to his crass attitude and assassin-like playing style. Gin rummy and transition to poker Ungar won a local gin tournament at age 10. He dropped out of school to play gin rummy in the 1960s full-time to help support his mother and sister after his father died, and began regularly winning tournaments which earned him $10,000 or more. By 1976, he was regarded as one of the best players in New York City. Ungar eventually had to leave New York due to gambling debts at local race tracks. He later moved to Miami, Florida, to find more action. In 1977, Ungar left Miami for Las Vegas, Nevada, where he reunited with Madeline Wheeler, a former girlfriend who would become his wife in 1982. One of the reasons Ungar eventually took up poker exclusively was because gin action had dried up due to his skilled reputation. Ungar destroyed anyone who challenged him in a gin match, including a professional widely regarded as the best gin player of Ungar's generation, Harry "Yonkie" Stein. Ungar beat Stein 86 games to none in a high-stakes game of Hollywood Gin, after which Stein dropped out of sight in gin circles and eventually stopped playing professionally. As one observer who knew him put it, Stein "was never the same after that night." After beating Stein and several other top gin professionals, Ungar was a marked man. Nobody wanted to play him in gin. In the hopes of generating more action for himself, Ungar began offering potential opponents handicaps to even the playing field. He was known to let his opponent (professional or not) look at the last card in the deck, offer rebates to defeated opponents and always play each hand in the dealer position, all of which put him at a strong disadvantage. At the time Ungar first visited Las Vegas in 1977, gin was still popular in a tournament format, much like heads up poker tournaments. Ungar won or finished high in so many gin tournaments that several casinos asked him to not play in them because many players said they would not enter if they knew Ungar was playing. Ungar later said in his biography that he loved seeing his opponent slowly break down over the course of a match, realizing he could not win and eventually get a look of desperation on his face. Shortly after arriving in Las Vegas, Ungar defeated