Jewish Poker Players
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 25. Chapters: Abe Mosseri, Barry Greenstein, Barry Shulman, Eli Elezra, Eric Buchman, Erik Seidel, Henry Orenstein, Jack Straus, James Bord, Jamie Gold, Jay Heimowitz, Jeff Shulman, Joe Bernstein (poker player), Josh Arieh, Lyle Berman, Michael Mizrachi, Mike Matusow, Nick Schulman, Patrick Bruel, Perry Green (poker player), Robert Mizrachi, Stu Ungar, Tony Bloom.
Excerpt: Stuart Errol "Stu" Ungar (September 8, 1953 - November 22, 1998) was a professional poker and gin rummy player, widely regarded to have been the greatest Texas hold 'em and gin rummy player of all time. He is one of only two people to have won the World Series of Poker Main Event three times (Johnny Moss also has three WSOP titles but his first was obtained by a vote of the players, not by winning a tournament). He is also the only person to win Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl of Poker three times, the world's second most prestigious poker title during its time. Ungar was born to Jewish parents and raised on Manhattan's Lower East Side. His father, Isadore ("Ido") Ungar, was a loan shark who ran a bar/social club called Foxes Corner that doubled as a gambling establishment, exposing Stu to gambling at a young age. Despite Ido's attempts to keep his son from gambling after seeing its effects on his regular customers, Stu began playing underground gin and quickly made a name for himself. Ungar was gifted at school and skipped seventh grade, but then dropped out of school in tenth grade. Ido died of a heart attack in 1966. Following his father's death, and with his mother virtually incapacitated by an illness as well, Ungar drifted around the New York gambling scene until age 18, when he was befriended by reputed organized crime figure Victor Romano. Romano was regarded as one of the best card players of his time. He had the ability to recite the spelling and...