Bio
Nolan Dalla has been a professional gambler for the past sixteen years and was selected by Stuey Ungar to co-write his autobiography before Stuey’s death in 1998. He is the lead sports handicapper for Casino Player, Western Player, and madjacksports.com and has written columns for Gambling Times, Card Player, Poker Pages, The Intelligent Gambler, and Midwest Gaming and Travel. His work has been published in U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, and The Dallas Morning News. Dalla spends about half of his time writing and the other half playing poker and betting sports professionally. He can regularly be found at the tables in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Los Angeles.
Project Description
The Man Behind the Shades is the biography of Stuey Ungar, the greatest card player who ever lived. Backed by the Mob, Stuey established himself as the greatest gin player in New York by the time he was seventeen. The first time he entered the World Series of Poker in 1980, he won. In 1981, he stunned the poker world by winning it again. Nicknamed "The Kid," Stuey was 5'5", never weighed more than 120 pounds, always wore dark sunglasses, and looked like a teenager even when he was in his thirties.
From 1992 to 1996, Stuey didn’t win any poker tournaments and was homeless and destitute. In 1997, however, Stuey stayed clean long enough to treat the poker world to the greatest comeback of all time, winning the World Series of Poker (and the million-dollar prize) in one of the most skillful and dramatic performances ever seen. A little more than a year later, at the age of forty-five, Stuey died a mysterious death in a seedy Las Vegas motel room with $800 and countless debts to his name.
