Stu Ungar - Early Life

Early Life

Ungar was born to Jewish parents and raised on Manhattan's Lower East Side. His father, Isadore ("Ido") Ungar, was a loan shark who ran a bar/social club called Foxes Corner that doubled as a gambling establishment, exposing Stu to gambling at a young age. Despite Ido's attempts to keep his son from gambling after seeing its effects on his regular customers, Stu began playing underground gin and quickly made a name for himself. Ungar was gifted at school and skipped seventh grade, but then dropped out of school in tenth grade.

Ido died of a heart attack in 1966. Following his father's death, and with his mother virtually incapacitated by an illness as well, Ungar drifted around the New York gambling scene until age 18, when he was befriended by reputed organized crime figure Victor Romano. Romano was regarded as one of the best card players of his time. He had the ability to recite the spelling and definition of all of the words in the dictionary and apparently shared a penchant and interest for calculating odds while gambling as Ungar did. By many accounts the two developed a very close relationship with Romano serving as a mentor and protector.

Ungar was infamous for his arrogance and for routinely criticizing aloud the play of opponents he felt were beneath him—which included just about anyone. One of Ungar's most famous quotes sums up his competitiveness: "I never want to be called a 'good loser.' Show me a good loser and I'll just show you a loser." However, his relationship with Romano gave Ungar protection from various gamblers who did not take his crass attitude and assassin-like playing style kindly. One man reportedly tried to hit him in the head with a chair in a bar after Ungar soundly defeated him. Ungar would claim years later that the man was found shot to death a few days after the incident. Others who were around at the time say it was Ungar who threatened the man with a chair, and there was no shooting.