staked when he played."

No way was Stuey the best of all time or even his time. Rating poker player is not an exact science, but I think there is very good reason to believe that Chip Reese was much much better than Stuey. He has been consistently beating the biggest cash games for almost 30 years.

[FortunaMaximus]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Greenstein come into poker and Vegas while Ungar was well and truly lost in his degeneracy? He's not one to judge the Stuey of the late seventies or early eighties.

And successful players to present day have tried to imitate his precise style (there wasn't one, actually.) to much lower standards of success. As Aaron said earlier in the thread, he was more capable than most of blending the two major elements you need to succeed at gambling against human opponents.

Madsen's achievements at this year's WSOP are worthy of putting him on a very high level of respect. But it'll take a decade, maybe more, before you can gauge a first-year breakout as an idea of how he will perform over his career.

Different players from different eras, that's all. Personally, I have no doubt a healthy Ungar who was better able to control his demons and degeneracy would still be a force to be reckoned with on the circuit, although I don't think it matters. What can be said is that he understood how to play tournament poker at a time when it was a relatively new introduction to the landscape, and while the biggest winners of the time were still adapting to the different variables that go into tournaments.

Attack, attack, attack, and he certainly did that with everything in his life.

Yeah, I'm an Ungar fan, but his actions off the tables are indefensible.

And the guy who compared Matusow to Ungar? Huh. Now that's giving Matusow too much credit.

[AaronBrown]

It's awfully hard to tell for sure, unless you're sitting next to somebody with a calculator for years. We can't compare baseball players from one era to another, it's much tougher with poker when no one keeps records and there is so much variance.

I saw him in the late 70s and early 80s. I didn't play much with him because he was part of an organized crime crowd, at least by reputation. By the way, that's another thing that makes it hard to judge how much money he made or lost. Those were days of highly unreliable accounting.

At gin rummy he may have been the best in the world. If not, he was among the best and louder than the others.

At poker, as far as I can tell, he was among the best players but not a superman. He was a rare combination. He had the memory and calculation skills of the nerd players, with the people-reading and manipulation skills of the road gamblers. These days most top players have both, but in those days it was uncommon.

Still, if you kept your cool and played carefully, he was not so fearsome. In fact, he shook a lot of chips loose at the table, and I'm not sure that the careful players didn't walk away with more of them at the end of the session than Stu did. I never won money from him, but I won money during sessions when he was playing. But I didn't play with him much, as I said I tended to avoid that crowd. He was not fun to play with, that's certainly true.

It's hard to argue with his tournament record, but I think there's some luck there. His style was great for building a big chip lead from the weaker players, then pushing for either a first place finish or quick exit. This was before people were sophisticated about tournament strategy. Personally, I suspect that if we could replay those WSOP's lots of times, he'd have the most first place finishes, but other people might have higher average winnings. But it's just a guess.

[samsdmf]

Iv read the book and its pretty clear that he was the best in the world (would easily defeat the world elite from teh past ~20 years in games)
Poker isnt that easy to judge and, as i never played with him I really cant say

[KennyBanya]

Sam,

You may want to read that book again.

The book indicates he was so good at Gin Rummy that it was very difficult for him to get opponents, even when giving odds.

It is also clear he has the best record in $10,000+ buy in tournaments ever.

However, the book also indicates that he may have actually been a long term loser in cash games.

That is pretty far from saying its clear he is the best in the world.

Peace,

KennyBanya