As far as I know, Brunson is still playing in today's poker world and we can only guess at what Stu's results would be today. We can even only guess at what his results were back in the day, beyond the well documented tournament wins, such is the nature of poker.

That's why I take issue with the statement that he was so influential, it's hard to be influential in a game with so much hidden information, unless you choose to share your info in a book or a training video or whatever.

Sqred summed a lot of it up, but things that seem clear today were less clear on the ground. No one sat you down and explained, "this guy is protected by this mob," or "that guy is dangerous." Asking questions was not smart. You just saw there were guys who got a certain kind of respect, and people who hung out with those people, and you stayed away. You could call it fear, or moral distate, but mainly it was because you knew you didn't know enough to be around them. Anyone could bluff you, or you could make a fatal mistake by thinking someone was bluffing.

But you also got quite a bit of protection if you acted right. Las Vegas made way too much money for the guys who ran it to risk bad publicity from beating up or killing random civilians. If you had some respect as a poker player, and were friendly with tourists who gambled a lot, and seemed to be an honest guy, there was some downside to harassing you. In fact, you were safer in Las Vegas than in a random city, because if some mob guy decided to shoot you because you took the parking space he wanted in, say, Miami or Chicago, there was no business at risk.

The only bad experience I had, and it wasn't too bad, is having two well-dressed but thuggish guys knock on my hotel room door one morning and tell me I had to give back the money I had won in a private game the previous night. I had seen them around and knew they were connected, although I didn't know their names or anything else about them.

They were polite and calm, no threats were made. They knew exactly how much I had won, and didn't try to take all of my money. If I'd had more nerve, I would have asked them for a receipt, and I think there's an even chance they would have given it to me. They also told me never to play poker with one of the people in the previous night's game, the guy who had been the big loser.

No one ever explained the whole story to me, but from similar experiences other people had I deduced that the big loser owed large gambling debts, and the mob regarded itself has having a higher priority claim to his assets than I did. The biggest way to skim from casinos in those days was to write off debts for the official casino books, then collect them privately.

Thanks Aaron for the insights on what the poker world was like in the 80's.

The poster who stated the Stu "laid the groundwork for today's game" may not have read The Biggest Game In Town. In that book Stu Ungar is portrayed as an inarticulate idiot savant whereas Jack Strauss emerges as an articulate smart aggro player.

I would make the bold claim that Poker Stove and Wilson Software before it allowed many players to see the +EV in amping up their aggro with a larger number of hands .

I seem to recall hearing an online radio show interview of an old time poker player -- i believe it was Bob Hoff on the Lou Krieger "Keep Flopping Aces", say that while Stu Unger was a good tourney player, he was lost in a deep stack cash game and someone a good cash game player wanted at the table: easy pickings as Unger was too loose, too aggressive for cash games.

Probably not enough strategy, OP, but if I remember correctly Mike Sexton mentions him frequently in Shuffle Up and Deal.

Unger fascinates me from a psychological standpoint.

I was aquainted with one of Spilatros girlfriends. Back in those days she spoke about most of those top players playing as a corporation under Tony. They were basically playing best hand rather than using traditional cheating methods etc.
Stu Ungar had as close as you can get to a photographic memory and was considered the best Gin player in the world, and i believe as you say he was backed by new york
outfit guys. His memory was such that he could remember every hand in detail that he played with anyone who had ever played with him, and of course this helped him make some great calls at the poker table, and at Gin he was so good that finally no one would play him because he knew what was in your hand.
This is the first time Ive seen anyone else write about the players under the influence of Tony S.

Absolutely loving this thread. Thanks for the read to everyone involved.

A fanciful and unfalsifiable claim.

Those 2 Alvarez books talk about some hands he played and also his 1st or 2nd WSOP win.
There was some other book that talked about him calling an All-In from someone with 9 high, because he had figured out the guy going All-In only had 7 high. How someone can figure something like that out and then be correct about it is beyond me.
Mike Sexton talks about him in a video you can find on youtube, he's on the verge of tears talking about his demise and it's very sad.
You can also watch the 1997 World Series. There is a hand where he made another top pro fold and all he had was garbage.

Its been written about elsewhere . Ill tone it down. He had an incredible memory..... hows that.

I once had a phone conversation with Norman Lepore (I think the name is correct) who was recognized as an almost equal to Stu Unger at gin. He told me that on a day to day basis he actually played better than Unger, but that when Unger was right, no one, including him, could come close.

Best wishes,
Mason

I can tell you this: Stuey was good in tournament because there's lot of gambling going on and there you actually have many short sessions based on the value of the blinds and at different tables. So, you got to take big risks and play aggressive. Example would be how AK is played in tournament and how AK gets played in cash games with 100-200bb effective stacks. Now, in deep cash games, Stuey was a big loser. He didn't had patience and he was just bluffing too much.

The board: 3-3-7-K-Q (rainbow)

Matloubi: 5-4

Ungar: 10-9

Matloubi shoved for 32k on the river, Ungar thought for a few seconds and said he thought Matloubi had either 5-4 or 5-6 and called.

He Said, She Said, Vol. 7: Stu Ungar's Famous 10-high Call

Mansour Quits Stuey forever!

Yea, that's it.
I couldn't remember the details.

Sounds absolutely amazing, especially considering that Stuey's opponent was a world class player too.

Great stories guys. Keep em' coming.

Another thing.

If you listen to Phil Hellmuth's commentary which was taken live during the 1997 WSOP main event, he read Ungar wrong almost every single time. In other words, had he been in that same table Stuey would have totally out played him which he did when he broke Phil earlier in the tournament.

And yet hellmuth is the successful player who has consistently stood the test of time and ungar was often broke

With all due respect, Phil has been broke before too. His endorsements help balance him out when he is running bad. I also think his family and background keep him in check. Hellmuth's dad was a Dean at Wisconsin, Stuey's was a bookie in NYC. Both were great at what they did.

Stu was a degen spending all his money on drugs, sports-betting ,parties and prostitutes

If he had been at that same table he would have, unless tilted, been in the zone. And not in the commentary box giving what-we-now-call-"standard" responses for the benefit of the viewing public. Not for a second saying he would have outplayed Ungar, Ungar looks like the better MTT player from all angles - just that this is unfair, and irrelevant, criticism.

I like this post a lot

After reading this thread, it interests me that the poker community doesn't have a similar style of historical analysis as chess, where you can look up games that go back hundreds of years. Obviously that would be difficult to do given the nature of hidden hole cards, but given our current technology it would be interesting and 100% doable. It would be cool to have libraries of hands that people could refer too, or could be analysed with modern day tools to compare lines and blah blah.

Just my random thought of the day.