
Stu Ungar - luu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stu_Ungar
======
imjk
I read his biography over a decade ago in one night and it has stayed with me
probably more than any other book I've read. It's such a gripping read. His
talent and intellect were so clear that it makes his story all the more
tragic.

Just one small anecdote from the book. By the time he was like 13 or 14 he was
playing in the biggest underground card games on the East Coast. We're talking
sketchy backrooms of bars hanging with some of the shadiest people betting
tens of thousands of dollars. Not only was he super young, he had a small
underdeveloped frame that made him look even younger.

So how was he able to get by in such an environment taking the money of shady
characters much older and bigger than him? He was backed by the mob! Yup, his
talent was so apparent at even such a young age, that the mafia took an
interest in him and backed him both financially and physically from harm.

I really suggest any one interested to read the book:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/074347659X/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_v...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/074347659X/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_vU0KDb7WT1RBH)

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bionsystem
I was in Vegas this summer, and an older lady dealing in my games told us a
few Stu stories. She dealt for him back in the days. She said that he was
never the same after his son's death and never recovered from it. She also
talked about his total recall memory as said in the article, he couldn't
forget anything or anyone unless he was on high doses of drugs, which is
probably why he was so addicted (must have been some sort of relief).

Today players are much stronger than he could possibly have been, though.
There are a couple of players online of which we can easily say that they are
the best players to ever live, and we know from recent advances in AI poker
that they still have room to improve. Saying that he is the best player to
ever live would be like saying Bobby Fisher or Paul Morphy are the best
players to ever live ; it's true in the sense that they were more dominant in
their days than anybody else in other eras, but in terms of pure game
knowledge it keeps evolving as years pass.

~~~
Yajirobe
> There are a couple of players online of which we can easily say that they
> are the best players to ever live

Who are they?

~~~
psv1
I don't know who OP is referring to but I would argue against the notion that
there are a couple of players who are clearly the best to ever live. The edges
between the top players are way too small to determine this especially at the
small sample sizes that they play against each other.

And the question becomes more complex when you realise that poker isn't just
one game and you need to consider NLH vs PLO vs mixed, heads-up vs 6-max, cash
vs tournaments. Some people specialise in a variant, others just play
everything.

~~~
bionsystem
We could explore every variants indeed, but nlhe is the most popular and Stu's
game choice. I was thinking about Linus and Baron as pete_mc replied, they've
both crushed it in the past few years.

Of course there are other specialists above their competition in every variant
; my point remain, though, that the level is much better now, and would we
analyse the plays made by Stu with solvers, we would find lots of mistakes
made. (Actually I will probably do it for fun).

My point being, Stu was incredibly dominant in his time, and props to him for
figuring out so much about the game especially back then, and that's a feat
just for itself, but other players are incredibly dominant now too and with a
much better understanding of what they are doing.

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tempestn
> During the 1992 World Series of Poker, Ungar faced off against 1990 World
> Champion Mansour Matloubi in a series of $50,000 buy-in no limit hold'em
> heads-up freezeout events. On the final hand of the game, Matloubi tried to
> bluff Ungar all-in for $32,000 on the river with a board of 3-3-7-K-Q.
> Ungar, who held 10-9, thought for a few seconds and said to Matloubi, "You
> have 4-5 or 5-6 so I'm gonna call you with this" and flipped over his
> 10-high to win the pot and bust Matloubi, who in fact held 4-5 offsuit.

~~~
jack_pp
Today exploits like this are impossible against even average players

~~~
Lutzb
Can you explain what would be impossible? Ungars call or Matloubis bluff?
Novice poker player here, trying to understand.

~~~
bionsystem
We would need the transcript of the game to analyse it properly. Here it is :

\---------------- Stacks: Ungar: ~60,000; Matloubi: ~40,000 Blinds: 200/400
Hands: Matloubi holds 5-4 offsuit in the BB; Ungar has 10-9 offsuit in the
small blind (the button).

Preflop: Ungar raises to 1,600 in the small blind, Matloubi calls.

