Quote:
Originally Posted by Neil S
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.