Continued from Part Two...
I've always wondered if there's a correlation between gambling and the top poker players. Rarely does a Series go by where Phil Ivey hasn't placed bracelet bets worth more than the prizes themselves. In 2009, he left first prize of the $2,500 2-7 Lowball as a tip, simply because it was so insignificant compared to the amount he'd won in side bets. Whatever event Ivey is playing he'll periodically be peeking up towards the plasma screen with an anxious look on his face to check out the latest sports results. It doesn't matter what the game is - it could be basketball, football, tiddlywinks, whatever it is, Ivey will probably have a wager resting on the outcome.
Ivey isn't the only one. Last week, Tom 'durrrr' Dwan was a hand or two away from single-handedly bringing down the poker economy when he finished second in a $1,000 donkament. Durrrr claimed that if he'd won, it would have been his biggest ever winning day and various sources reported his potential winnings as anything from five to fifteen million. As the final table neared, numerous big name pros would be sweating profusely from the rail: Negreanu, Matusow, Elezra, Benyamine - they all seemed to have taken a piece of the action and many were requesting a buy-out. Apart from Huck Seed, durrrr refused them all. He could have tied up a tidy sum there and then, but he knew he was in a strong position and he was determined to scoop the lot.
Why do they do this? Why do they feel the need to wager such large amounts? For durrrr, I actually believe that he is so confident in his ability that he sees value and profit in the bets he makes. Why else would he offer himself up at 3:1 for the Durrrr Challenge? He is eager for action, but he knows when to refuse action too. He won’t gamble when the odds are stacked against him just for the sake of gambling, he’ll gamble when he believes he has an edge.
In a bizarre way, his approach is almost reminiscent of Amarillo Slim’s of yesteryear, but without the art of the hustle. Slim was renowned for his prop bets, but unlike some of today’s players who make their wagers without any real knowledge of their capabilities of winning the bet (who could forget Huck Seed claiming he could stand in the ocean up to his shoulders for 18 hours), Slim always seemed to arm himself with a battle plan, and one that never failed to outfox his unwitting opponent. One occasion saw Slim claim that he could out-run champion horse Seabiscuit over 100 yards, the only condition being that Slim picked the track. Slim set a course of 50 yards one way, and 50 yards the other, meaning that when Seabiscuit reached the halfway point, his momentum was such that the jockey couldn’t turn him around in time to stop Slim overtaking and finishing the race as the winner. Slim was a gambler, but he was shrewd in what he bet on as making money was the name of the game, not just risking it.
I truly think durrrr is a rare breed in the modern game. For the majority of the poker community, gambling, whether it's within or outside the poker circle, adds an element of fun to the day. That’s the main perogative. It doesn't matter what the bet is, it could be something of genuine triviality, these guys just need to increase their action to maintain their interest in that particular moment. It's a character trait that many of the most successful pros seem to possess. But whilst some have the ability to control it, curb it to a sensible level and make sure it never sends them broke, there are those who are never happy until they have pushed themselves to the very limit.
For every durrrr, there's a Stu Ungar, a player who has no limits when it comes to gambling. The stories of Ungar are legendary and endless, but ultimately tragic. On his first game of golf he lost $80,000 without even making the course. He had no idea how to play, but he didn't care, he needed there to be something on the line to keep it interesting, and it had to be an amount big enough to get the blood circulating. Despite beating anyone who dared challenge him, Ungar had lost all of his gin winnings by 1977, including the $35,000 he'd taken off Canadian Harry Stein which was gone at the race track within two weeks. He'd squandered the $14,000 his late father had left him, he owed $65,000 to the bookies, and had scared off all potential opponents due his inability and unwillingness to hustle. Of course, there was the occasional moment where he won. In 1981 he famously bet himself at 25:1 to win the World Series of Poker Main Event, and duly took the title a few days later. Ungar had balls, but he never knew when to stop using them.
Everything Ungar did had to be a gamble, whether he had the money or not. It mattered not what the bet was, he was an action freak. You'll sometimes see players betting on something as simple as the colour of the next card, and Ungar was no different. On one occasion, he pitched chips with Bob Stupak at $1,000 a time, the winner being the player whose chip landed closest to the wall. There's a theory that suggests that intelligent people suffer from boredom, and if they don't fill that void, they quickly become depressed. Ungar was super intelligent, and easily fell foul of depression and self-loathing. He was more vulnerable than most, and gambling was required to fill that gaping hole.
Ungar was thus a victim of his own intelligence. He was so good at gin, and later poker, that winning became boring, there was just no challenge in it. Gambling therefore provided not only entertainment, but also a challenge, because trying to beat the bookies was 10 times as hard as beating his opponents at cards. As Ungar once said himself, “I was an action freak. Winning got boring if it was too easy. I need the constant challenge. There wasn’t any challenge in beating a bunch of losers at gin or pinochle. That just wasn’t a thrill for me. But give me a Daily Racing form and let me try to pick the winner of the third race at Aqueduct. Hey, that got my juices flowing.” After he won the title in 1980, Ungar was asked what he was going to do with the money. "Gamble it," came the reply.
There aren’t too many people in the UK who played poker with Ungar, but Mel Judah is one. The former Australian hairdresser is also one of the most well known, as he came third in Ungar’s famous comeback tale of 1997 when he won his third World Series of Poker Main Event title. When I caught up with Judah at the Grosvenor Victoria in London, he was more than happy to regale me with tales of Ungar. It was almost as if he was honoured to have played him.
“When he won the money in ‘97,” reminisced Judah with a distant look in his eyes, “he was straight on the phone placing bets on horses. He was broke the next day. Billy Baxter put him in, so he got 50 percent of the winnings, but within 24 hours it was all gone. That’s just how he was.
