Mike Sexton

Peter Alson

Nolan Dalla

Traces the rise and fall of poker champion Stuey Ungar, offering insight into his meteoric career as one of the game's most feared tournament players, the factors behind his tragic change of circumstances, and his early death at the age of forty-five. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.

The Rise and Fall of Stuey ',The Kid', Ungar, The World's Greatest Poker Player

One of a Kind

The extraordinary life of the best poker player who ever lived When Stuey 'The Kid' Ungar took his first World Series of Poker title, one journalist asked him what he would do with the money. His answer: 'Gamble it'. Stuey grew up among the hoodlums and wiseguys of New York's Lower East Side. A pint-sized high-school drop out who never worked a day in his life, never had a bank account or paid a penny in taxes, he lived to gamble and became the world's most feared card player. From the multi-million dollar fortune he won and lost, the addictions that consumed him, and one of the greatest phoenix-from-the-ashes comebacks of all time, this is the story of a Las Vegas legend.

The Rise and Fall of Stuey 'The Kid' Ungar, Poker's Greatest Player

The Man Behind the Shades

Stuey »The Kid« Ungar är världens bästa pokerspelare genom tiderna. En kasinots Maradona, en legend innan han ens hunnit bli myndig. Stuey Ungar växer upp i sextiotalets New York, pappan är bookmaker och Stuey tillbringar all sin tid i stans spelhålor. Han lär sig poker och gin rummy och inser att han kan utklassa alla de äldre spelarna. I tonåren träffar han mafioson Victor Romano som presenterar honom för de riktiga proffsen, och snart är han så bra att ingen vill möta honom längre. I jakten på ständigt nya kickar ser han tiotusentals dollar komma och gå. När Stuey hamnar i Kalifornien ställs han inför det största spelet av dem alla  Texas holdem no limit. 1980 vinner han sitt första poker-VM, han har bara fyllt 26, och redan nästa år ska han göra det igen. ALL­ IN! är en sann historia om spelandet som livsstil, men också om tillvaron utanför spelet. Kokainet, som först hjälper Stuey att hålla sig vaken vid spelbordet, blir snart till ett beroende och verkligheten hamnar alltmer i bakgrunden. Stuey gör sig också ökänd för att spela bort varenda dollar han har på fickan. Han vinner runt 30 miljoner dollar under sin livstid, men har inget bankkonto, eller ens någon fast adress. 1997 gör han oväntat comeback och vinner sitt tredje VM. Den 22:a november 1998 hittas Stuey Ungar död på ett motell i Las Vegas efter ett långvarigt crackmissbruk, 45 år gammal. Hans vänner tvingas samla in pengar till hans begravning. I översättning av Stefan Lindgren. »Har man det minsta intresse av poker så är den här boken ett måste. Mycket läsvärd!« JENS JADBÄCK, SUPERBLOGGEN, AFTONBLADET »Vem som är världens bäste pokerspelare genom tiderna? Stuey Ungar, definitivt.« DAN GLIMNE, spelexpert & pokerbloggare »I kort jämnar turen alltid ut sig till slut. De bra spelarna vinner. Alla som tror att kortspel handlar om tur är idioter.« STUEY UNGAR

Den sanna historien om tidernas bästa pokerspelare

Stuey ' The Kid' Ungar

Stuey Ungar, the son of a Lower East Side bookie, grew up in a New York of the 1950s and '60s that was straight out of Damon Runyon. By his early teens, he had dropped out of high school and was spending most of his time in the city's under- ground card rooms. So prodigious was his talent for playing gin rummy that he soon found himself bankrolled by members of the Genovese crime family. After thrashing every top gin player on the East Coast, he was forced to broaden his horizons--traveling around the country to find opponents and also learning other card games, including poker. At twenty-one, he moved to Las Vegas for good and quickly found mentors in poker legends such as Jack "Treetop" Straus, "Amarillo Slim" Preston, Doyle Brunson, and Chip Reese, who embraced the skinny five-foot-five kid with the Rimbaud aura. Soon enough, Ungar was playing in the biggest games at the famous Dunes poker room, learning the finer points of the game at incredible speed. In 1980, competing in his second tournament ever and playing a game--no-limit Texas Hold'em--he'd just learned, he shocked the poker universe by winning the World Series of Poker. He would go on to win the event a record three times. In One of a Kind, authors Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson tell the startling tale of a man who managed to win millions of dollars and live the highest of high-roller lives without ever quite understanding or respecting the value of money. Whether tossing away his winnings at the racetrack or on a single roll of the dice, Ungar was notorious for gambling every single dollar in his pocket on a daily basis. The risk that he embodied in his gambling carried over to his personal life. He had no concept of night or day. He didn't own a wristwatch, didn't have a bank account, and for years had no home address or personal possessions. For all his gambling successes, at the end of his life he bounced between hotel rooms, casinos, and crack houses, dependent upon the kindness of friends and strangers. This intimate, authorized biography illuminates the dark genius of poker's most charismatic and mysterious star, who could ruthlessly peer into and read other men's souls but seemed baffled and powerless when confronted with his own.

Nolan Dalla

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