Legacy
Ungar is regarded by many poker insiders as one of the greatest pure talent players ever to play the game. Ungar and Johnny Moss are the only players to have won the World Series of Poker main event three times. However, Moss' first victory came in a non-tournament format, as he was elected winner by vote of his fellow players at the conclusion of a timed cash game event. During his poker career, Ungar won five WSOP bracelets, and over $3,600,000 in tournament pay with over $2,000,000 coming from cashes at the WSOP.
Ungar also won the main event at the now-defunct Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl of Poker in 1984, 1988 and 1989, when it was considered the world's second most prestigious poker title. As Slim put it, "Stu musta won a million dollars in my tournaments." He won a total of 10 major no-limit Texas hold 'em events (events in which the buy-ins were $5,000 or higher) despite only entering in 30 major tournaments in his life.
A movie based on Ungar's life, High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story (alternate title Stuey), was made in 2003. Ungar was portrayed by Michael Imperioli.
Stu Ungar was inducted posthumously into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2001.
His biography, One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey 'the Kid' Ungar, the World's Greatest Poker Player by Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson was published in 2005. The Emmy winning ESPN documentary One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stu Ungar was broadcast in 2006. It contained interviews with his wife and daughter and several other people who knew him; it also featured excerpts from tapes he recorded in the last year of his life for an autobiography that never appeared.
Read more about this topic: Stu Ungar
Famous quotes containing the word legacy:
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)