Flop (pot 3,200): 3-3-7 rainbow Action: Matloubi checks, Ungar bets 6,000,
Matloubi calls.

Turn (pot 15,200): K, board still rainbow Action: Matloubi checks, Ungar
checks.

River (Pot 15,200): Q Action: Matloubi moves all in for about 32,000 and Ungar
calls within a few seconds, declaring, "You've either got 4-5 or 5-6, I call."
Ungar then flips up his 10-high to drag the $80,000 pot. \----------------

Not sure what your parent has in mind, but just from the choice of sizings
from both sides, I doubt that many people would play either side of the hand
this way nowadays. Which kind of make any analysis a bit pointless. But I'll
check tonight with a solver if it has anything to say about it.

~~~
chumali
Can't see how Ungar could have acted any differently here given the betting by
Matloubi?

~~~
mattmaroon
He had ten high. That loses to most bluffs. It's an underdog to a random hand.

Normally you'd fold and laugh quietly to yourself because your opponent
thought they bluffed you when really they had the best hand.

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nickjj
I used to play online poker a lot in the early 2000s.

What's really interesting between Stu's era and today (or even the last 20
years) is technology.

Live poker is a pretty slow game. You might get 30 hands in per hour and play
with 5-15 other people (rotating in / out) during a few hour time span. The
bottleneck is mainly the physical action of moving cards around, counting
chips and slow players due to the environment.

But online is a totally different game. You could pretty easily play 4 tables
in parallel by tiling them on your monitor. Then there was software you could
run that overlays stats about every player you encounter (collected
automatically). You gathered tremendous amounts of data that you could then
analyze in real time to help make decisions and then also look at a hand by
hand audit with those stats to help evaluate your game after the fact.

Some people ended up playing 10+ tables at once (even at pretty high stakes),
and an online game can easily get 90 hands per hour just on a single table. So
if you do the math, you could be cranking through 900 hands an hour vs 30 in a
live scenario. That's 30x more hands played per hour. If you factor in playing
for tens of thousands of hours, the amount of experience you can gain online
in such a short amount of time is crazy. You could put in many millions of
hands online vs low hundreds of thousands live, and then have a ton of data to
help figure out the game better.

1 year of playing online like that gives you 30 years worth of experience. Of
course it's not as high quality of experience since 10 tabling is tough, but
even if you dropped it to 5 tables, that's still condensing 15 years worth of
live play in 1 real life year online. So it's no surprise that players now
have a huge upper hand in being able to improve their game.

~~~
ryandrake
Online and live are very different, though. Some of the skills are
transferrable, others not so much. I think you can get very good online and
then get trounced live where you are _limited_ to one table and don't have all
your HUDs and record keeping software. When you're playing 10+ tables
simultaneously online, are you even paying attention to the action at any
particular table when you're not in the hand?

~~~
nickjj
I don't play that many tables, but probably not much thought would be given to
those hands since people playing 10-20+ tables are usually trying to grind out
hands at a low +BB/100 win rate or even breaking even while taking advantage
of rake back deals (not sure if that still applies today).

But at 3-5 tables you can definitely play close attention to everything going
on. A lot of really high level players do well in both environments.

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INGELRII
Most top players today are like athletes. They eat, exercise, and study the
game like pros. Being a sick drug addict and winning tournaments was just raw
ability.

The level of the game was lower at the time. Ungar would be high level player
even today's standards, but his game would not look as spectacular.

~~~
psv1
> Being a sick drug addict and winning tournaments was just raw ability.

And lots of luck. The variance in low sample sizes is ridiculously high,
especially in tournaments.

~~~
ramblerman
I’d argue in those days the edges were much much bigger as well.

A good player like Stu would not have experienced that much variance against a
weak field like back then

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StanislavPetrov
A true legend. Probably would have been considered the best poker player of
all time (and still is by some) if not for his drug problem and untimely
demise.

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wallace_f
How could he bust out of single deck black jack with a $300,000 bank roll?
Even someone like me who has a terrible memory can play a winning game against
the house in a single deck game. Actually, you can easily play a winning game
against single deck with basic high-low. That has to be drug abuse.

