Stuff
Adobe DRM
Product Details
Atria Books, June 2005
eBook, 336 pages
ISBN-10: 1416510184
ISBN-13: 9781416510185
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
Description
He was the Jim Morrison of the casino, a legend before he was of legal age. Stuey Ungar, the son of a Jewish bookie on Manhattan's Lower East Side, dropped out of high school to become an underground card-table sensation, eventually taking out every top gin-rummy player on the East Coast. Bankrolled by the Genovese crime family, Stuey would soon travel around the country in search of new opponents and opportunities -- including poker. He would go on to win the World Series of Poker a record three times. And then his luck began to run out.
One of a Kind is the startling tale of a man who won at his game and lost control of his life. Whether tossing away his winnings at the racetrack or on a single roll of the dice, Stuey was notorious for gambling every single dollar in his pocket. Though he had won an estimated $30 million in his lifetime, Stuey had no bank account, not even a home address. He was found dead in a Vegas motel -- with $800 in cash on his person, the only money he had left -- at the age of forty-five.
An intimate, authorized biography -- Nolan Dalla was commissioned by Stuey in 1998 to pen his story, resulting in hundreds of hours of taped interviews and conversations -- One of a Kind illuminates the dark genius of one of poker's most memorable figures.
Read more:
Chapter 1"Reader beware the seductive blue flame. To illuminate the triumphant yet scorchingly hideous forty-five years Stuey Ungar spent among us, Dalla and Alson have produced an acetylene torch of a book. There was no other way to write a story like this. One of a Kind is a lesson in no-limit hold'em as well as a terrifying pleasure."
-- James McManus, author of Positively Fifth Street
"I knew Stuey Ungar well and played with him many, many times. He was one of the most remarkable characters to ever sit down at a poker table. Reading One of a Kind not only brought him back to life for me, it vividly re-created a time and place that we'll likely never see again. For anyone interested in understanding and unraveling the legend of poker's most creative thinker and tortured soul, this is the real deal!"
-- Doyle Brunson, two-time world poker champion and author of the legendary bestseller Doyle Brunson's SuperSystem: A Course in Power Poker
"If you want an 'education' in the old-time gambling underworld, you can't do better than One of a Kind. Although you'd never want to live it, Ungar's life, as drawn by Dalla and Alson, is riveting, haunting, and compelling. Ungar's legacy of genius, destroyed by indulgence, would seem absurd as fiction; as truth it is a gripping epic tragedy."
-- Brian Koppelman and David Levien, screenwriters of Rounders and Runaway Jury
"A well-written and well-researched study of the most naturally gifted and emotionally stunted card genius in the history of poker."
-- A. Alvarez, author of The Biggest Game in Town
"Even though Stuey Ungar was perhaps the greatest poker player ever to live, his talent at card playing wasn't close to being his most compelling characteristic. Stuey was a little bit of a gangster, genius, madman, tragic hero, and cardsharp. Add it all up, as Dalla and Alson have done in captivating style, and you get one of the most unusual characters to ever appear on the Vegas scene."
-- Andy Bellin, author of Poker Nation
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