Stu Errol Ungar was a professional poker and gin rummy player. He was considered by many to be the best poker player in history, and is the only person who has ever won the World Series of Poker Main Event tournament three times over the course of their career.

Stu Ungar was born on September 8^th, 1953. His father was a loan shark and owner of a gambling club, so Stu was exposed to gambling from a fairly early age. He won his first Gin Rummy tournament when he was 10 years old, and dropped out of school to gamble full time.

By the late 1970s, Ungar had built up such a reputation that many professional Gin Rummy players refused to play him, and a lot of casinos had asked him not to play. He tried to offer handicaps to opponents, to encourage them to play him, but his reputation had become too great. The eventually decided to take up poker so that he could enjoy the challenge of gambling and high-stakes action again.

He entered his first World Series of Poker tournament in 1980, and won the main event, making himself the youngest champion in the history of the tournament – an honor he would hold until 1989, when Phil Hellmuth took his first title.

Stu Ungar successfully defended his crown the following year by defeating Perry Green.

In 1982, he was accused of cheating at blackjack by ‘capping a bet’ in an Atlantic City casino. The fine for this would have been $500, but Ungar refused to pay because he denied the accusation and did not want to be seen as admitting to cheating. 

He went to court to defend his name, and eventually won the case, although it cost him $50,000 in expenses to do so. He later said that the stress and travelling involved left him exhausted, and was a major factor in his failing to defend his WSOP title that year.

In the mid 1980s, Stu Ungar started to take cocaine recreationally – some attribute this to the fact that his marriage broke down around this time, after the suicide of his step-son. Others believe he started to take cocaine after his fellow poker players suggested it as a way to stay alert during marathon gaming sessions.

The recreational use escalated to addiction, and over the next 10 years he went through a repeating cycle of winning big, then blowing the money on drugs and horse racing. His friend, and fellow poker pro, Billy Baxton, would often help him out with stakes for tournaments to help him get back on his feet financially.

In 1990, when he was competing in the World Series of Poker main event, he was found unconscious in his hotel room from a drug overdose. This was on the third day of the event, and he had built up such a chip lead that he still managed to finish 9^th, even after the dealers took his blind each time they went round the table. He finished the event with $20,500.

In 1997, Ungar returned to the World Series of Poker scene – many believed he would not be able to compete, but the years of drug addiction had not dulled his senses, and he performed well, netting his third World Series of Poker win.

His health, however, was deteriorating by this stage – he was wearing sunglasses to poker matches – supposedly to hide the fact that his nostrils had collapsed from years of abusing cocaine. He started smoking crack, and ended up deeply in debt. He was found dead in his hotel room in Las Vegas on November 22^nd 1998 – the official cause of death was a heart condition brought on by years of drug abuse.

During his career Stu is believed to have won more than $3 million, making him one of the top money winners of his era. In 2001 he was posthumously inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.