Continued from Part Four...
The legend of Stu Ungar has created more stories than Jackanory. Sadly, most of them are focused on his negatives, his vices, and the aspects of his life that have made his tale such a tragic one. However, amid the rough is a smattering of diamonds, the occasional anecdote that shines so brightly that it momentarily reminds us that Ungar was a genius, and someone who was able to play on a level above everyone else.
Perhaps the story I hear most frequently is that of Ungar’s heads-up battle with Mansour Matloubi. Iranian in descent but residing in London, England, Matloubi’s presence in Vegas has been almost as ghostly as Ungar’s, with his last cash coming back in 2001. However, as I write here in the Amazon Room, the two glance over at each other from across the room, and it serves as a constant reminder of what has become one of the most talked about battles in poker
Having pulled out of the 1990 WSOP Main Event due to overdosing on cocaine, Ungar was eager to prove himself as the best in the world and duly challenged then champion Matloubi to a series of heads-up matches. The game would be No Limit Hold’em with a buy-in of $50,000. At first, the action was back and forth, and Ungar only boasted a 60,000 to 40,000 lead, but with blinds at 200/400, one of the most talked about hands in poker history unfolded. Holding T-9 off-suit in the small blind, Ungar raised to 1,600 and Matoloubi called in the big blind with 5-4 off-suit. On the 3-7-7 rainbow flop, Ungar led for 6,000 into a pot of 3,200; again, Matloubi called. After both players had checked the K turn, Matloubi moved all in for 32,000 – more than double the pot – on the Q river. Within seconds, Ungar made the call, declaring, “You’ve either got 5-4 or 6-5. I call.”
Several years ago, Phil Hellmuth added on his website: “He not only read Mansour right, he then made an amazing call. After Stuey called, Mansour looked up at the ceiling thinking, ‘I feel so crushed, it’s almost like a bulldozer just ran over me. I still love Stuey, but what the heck is going on?!’ Mansour tells me now, ‘When a guy makes a call like that against you, you just give up. It’s like he’s taken all the steam out of your sails. I decided that I couldn’t play him anymore at heads-up No Limit Hold’em, at least on that day, if not forever.’ Indeed, it proved to be the last hand that Mansour ever played with Stuey heads-up.”
When I asked my victims if they could remember any specific hands they’d played with Ungar, the response was vast. Unlike any other player, their hands with Ungar have remained at the forefront of their mind, whether they were on the receiving end of a severe spanking, or one of the few players to have got the better of one of the greats of the game. Mickey Wernick slotted into the latter category and his eyes lit up at the mere mention of Ungar.
“Stuey was awesome,” he reminisced with a distant look in his eyes, “Absolutely fearless and a great reader of hands. He probably never read a book in his life; he was a natural player who played on instincts. There aren’t too many around like him, but I do see signs of Stuey in players like JP Kelly and James Akenhead. They’ve got guts and go with their reads, which reminds me of Stuey, because if you played a pot with him, you had to follow it through.
“I first met him in the eighties,” he continued, setting his mind back 25 years. “He’d already won the Series and was best known as a No Limit player. He was only slightly drugged up at the time, but later on he was terrible. It was horrible to see how he’d gone downhill, just a kid who got hooked on drugs. He was volatile at the table, completely mad, but at the bar he was a good kid. I used to share a drink with him. You know, we actually had a few things in common.
“There was this one pot I played with him that I’ll never forget. It was heads-up and I put $20,000 or $30,000 on the table. You could have bought a house with that at the time, but I’d been running pretty good. He made a raise, I had A-Q, so I called to have a look at the flop. The flop came T-T-J. I checked and he bet. I didn’t fancy him for the ten because I think he’d play it differently and try and catch me, so I made the call with the intention of hitting one of my cards or bluffing the turn.
“The next card on the turn was a rag, like a deuce or something, and I checked and he made a bigger bet. I was just convinced he didn’t have a hand. I’m thinking now that if I call this hand, he has to put me on a hand, and not a draw, and that I’ve been trap-checking. He hasn’t got a ten, I’m pretty sure he hasn’t got a jack, he might have a small pair though. I called him anyhow and the last card, which I thought was perfect, was a jack. Most other river cards, I’m gonna make a bet of 10,000 or something and, in my mind, he wouldn’t be able to call. Now I’m thinking I’ve split it at the very worst, but in my mind, he’s got a small pair, so I check and he bets.
“I called without thinking and he asked, ‘What you got, Mickey?’ ‘I called you, Stuey,’ I replied. He turned over a pair of sevens and I showed my ace high. “What the,’ he stuttered. ‘How can you call?’ All his backers were there at the time. They didn’t know me, but I’d just caught their man bluffing. After that, we played on for while and he got some of his money back, but I think I finished in front for the session.
“It felt great to outplay Stuey in this hand because he was so good. There are people who can play poker, and always will be able to play poker, and he was one of them. He had weaknesses, like all of us, and when he got behind he became easy to beat and would have trouble with tilt, but he was one of a kind and the best I’ve played. Whatever your skill, though, you need luck, and something that too many people don’t use is common sense, and sitting back and thinking about it, but to Stuey it just came naturally. He played quickly, instinctively, and always knew what to do. He’d never sit there and think ‘what should I do?’ and dwell.”
