Generally makes little sense to hold people from very different eras to today's standards. If James Ingraham's 1977 Supreme Court case would happen today, the end result would be very different.

No need to idolize him but I think we can agree that he was significantly better in a pretty important area of the game than almost everybody else during his time. 10 years after Unger's last WSOP win, during the poker boom years, CTS and a couple others made millions by being more aggressive than others (and understanding ranges).

Spirit Rock comes to mind also.

He was the best ever. I remember Mike S talking about some crazy **** on YouTube. I know I remember Chip Reese and Doyle talking about how little WSOP events they played. Doyle would have the most bracelets in history if they could have mode more in MTTs than cash. Back in the 90s/early 2000s. There are a few high stakes MTT players in today’s scene that are pretty insane.

The guy was so good at other card games that the entire playing for cash scene in those games died... To say that he was just some hyper LAG who inevitably luckboxed a few wins is simply rewriting history.

Regarding treating people like crap, he definitely seems like he was quite a scumbag. People dont exclude Bobby Fischer from the disccusion of great chess players because he was antisemitic though. Its possible to hold two thoughts at the same time.

My read on Stu Ungar is that he's the kind of guy who would have moved on from today's poker market, as it has dried up relative to what he faced in the 80s. That is in precisely the same way he moved on from Gin Rummy after it dried up.

He'd probably be moving on from DFS by now.

I think this is an interesting observation.

Ungar has a reputation for being hyper LAG when no one else was hyper LAG. Am I presuming this correctly or incorrectly?

Fast forward a few years later and you had Dnegs championing the "Small Ball" strategy (and even winning the WSOP player of the year) in the mid 2000s.

I think Ungar's style was right place, right time. Just like Dnegs in 2005 although Dnegs has evolved from this style IMO.

I am making two assumptions about two styles of play that I presume to be somewhat opposite. Am I right about this, or off-base?

I don't have a ton of hands to review from Ungar, so I am going off 2nd and 3rd hand information.

We all know Ungar was flawed. My personal opinion is that dealer abuse, to the degree he took it, should have had him removed from the series entirely and permanently 86'd from all properties. He was quite literally the walking-talking embodiment of why poker players had such a poor image in the eyes of the general public up-until the mid 2000s.

On the other hand, I have to wonder if he was thought of as a massive whale by casino owners and that's why they kept him around?

Rake is being raked whether he plays poker or not. It's no secret he would degen on sports and horses (6 figure horse wagers), as reported in the documentary. This was at a time where I am not clear if horse wagers went into the parimutuel pools at the track or if casinos were just pocketing his 6 figure wagers and laying him odds.

Maybe the casinos owners kept him around because he was simply an off-loading ramp for the bankrolls of the poker player's he would beat?

I understand times were different, but assault and battery is assault and battery...and to do it on the biggest poker stage (at that time) makes it that much worse.

He moved on from Rummy bc literally nobody would play him.

It's not like poker tournaments would have ceased to exist if he kept playing. Very different things.

Right, he wasn't afraid to skin the sheep. And he'd recognize it being done by others.

I never said he luck-boxed anything or tried to 're-write history', nor did I say a single thing that was not true.

Get real, he'd probably be doing Fentanyl on skid row somewhere.

And literally while I was writing that, some guy on a 2/5 table just blurts out that Stu was the greatest player of all time and now I'm listening to 5 minutes of cringe conversation about who the GOAT was.

Holy **** it's just getting worse and worse.

Either bring headphones or get kids so you learn how to look like you're in the middle of the conversation without listening to a single word.

You basically said he loldonkament varianced his way into a few wins due to aggression so yea, you kinda did.

Is there anywhere where we can analyze a decent sample of Ungar hand histories? Or is everything we know about him just based on word of mouth and results?

Unfortunately no hole card cameras, not to mention online.

Old time players played many games besides holdem. When they did play holdem cash games it was nine handed without an ante where tight was usually right. Most importantly old time players were uneducated because there was a stigma to being a pro player that the smartest students didn't want to fade.. But the math graduate students at MIT in 1970 were familiar with John Nash and if they had access to today's computers and it was a matter of life or death for them to get good enough to beat 2024 pro players coming back to them on a time machine, it would be, on average, no contest.

(Its kind of funny to me that in the old days when I stated my opinion that poker players should be glad that they are not playing against MIT types, there was a reasonable comeback that such people would not be as good as poker players especially talented at reading hands or disguising their own hands. But now, if the subject is good player against better player, that comeback can't be used. In other words I can now say with certainty that almost all the new school GTO aficianados are lucky they are not facing MIT math Phd's who have specialized in poker whether it is now or via time machine back then.)

I‘m not sure about that. Learning and understanding theory is imo just a small part of being successful at poker. If all mit students start playing then of course a few would be crushing and would be the top dogs, but I think a fast majority wouldn‘t.

I play online competitive highstakes for about 15 years and I‘m so surprised about the lack of mathematical understanding of almost all my peers I met through the years. Most of them have no statistical an mathematical knowledge and are crushing. On the other hand my brother, who is a genius in understanding basically everything from a theoretical standpoint, tried to play for about two years and quit. But he really crushed real life business afterwards.

can confirm the above as someone who has played highstakes plo very succesfully for years

Poker is nuanced. It's not a math problem.

aww i love razz lol

poker is fun for everyone...except my opponents, they should have practiced avoidance

Well, of course, but did you mean to quote someone else perhaps? Your comment has nothing to do with my original post.

Thread should have ended here with this slam dunk. Still waiting for the other poster to reply, btw, but I doubt they ever will.