Poker Player: Stu Unger
The main reason for why Stu switched from gin rummy to poker was that he was a little too skilled at it. So skilled in fact, that no one could equal him. Even the commonly called experts who were supposed to be the best at gin rummy were beat when they played against Mr. Ungar. One of these gin rummy masters was Harry Stein, called, "Yonkie". Mr. Stein suffered such a crushing blow at the hands of Stu Ungar that he evidently quit participating in it as a pro and never showed up at a gin rummy tournament.
Of course, with a honor like that it wasn’t long before people became weary of competing against mr. ungar. He could find no games and in his bleakness he began doing something no one had done prior. Stu provided starting handicaps to potential competitors with the high hopes that they might just play against him if they thought they had an edge. He deliberately played from a disadvantageous arrangement and one story has it that stu even played with a regular bad egg. Amid the game, he received advice that the cheater was at it one more time but mr. ungar stated that he knew of the chicanery and he would still win, which he did, of course.
The same trend followed Stu Ungar into vegas. He won so frequently that the poker rooms started requesting that he not to compete on their poker rooms anymore. The reasoning behind it was that other poker room clients would not be seated at the poker table if Stu was seated.
Stu Ungar is recalled better for his abilities in holdem poker but he always insisted that he was far better at gin rummy.
He defeated Doyle Brunson in the WSOP in 1980 and became the youngest world camp. Because of his looks that made him seem far younger than he actually was, he got the nickname, "The Kid".