Continued from Part Three
I spotted Surinder Sunar in the Vic one day. I didn’t think of him before, but he’s been recording results as far back as 1987, so even if he hadn't played a single hand of poker with Stu Ungar, then, at the very least, he will have crossed his path. But Surinder’s a secretive guy, someone who keeps his cards very close to his chest, so I was unsure if he’d be interested in regaling me with tales from the past. He’s just never seemed like the type.
“I was at his table around 25 years ago,” he started, dispelling my initial fears of reticence. “It was the Main Event. I’m a pensioner now, at 50, so I would have been 24, I think. I’d just been playing at the Vic and in Wolverhampton, so I didn’t even know who he was at the time. I could tell he was good though.
“He had a similar style to me,” he continued, mumbling in his own unique way. “A very aggressive player. There weren’t many people who played aggressively at the time, just a few of the younger players like us. He raised most hands and liked to play flops, and whenever you looked at the field, he always seemed to be the chip leader. He hit a lot of flops though, and his style tended to send people on tilt.
“He had an incredible knack of getting money out of people with weaker hands. He was a modern player, probably the only one back then, and he was able to get people to do exactly what he wanted. If you changed your game, then he’d change his. He was great at adapting to any situation and was always that one step ahead. I got to see his moves first-hand and learned a lot from watching him play.”
At this point, I asked Surinder what he was like as a person. Surinder sniggered and shook his head. I knew the answer wasn’t going to be complimentary, but, much like his undeniable ability at the felt, it’s a part of the story that everyone seems to agree on: Ungar was one of the most petulant players the game has ever seen, which, along with his drugs and gambling, was a character flaw that will forever taint his legacy.
“He didn’t respect anyone’s game,” explained Surinder. “That’s OK when you want to be confident and push people around, but he berated players too. When I first met him, he wasn’t coked up, and the only bad thing about him was that he was a sore loser. He was worse than [Johnny] Chan; he’d throw his cards around and shout at people all the time. Don’t get me wrong, he was a massively respected player, but he wasn’t necessarily respected as a person. He came across as a brat, a spoilt kid, and everyone saw this. He wasn’t a bad winner, just a bad loser.
“In some ways, he reminds me of the Devilfish. He’d talk a lot at the table and during hands, and had this ability to get inside your head, break down your game and manipulate your decision. He talked like a young boy, much younger than he actually was. The problem was that he thought he was so good, that he just couldn’t accept it when he lost, and he’d throw a tantrum like a little boy.”
As Surinder plunged a fork into his steak, he continued to highlight Ungar’s character flaws, but his words merely echoed what I’d already heard from the general consensus. Chris Bjorin, who was also in the Vic at the time, concurred, adding, “I didn’t know him very well, but he was extremely nasty at the table, especially to the dealers. They weren’t treated like human beings. He wasn’t a pleasant person at all yet, back then, he was allowed to do whatever he wanted. I can’t say I liked him, I did not.”
Even one of Ungar’s closest friends, the legendary Doyle Brunson, couldn’t refute the fact, admitting in a documentary: “At the poker table, he was one of the most obnoxious people I’ve ever known. I almost got into two or three fights with him. Stuey talked very bad to people. He’d get up in their face, call them names, threaten them and do a lot of things to disrespect the game. He spit on a card one time.”
If there’s one thing I want to achieve, it’s to clarify that although the game has come a long way in terms of policing bad beahviour and curbing the despicable actions that Doyle and co. describe, politics still run rampant in poker, even today, in 2010, where the game is examined through a magnifying glass by journalists, bloggers, poker forums and a televised audience. Whenever you have a game that revolves around business, and money, you will always have elitism, and much like Phil Hellmuth today, Ungar was virtually untouchable.
Ungar was a brash New Yorker with a bad attitude, but he also had connections, and a known relationship with influential people like Victor Romano, a gangster who had taken Ungar under his wing and backed him during the early part of his playing career. Ungar had always been cocky and arrogant, but his friendship with Romano excused his behaviour, and enabled him to do and say what he wanted at the table without repercussion. Hellmuth has connections, connections to TV people, Harrah’s big wigs, people who need Hellmuth in order to make money, and it is these kind of relationships that enable players of his ilk to call people idiots and abuse dealers without being punished in the same way your Average Joe would.
But even then, the travelling Brits weren’t used to witnessing such poor behaviour, as Mel Judah explains: “I’d just come from England, and I wasn’t used to that kind of behavior. It was his normal temperament, but I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t know who Stu Ungar was. I saw him do it again [be abusive to a female opponent], for the second time, and I said, ‘What’s wrong with you guys, why do you not say something, how can you let him be rude to a lady?’ but I didn’t know he was involved with Jack Binion and could do what he wanted and get away with it. I came from London, and we don’t do that sort of stuff. Other people kept quiet and probably just laughed at him. After I said something across the table, he actually stopped. He knew I was English, because of the accent – and that was my first encounter with Stuey.”
