Stu Ungar: Professional Poker Player

Mentioning Stu Ungar's name, when conversing about the greatest Professional Poker Players, is inevitable, because Stu Ungar is a three-time World Champion and has five WSOP bracelets to boot. He has also won 10 major championship events, of No-Limit Hold'em, where the buy-ins were in excess of $5,000. Following his lead are T.J. Cloutier and Johnny Chan.

Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl of Poker was, for years, the second largest Poker tournament in the world. During those years, Professional Poker players attended Slim’s Super Bowl of Poker. The buy-in to the main event, No-Limit Hold'em championship, was a hefty $10,000 and Stu Ungar was the only man to win titles in both the Super Bowl of Poker and the WSOP. Not just once, but THREE times, each.

On November 22, 1998, Stu Ungar was found lying dead, facedown on his bed at the Oasis Motel in Las Vegas with $882 on him, the remnants of a $10,000 advance from Bob Stupak, who earlier in the month signed a contract with Ungar, offering to pay off Ungar's debts and finance tournament play in exchange for future winnings. It is still unknown to this day where the remainder of the money went. But the book, Aces and Kings, by Michael Kaplan and Greg Reagan, quotes an anonymous 'longtime friend' of Ungar's who claims to know what happens. He claims "Stuey bought a bunch of crack and picked up two hookers who like to troll near the Oasis. Once they found out how much money Stuey had on him" - presumably a good chunk of Stupak's $10k - "he was as good as dead. They pushed him to smoke enough so that he went into convulsions - which Stuey was prone to do. The convulsions came, they took the drugs and most of the money, and left Stuey for dead." No drugs, not even paraphanalia were found in the room, which is incredibly inconsistent with Stuey's behavior. Despite winning millions during his poker career, Ungar died with no assets to his name. Friend and fellow poker player Bob Stupak took up a collection at Ungar's funeral to raise funds to pay for the services (Source: Wikipedia).