“I met him the first time I went to Vegas in the eighties. I had no idea who he was at first, but he was sat next to me in a tournament at Binions. Amarillo Slim and Phil Hellmuth were also at the table. He played this pot with Barbara Gold, and when she beat him, he shouted, ‘Fucking station!’ and threw his cards at the dealer. It was some introduction.
“We were never really friends,” he continued. “I was more friendly with Brunson and his son, and also Chip Reese. We crossed paths verbally because we were both friends with Marshall Wagner, say hello and that type of thing, but it was all just causal. I never actually saw Stuey with too many people.
“I think Stuey was ahead of his time, because when I look back to the final table, I think everyone else, including me, didn’t know enough. What you think you know, and what you actually know are two different things. What you know, you think is correct, and that it’s enough, but it’s never enough. I’ll always remember this one hand he played against Ron Stanley. Stanley had limped on the small blind and Stuey checked behind. They both checked the A-9-6 flop with two spades, and when the turn came an 8, Stanley bet 60,000. At this point, Stuey raised him another 100,000. Stanley made the call and checked when the river came a K. Stuey bet 220,000, and after a long dwell, Stanley made the fold with 9-7. Stuey showed Q-T off, and that sent Stanley on tilt.
“People never thought about the game too much, they just played poker. Sometimes reading your opponents was more than the odds. Whether they bluffed or not was part of their make-up, so it was much more about knowing who they were. In that hand, Stuey knew exactly what he was doing right from the start. He was playing the whole hand for whatever came on the turn. If a blank comes, he knows what to do. If a good card comes, he also knows what to do depending on the card. He knew he could push Stanley off the hand because he’d checked the flop. It was obvious he had a 10 by the river, because if he’d had an ace he would have bet the flop, because in those days, that’s what you did.
“Stuey was extremely talented, there’s no question about that. He was just so aggressive, and he knew about implied odds. A lot of us didn’t know about that kind of stuff, or use our skills for that. But the truth is that it didn’t matter how good Stuey was, or how much money he won, because the next day it would be gone. He was an addicted gambler, gambling was a part of life, and everything he did revolved around gambling.”
For Ungar, gambling came ahead of everything. He postponed his marriage on two separate occasions due to a sports or poker game, and Madelaine even confessed herself that she never knew if they were going to have turkey or soup on Thanksgiving. Close friend Mike Sexton once said, “When President Reagan was shot at in 1981, it happened to coincide with the day of the NCAA basketball finals between Indiana and Louisville. While even the most degenerate gamblers wanted to get the latest news about Reagan, Stuey insisted that the television be kept tuned to the game. So they were.”
It’s easy to suggest that Ungar simply liked to live life on the edge, but his upbringing was unique in that he was surrounded by gambling and money from a very young age. It was virtually in his blood. As his father took bets from various punters, Ungar saw money come and go on a daily basis, and this must have surely affected his own attitude towards the dollar. He never had a bank account, credit card, or anything like that, and he was never stingy with money. If a beggar served him a cock and bull story in order to extract some money, then he’d dip into his pocket without offering a second thought. Ungar was even conned into sending a distant cousin in jail $200. Of course, he wasn’t his cousin at all, but Ungar was an easy target, and handing over $200 meant very little to him. When money comes and goes as easily as it did, you didn’t question where it went or why, you just let it flow through your hands like grains of sand.
I see many players on the circuit that have developed a similar attitude towards money as Ungar, but it’s an attitude that has led to a fearless playing style, and one that can reap huge awards when it comes to tournaments. But whilst it can be productive on the table, it can be devastating off it. Disregarding the buy-in or prize pool when you’re required to bluff for your entire stack may seem beneficial at first, but when you adopt the same approach in your every day life and continue to treat money as if it is just chips in a tournament, then your ‘fearlessness’ can prove a very expensive trait indeed.
The difference today, however, is that players have more security from lucrative sponsorship deals. Ungar’s reputation was such that backers queued up to stake him, but eventually, people became tired of him and his unrelenting antics, and the queue quickly diminished. Investors were fully aware of his abilities at the table, but when he couldn’t even make it to the table in the first place, which was the case on more than one occasion, then those abilities didn’t mean anything. As Ungar grew older, and his vices became more prominent, potential stakers became more wary of the risks involved and concluded that he was no longer a worthwhile investment. If it weren’t for loyal friend Billy Baxter, Ungar may never have become Champion in ’97, and Judah’s story would not have been told.
If he were around these days, Ungar would no doubt be sponsored by one of the big online sites, and would always have a spot in a tournament. If drugs prohibited this, then the community is wide enough that someone, somewhere, would sponsor him. At the very least, he could earn money through the multiple other avenues that now present themselves as he was too good a player not to have a profile or face recognised by millions. Once you’ve reached that status, then your options are wider, and your vices form less of a financial burden. Corporate sponsorship provides that cushion.
It’s a scenario that has meant durrrr can now play Isildur for millions without being overly concerned about the swings. Even Roland De Wolfe can bet big on sports-betting, yet remain safe in the knowledge that if the worst did come to the worst, his profile is at such a level that he could still survive in the game. This is the luxury the modern game offers, and it’s one that Ungar didn’t have at the tail end of his career. If he hit rock bottom, then only he could truly pick himself up. Unfortunately, Ungar had reached a stage in his life where overcoming his vices was out of the question. Gambling, one of his biggest, would forever be with him, and in the end, combined with drugs, it was what ultimately killed him. Ungar gambled with his life, and lost.
Read Part Four...
Previous articles:
Introduction: An Icon of the Game
Part One: The Fall & Fall
Part Two: A Freak of Nature