Mickey’s experience will have likely been an exception as it was seldom that players got the better of Ungar or triumphed in a battle of wits. People didn’t beat Ungar at poker, he lost at poker, and if they did empty his pockets, it would be a result of tilt, or Ungar playing badly due to an external influence such as his ongoing drug habit. Ungar had a knack of being able to make the right decision, especially when it was at a crucial stage of a tournament. Donnacha O’Dea explains:
“It was in the Main Event of the World Series, the ‘97 one Stuey won. Stuey was at my table along with Doyle [Brunson] and Mel Judah. I got busted by Judah when I slowplayed aces, but I remember this one hand with Stuey and Doyle. Stuey had 100,000 at the time and they said they were going to play to 36 players, but Doyle wasn’t happy because it was late and he was tired, so he asked if they could stop for the night. Ron Stanley objected though so they played on.
“Right after that, Doyle was saying fuck this, and raised Stuey preflop. The action got back round to Stuey who was jumping around in his chair. He knew Doyle had just announced he was tired and pissed off, and he wasn’t sure if Doyle was just saying that or not. Stuey thought for ages, I spotted a ten in his hand, so I knew he had tens. Stuey was saying that he was sure he had Doyle beat, to which Doyle replied, ‘Your problem is that if you lose this pot to me, the rest of your stack is history.’ ‘You’re right,’ said Stuey.
“After a while, Stuey threw his hand away and Doyle said afterwards that he had two jacks. Stuey was trying to work out if it was a stroke, and he would have been so mad if it was. It was a tough fold for Stuey because it would have eaten him up inside if Doyle had shown a weaker hand, but he made the right decision in the end.”
Ungar was renowned for his hand-reading skills, and it was a talent he carried over from gin. He had an astonishing memory – once winning a $100,000 bet off Bob Stupak that he could count down a six-deck shoe and determine the final card. He subconsciously logged and recalled patterns and trends in players, and automatically knew where an opponent stood in the hand just by comparing their line to previous lines. If you didn’t mix up your game, Ungar would read you like a book. Mel Judah, who came third in the ’97 final, is a great advocate of Ungar’s abilities, and knows firsthand how good he was at putting opponents on hands.
“I was involved in a game with Stuey and Johnny Chan in the Bike in 1989. A hand came up where Chan raised and Stuey and me called, in the blind, with 8-6 suited. The flop came J-7-Q with two spades. I checked, Chan bet, Stuey called, I called. Turn came a T or something. I checked, Chan bet, Stuey moved all in, and both Chan and myself called. The river was a blank, and I was out.
“Back in the poker room, they both came out, and they were chatting about the hand, and saying, ‘We’ve got to find out what Mel had. Did you have the flush draw?’ I told them that I had both the flush and straight draw and Stuey said, ‘I told you so, Chan.’ Whether they had a bet on it or whatever, I don’t know, but Stuey was very good at hand-reading. He knew I wouldn’t call with just one of the draws.”
Despite my opening paragraph, there’s no denying that Ungar’s erratic behaviour could make even the most standard of hands seem memorable, and this was certainly the case when I asked Donnacha O’Dea to cast his mind back once again. Initially, he looked on blankly, but after a few seconds he began to smile, and I could tell this was going to be a fun hand.
“Players always remember bad beats,” he started, “and I always remember a hand I played with him in ‘85 in Tahoe. I was stuck in this game real good, and we were playing really late, until like six in the morning.
“This flop came down A-J something small with two spades at either $50/100 or $100/200 No Limit Hold’em. I had A-J with the ace of spades, so when Stuey bet out, I decided to raise. Anyway, he reraised me back and although I didn’t like it, it was Stuey, so maybe he’s putting me on the flush draw, so I called all in. “Don’t tell me you have three aces,” he said, at which point it became obvious he had three jacks. ‘Jesus,’ I said to myself. I’d clawed my way back and this pot was one of the biggest I’d played back then, about $60,000.
“We used to do insurance sometimes in those days, but I’m in such bad shape, I mean, I’ve only got two outs twice, so it’s like 10 or 11 to 1. Normally the insurance price in those days is 15:2, 8:1, so he said, ‘Do you wanna lay me $3,000?’ I’d put my money in at evens, so I’m sick. A bookie called Dickie Carson was in the game, but had gone to the toilet, and he’d normally lay the insurance. At first, Stuey suggested we wait for Dickie, but after five minutes there was no sign of him. By this time, everybody was surrounding the table, all the monies were in there and I’m feeling like a complete idiot and getting edgy that everyone’s thinking, ‘How did that guy get all that money in?’ After another few minutes, I said, ‘Look, Stuey, we’re going to have to deal,’ and he reluctantly agreed.
“Eventually, the dealer dealt out the turn, which was an ace, giving me the bigger full house. I was stunned and the whole room was silent. The dealer just sat there doing nothing. After a couple of minutes, Stuey looked at the dealer and said, ‘What the fuck are you waiting for?’ and the dealer replied, ‘I thought you might want to make a deal.’ Stuey just exploded. ‘What fucking deal are we going to make now, you fucking moron?!’ he screamed. Stuey had 200 in fivers left and so he picked them up and threw them everywhere. He totally lost it.”
I could regale you forever with hands featuring Ungar but you’d get arthritis from scrolling the page. The underlying message is that whether it be his fearless play or his behaviour at the table, playing poker with Ungar was evidently a memorable experience, and one that veterans like Wernick, O’Dea, Judah and Matloubi, especially, will never forget. Ungar was a great hand-reader, and possessed a unique ability to detect weakness and apply the pressure accordingly. The only way to beat him was to play on a level even higher than Ungar in order to outthink, and then outplay him. Few possessed this ability to adjust, and even if they did, Stuey was able to change his own game. Of course, it’s always going to be tough when your opponent is already playing on the highest level possible.
Read Part Six...
Previous articles:
Introduction: An Icon of the Game
Part One: The Fall & Fall
Part Two: A Freak of Nature
Part Three: An Appetite for Action
Part Four: Jekyll & Hyde