“The stuff he said to the dealers was terrible,” added Donacha O’Dea. “For me, as a European player, I couldn’t believe the bullshit these dealers had to take. They just took it most of the time, one big dealer got up and threw a punch at Puggy Pearson, but basically they got no protection, and if they did do something, they’d get sacked.
“Stuey was such a bad loser. I remember bluffing one pot. I had something like 5-4 on a Q-7-5-Q board and bet out thinking that queen was a good scare card to bluff at. He had aces and is so incensed because he thought he was gonna win a big pot off me. I suddenly realised what a big hand he had, and he was showing his cards complaining, but if he’d looked at my face, I mean, I was really getting sick now, edgy, and I could feel my jugular, but he was looking everywhere but at me and telling everyone what a ‘lucky bastard’ I was. When he threw his hand away, of course, I showed the bluff, and the whole room fell around laughing. He was furious, he just hated being teased, and if he was getting beat, Doyle and Chip would always needle him.
“He said to a female dealer once, ‘If I ever talk to you again, may my daughter get cancer in the eyes.’ I always remember this thing and I thought, ‘Holy fuck, what’s he talking about, he lost one hand of poker in a tournament.’ I would maybe get up and go for a walk if I felt some negative energy about a dealer, but I would never think they were lucky or unlucky for me. Stuey definitely wouldn’t have made the perfect ambassador for the game. Scotty [Nguyen] reminds me of him, a flashy type character. Stuey was often after the cocktail waitresses, so he always wore lots of gold.”
Ungar reminds me of the keyboard warriors online, the guys who make the most disgraceful comments imaginable in the chat box and from the safety of their computer. Sometimes, this is just their true nature coming out, but oftentimes is just a way of venting anger, and then, in person, they’re perfectly nice. The only difference is that Ungar never hid his comments, he made them in the flesh. Whilst I personally never like to excuse such actions, the era, his upbringing, his mafia connections, and his sheer inability to accept loss were notable factors, and away from the table, few players have anything derogatory to say about him. Stewart Reuben - co-author of Pot Limit and No Limit Poker with Bob Ciaffone - rarely saw this negative side of Ungar. He agreed that he was brash, and wasn’t a cultured person, but claimed, “He wasn’t hated, the only people who disliked him were probably those he took a lot of money off.”
Similarly, Freddy Deeb, who played with Ungar more than most, believed that his reputation as someone who threw cards at the dealer had been exaggerated, and that he rarely witnessed this. “He wasn’t a great friend of mine,” he declared, “but you can say I knew him as a person, for sure – when you play someone for years, then you get to know them as a person. Not in the manner of, you know, hanging out. I always liked him though and I never had a problem with him. Away from the table, he was always willing to gamble, to bet money on anything, to be in the action. He loved girls, he always did, and every time he saw a good looking cocktail waitress or dealer, he tried to be sociable, give them good tips. He wasn’t a loner, he had a lot of friends. When he was there, you noticed him. Always open, very talkative and loud for someone so little, but he was a good guy.”
Ungar is lauded, worshipped even. Young players praise his talent, his aggressive, fearless style, and they consider his vices almost ‘rock ‘n’ roll’, but the venomous side of his character, the abusive, rude and obnoxious side is often left out of the story. For this reason, this article is required to create a balance, to show that whilst Ungar was indeed a poker phenomenon, he was also someone who once spat in the face of a dealer, someone who boasted that he could beat people whilst sitting on the toilet, someone who used the most foul language imaginable, whoever he was playing. This was also a man who cheated on his wife with hookers, constantly chased women, and paid for six abortions. Sure, Ungar was a great player, possibly the best that ever lived, but does this alone make him a legend? How about discipline, poise, good bankroll management – just some of the qualities that many would assign to the word ‘legendary’.
I sometimes wonder if Ungar’s legacy was, in part, a creation of good timing, his eventual passing just one year proceeding the ‘ultimate comeback story’. If he were still around today, would he receive the same adulation, be placed on the same pedestal as Phil Ivey, or ridiculed in the same way that TJ Cloutier is, as a down-and-outer, a victim of his own vices, and a modern day poker tragedy? Whatever the climate, I don’t think Ungar would ever have changed his ways, and with the media’s tendency to focus on the negatives, I fear Ungar’s legacy wouldn’t have been the same. Ungar was undoubtedly a Jekyll and Hyde character - nice as pie when things were going his way, but a ball of fury when they weren't - but, for me, the mark of a champion, and subsequently a legend, is their behaviour at the table, as well as their results. Sadly, Ungar failed on this account, and, left the world with more than one black mark. But, as time has proven, Ungar's popularity has continued to grow, and despite his vices and some of the terrible things he did and said, they've never quite overshadowed the positives: predominatly, that he was on the greatest players the game has ever seen.
Read Part Five...
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