Stuart Errol Ungar is perhaps the youngest professional gambler the world has ever seen. Stu was born in New York City and at the age of 14 became a professional gambler. He decided to become a gambler a year after his father, a bar owner and bookmaker, died. Ungar lived in the Lower East Side as a child. He was born in ‘53 and died in 1998. He was a gin rummy player first and foremost. At the age of ten he won his first tournament for gin rummy. He was at Catskill Mountain Resort vacationing with his parents. At 14 he was playing with regularity and beating most of those he played in New York. By 15 he dropped out of school to play as a professional. A bookie staked him $500 for a big gin rummy tournament. Stu won, earning himself $10,000 for the first place prize. He never lost a hand of gin rummy in New York. His record has not been broken in most New York City card rooms. He gave his mother $1000 from the winnings, then took the rest to the track. At Aqueduct racetrack he lost the winnings. He was not a horse gambler as far as this first attempt showed.
Stu decided to move to Miami due to the high rate of Gin games in the city. He did quite well playing gin rummy tournaments; however, he still tried to bet on track and sports. These bets at the track and on sports never turned out good. He tended to lose. In ’76 he was near broke, but he picked up and headed for Las Vegas. He found money to get into a $50,000 tournament. On the last two hands he was able to correctly assess the hands of the other player thus winning. His winning streaks tended to mean players feared him. He was having trouble finding games outside of tournaments because players knew his skills. They were unwilling to bet against him.
Given that his skills playing gin rummy were becoming too widely known, Ungar took up blackjack. He was able to clean up at the tables even with poker. He would move between Nevada and New Jersey playing. There was an incident at Caesars Palace where the manager stopped the play when he won $83,000. Angered, Stu forecast the last 18 cards in the single deck shoe. The fact is that Stu Ungar was a card counter. He had a mind for being able to see which cards were in play and what would be coming out of the deck next. It meant single deck shoes at casinos would leave forever. Caesars was the first to remove them, but other casinos soon followed.
In the 80s Stu entered his first world championship. He won, but critics thought it was a fluke. He won the next year too. He played various games like RAZZ, craps, and poker. In 1998 Ungar was found dead at the Oasis Motel. His death was considered accidental. He did have pain killers and narcotics in his system, but it was a heart condition that led to his death.