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Comment by fdeage | Hacker News Reader

> He was utterly dominant; indeed it is hard to think of a competitor in all of history more dominant over his sport or game than Tinsley.

Very interesting comment. This sentence about dominance in a field made me think of Stu Ungar, who dominated Gin Rummy so completely that he had to switch to Poker (where he became a 3-time world champion) to meet interesting adversaries.

I couldn't find an exact reference for the following quote, but still: "Some day, I suppose it's possible for someone to be a better No Limit Hold'em player than me. I doubt it, but it could happen. But, I swear to you, I don't see how anyone could ever play gin better than me."

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Fascinating character. I ended up reading the whole Wikipedia article [1] because of your comment.

Sounds like he was very skilled and continuously getting better -- which is of course impressive. At the same time, his overall life story turns out to be tragic. Two choice quotes from the article really jumped out for me:

> Ungar told ESPN TV... that the 1980 WSOP was the first time he had ever played a Texas hold'em tournament. Poker legend Doyle Brunson remarked that it was the first time he had seen a player improve as the tournament went on.

> Ungar is regarded by many poker analysts and insiders as one of the greatest pure-talent players ever to play the game. But on the topic of his life, Stu’s long term friend Mike Sexton said “In the game of life, Stu Ungar was a loser.”

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stu_Ungar

there's a (so-so) movie - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338467/

when the show Billions did a poker game they used a famous Stu Ungar hand https://somuchpoker.com/calling-with-ten-high-stu-ungar-vs-m...

(but OMG that game was so cringey for so many reasons, you don't get to call time and go talk to your therapist in the middle of a hand)

After reading that Wikipedia article I'm reminded of a episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent that was almost certainly inspired by Ungar's life: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0799186/ . The character appears in two episodes, although the second one isn't that great.

Along the same lines of utterly dominant and lesser known, Jahangir Khan in the sport of squash. Most famously for 555 consecutive victories.

> "Some day, I suppose it's possible for someone to be a better No Limit Hold'em player than me. I doubt it, but it could happen. But, I swear to you, I don't see how anyone could ever play gin better than me."

An approximately optimal strategy for Limit Heads Up was determined: http://poker.srv.ualberta.ca/ is a Limit solution.

Machines don't play No Limit perfectly, but they're good enough to have beaten the best humans available when they last tried, so I expect if Stu had lived long enough they'd beat Stu too.

Interestingly Gin Rummy is not seen as a major AI research target. I found some undergraduates playing with relatively simple AI approaches for Gin Rummy as basically a getting your feet wet exercise, but this is apparently not in the context of "Here's what the grown-ups did" but rather "Nobody is exploring this, so whatever you do is actually novel". So there's a real opportunity if somebody is interested.

About being dominant. What about Raymond Ceulemans ? From the wikipedia page: Billiards player, having won

   - 35 World Championship titles (23 in three-cushion + 12 in other carom disciplines)
   - 48 European titles (23 in three-cushion) and 
   - 61 national titles.

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