He was an Ace Among Poker's Kings Before Caving in at 45
"...Stu, or Stuey the Kid, Ungar was the swashbuckling enfant terrible of poker before it blew up into a mainstream obsession in the 1990s. The diminutive son of a bookmaker from Manhattan's Lower East Side, he won his back-to-back World Series of Poker titles by the unheard of age of 27 and went on to win, and lose, $30 million by one estimate before his epic taste for excess left him dead, in a cheap Las Vegas motel on Nov. 22, 1998, at 45.
"...A legend even when he was alive, Ungar left a legacy that has always loomed large at the World Series of Poker. It looms even larger for the hundreds of players roaming the hangarlike convention hall at Harrah's Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, where the tournament continues through July 15. His biography, One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey 'the Kid' Ungar, the World's Greatest Poker Player, by Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson, hit stores last week..."