When it comes to the kind of well-documented rags-to-riches-to-rags type tales that yesterday's question alluded to, wondering if big-time poker champs have a tendency to fall into the same traps that are well-documented throughout the history of lottery-jackpot winners, 1980 WSOP champion Stu "The Kid" Ungar is the poster child. A genius card player (he excelled at blackjack and is regarded by many to have been the greatest Texas hold 'em and gin rummy player of all time), his prodigy-level IQ and likable boyish demeanor unfortunately were accompanied by what would escalate into an inexorable substance-abuse problem that simultaneously ate away at Stuey's bankroll and his face.
Ungar earned his first WSOP main event bracelet at the tender age of 27, defeating Doyle Brunson and stealing Bobby Baldwin's brief mantle as youngest-ever champion. There were just 73 players in the field that year, but Ungar won a record $385,000. The following year, in 1981, he became one of a small handful of players to win back-to-back WSOP main event titles, for another $375,000 payday.
It would be another 16 years, however, before Stuey claimed his hat trick and at the time of the 1997 WSOP, he couldn't even afford the $10,000 entry and was staked by a friend. Ungar beat out another record field, for that time, of 312, to take the first prize of a cool $1 million -- which he got to split 50-50 with his backer. But after paying off all of his outstanding gambling debts, then suffering heavy losses betting sports and horses, it was only two months until Ungar was flat broke once again. Meanwhile, the years of cocaine abuse had wrought havoc on his general appearance, facial features (in the latte years Ungar resorted to smoking crack, since the years of snorting lines had destroyed his nasal membranes), and health.
Still a beloved father, sadly Stu Ungar died the following year in a cheap Las Vegas motel room, with only a trace of drugs in his system, but just $800 in his pocket. It turned out to be all the three-time WSOP champ had to his name, and all that remained of a $25,000 advance he'd recently received from Bob Stupak, who'd agreed to settle all of Ungar's debts in exchange for his future tournament winnings. At the funeral, attended by 250 friends, family, and fellow players, Stupak took the initiative to take a collection to cover the burial expenses of a still-legendary card player, whose lifetime gambling winnings are said to have amounted to $30 million but who died unable to pay for his own coffin.
In 1982, the main event was won by professional poker player and WSOP veteran, Jack Straus, who's famed for making a remarkable comeback from being down to his last chip at one point in the tournament and had twice before made it to the final table. As PokerNews.com remembered the flamboyant witty 6'6" Straus in a WSOP retrospective, "Jack Straus was indeed a true gambler. He bet on most everything, especially sports (including his own golf game), and lived life as a wild adventure." "I can get all the money I need to gamble on, but I have hell paying my rent," a fellow player recalls Straus explaining to him. Likewise his observation that, "If you were supposed to hold onto it (money) it would have handles." It seems fitting that when Straus died, on August 17, 1988 from an aortic aneurysm, aged just 58, he did so while playing in a high-stakes poker game at California's famed Bicycle Casino.
From Jack Straus' win through the mid-'90s, the roster of main event winners features some legendary players, including back-to-back wins by Johnny Chan in '87 and '88, followed by Phil Hellmuth's first WSOP main event victory, in 1989. However, while future years' winners include some professional players who went on to become household names, thanks to the online/TV poker craze, tomorrow when we resume we're going to skip forward to the era of Stu Ungar's last WSOP victory, which came sandwiched between wins by two other notoriously flamboyant and reckless gamblers: Huck Seed (1996) and Scotty Nguyen (1998). We'll also take a look at some of the more-recent winners, in the era when the prize money for the WSOP main event champion has routinely been in the $8+ million range, but where that win has not always translated into the best of results...
