Can't beat the dealer

"I was a freak of nature," said Ungar, a few weeks before his death in November 1998. "Nobody calculated quicker than me, nobody."

Ungar was known as The Kid and was just 5ft 4in. He weighed a pound or two over six stone dripping wet. At the card tables in Las Vegas he was a beast, a man capable of leaving gambling's finest men in tears of hate and frustration as they calculated their deep losses and wondered how. "He stuck it in your liver," said Doyle "Texas Dolly" Brunson, a friend, rival and backer.

Ungar arrived in Las Vegas from the streets of New York, where he had been backed by one of the main criminal families in card games across the city since he was 14, and quickly taught himself to play poker. "I locked myself away in a hotel room and played all night for a lot of nights," Ungar said. He would repeat the method whenever he found a new game or hustle.

He entered the 1980 World Series Of Poker (WSOP), which was only his second tournament, and won the title. He won again the following year to establish his brilliance, a brilliance that was breathtaking at times to watch as he breaks the men that he is playing against. The dialogue at the table between the players is savage. Ungar spoke of needing to find a reason to hate his rivals, needing to find something that made him nasty.

He was beating the sport's giants; old men like Brunson and Amarillo Slim, who had been the best for decades at the tournament tables. Ungar's bravery at the table, his gut-shot plays and his willingness to play heads-up poker for hard cash at any time, gained the respect of the sport's icons.

"To be a successful gambler, you need a healthy disregard for money," Slim said, and Ungar had a deep understanding of the gambling code. He is said to have once spent or lost $3.6m, the profit from a marathon no-holds game, in three short weeks.

However, the tiny whirlwind was snorting far too much cocaine and had become predictably unreliable for his backers. Ungar, who needed to be backed because he never kept the millions he won, was in a great position at the 1990 WSOP tournament before ducking out after two days and vanishing to a cheap hotel. The experts think that he could have taken his third title that year. He was, however, starting to look like what Americans would call a bum.

The Las Vegas years were hard on Ungar and by 1997 his teeth had fallen out, his nostrils had rotted away and he was considered finished in poker circles; the game had become increasingly popular and the WSOP prize was now $1m.

There was no room at the table for The Kid. "This town is heaven for a degenerate, for a slick guy like me," Ungar had once said of Las Vegas. But by 1997 Ungar was often holed-up in tiny hotels like the Oasis, where for your $58 you got a hot tub. He was living a desolate addicted life, seldom seeing his wife and teenage daughter. In 1997 Ungar found a backer with less than 20 minutes to go before the closure of entries. His name was added last to the record-breaking number of players: He was number 312.

"Waste of money," people muttered. Ungar had been wandering the casino floors for 48 hours without sleep trying to raise the 10 grand needed to buy-in. He was dirty and looked like he was wearing charity-shop clothes. He had a torrid time at the start and nearly went out the first day, but The Kid found a few gut shots and survived. He wore dark blue shades to disguise his collapsed septum. The shades hid nothing: up close his face was a reminder of his addiction and his failures.

At the end of day one he was seventh and one of the 77 remaining players. At the end of day two he was second in chips and one of the surviving 27. He kept playing and word spread that The Kid was back from the dead. Ungar made it through day three and into the live final on ESPN with five others.

The final was moved outside for the first time and the crowds rallied behind The Kid. He ruined the men slowly at the table, dismantling their resistance until there was just one rival left. At that point the million-dollar prize money was removed from the vault and placed on the table. Ungar could smell it from his chair; it was with the money piled high that the most feared poker player in history completed his comeback and won.

Just over a year later he was dead, after blowing his million in typical style, then wandering Las Vegas for months begging for cash to feed his latest habit, crack. A sad end for the first man to win three WSOP tournaments.