Mike Matusow: More Than a Mouthful

Mike Matusow is a tough guy to miss at the poker table. Suitably nicknamed The Mouth, he's constantly bantering, chattering, joking around, and needling. Sometimes it gets him on TV – as did a famous confrontation he had with Greg Raymer at the 2004 World Series – and other times it gets him suspended from play for 40 minutes. Such was the case at this year's Series when Matusow was accused of dropping a succession of F-bombs. Behind the bluster, though, is a skilled poker player who has managed to make two World Series championship final tables between 2001 and 2005.

Mike Matusow after being eliminated in ninth place in the World Series of Poker main event

Matusow is known for being one of the craftier Omaha eight-or-better specialists on the circuit, and his knack for reading opponents is considerable. During the 2005 Series, he managed to cut through a field of more than 5,600 players and came to the final table of the championship event with a medium-sized chip stack and more tournament-closing experience than any of the other contenders. He didn't win the event, but he took home a prize of $1 million and busted out with nary a whimper (which is way out of character for The Mouth). That Matusow had recently gotten out of jail, after serving six months for what appears to be a trumped-up charge of drug dealing, makes his Series performance all the more impressive.



Michael Kaplan: Going into the 2005 World Series championship, how were you feeling?



Mike Matusow: Not good at all. I was coming off the worst six weeks of my life. I hadn't been playing well and didn't even want to play in the championship. My friends talked me into it. I was on a major losing streak and was struggling with my medicine. I take antidepressants, and if that medicine doesn't work, I have trouble focusing and playing well.



MK: Things definitely picked up during the final days of the tournament. What was going on then?



MM: I changed my medicine, and it began working fantastically. I got into a zone and played great. When the medicine works right and does what it should do, it enables me to play at a great level. I played the best poker of my life for seven days. I would come home every night and just jump up and down like a little kid. I thought I had a real shot at winning the championship.



MK: So did a lot of people. Then you pushed all in with kings. Scott Lazar called with aces, you caught a third king on the flop, and he hit runner-runner hearts to make a flush. What went through your mind during all of that?



MM: When the guy turned over aces, the first thing I thought was that this couldn't possibly be happening. But I had a smirk on my face. I figured I would lose half my stack. Then, I hit the king and was higher than life. But for me to hit that king and lose the pot anyway – well, it was so hard to handle.



MK: How could anyone not steam after that?



MM: I tried not to steam. I tried to stay focused. But then I made a $2 million mistake against Andy Black, when I sensed weakness and made a big bluff, and then sensed strength and folded with $2 million of my chips in the pot; he showed me his cards after the hand, and I ultimately had made the right decision. But if I hadn't been so shaken up from the earlier beat, I wouldn't have made that initial mistake. Then, on my last hand, I looked the guy [Steve Dannenmann] right in the eye and knew he had nothing. I put my chips in and got unlucky, man [Matusow had a pair of tens, and Dannenman was on an inside-straight draw with two overcards]. I was shocked to be out in ninth place.



MK: Still, a million dollars is a pretty good score.



MM: I needed to make one of the top three places [for it to matter]. Number nine doesn't mean anything to me. It just enables me to pay off a few markers.



MK: I remember hearing that you had been having some serious swings just prior to the Series, that you had gotten ahead $750,000 online and lost back most of it.



MM: That's true. One of the biggest mistakes I made was playing online during the World Series. Whenever I got knocked out of a Series event – which was every one I played in up till the championship – I would go home, go online, and play $50-$100 no-limit. It was a game in which you could lose $30,000 or $40,000 a day. My friends eventually came by and took away my keyboard and mouse. But I was f—-ing jonesing. [Playing online poker's] an addiction, man.



MK: Couldn't you have just gone out and gotten a new keyboard and mouse?

During his 40-minute penalty period on day one of the WSOP main event, Mike Matusow roamed the tournament area chatting with other players.

MM: That would have shown me to be a real sicko. (Matusow hesitated for a beat, then came clean.) I played a little bit with a new keyboard and mouse – but I lost. I never won a hand of poker all month [during the weeks of the Series]. On one level, it was the worst World Series I ever had. But, when all was said and done, I walked away from the best World Series I ever had.



MK: Especially in light of what preceded the Series for you. You had been in the Clark County Detention Center, serving a six-month sentence, apparently entrapped on drug dealing charges. How horrible was your time in jail?



MM: It was awful. I spent half a year amongst the criminal lowlifes of the world. Everybody in there was a drug addict who couldn't wait to get out and do more drugs.



MK: How did you get people to watch your back while you were behind bars?



MM: I f—-ing bought 'em store [that is, items from the jail's commissary]. I'd give out $10 worth of stuff or a couple of soups and would be loved to death. Nobody was allowed to f—- with me. Anyone who got near me would get his ass kicked.



MK: Right before going away, you finished third in the UltimateBet.com Poker Classic and pocketed $250,000. Did anybody in jail realize that you had so much dough? I mean, I'm surprised nobody threatened to kill you if you didn't get $10,000 to his girlfriend or someone.



MM: People knew I had money, but they were good to me. This guy Rodney took care of me for the last few months. Then he wanted to be friends with me on the outside, but I pushed him away. Friends on the inside and friends on the outside are different.



MK: Did you do much gambling while you were incarcerated?



MM: They played a game called Casino, which I don't even remember how to play. But I managed to lose $200,000 in jail. Before going away, I put a couple hundred thousand in my sports-betting account. I knew I would be bored and needed to be in action on Saturdays and Sundays. I did really well for a while, but toward the end of the football season, I went crazy and bet $100,000 on a couple games and lost them both.



MK: Did you care?



MM: Not really.



MK: Does the notion of going broke bother you?



MM: I have people I can borrow money from. I don't worry about money. When things get bad, my mom asks how I will pay bills. I say, "Ma, shut up. Have I ever worried about money?" I don't worry about money. Somebody will always loan me money. I'm a great poker player. People will always loan money to great poker players. If they think you can't play, though, you're f—-ed. Plus, I know I can borrow $300,000 cash on my house in one day.



MK: Yeah. But you wouldn't risk your house on poker, especially if you've already lost enough money to have gotten to that point in the first place.



MM: Sure I would. I've done it many times and paid it back.



MK: How did you get into playing poker?



MM: My family moved from L.A. to Las Vegas when I was 10, and I was never into gambling till after I turned 18. That's when my friend Loren had me play video poker. I won $85 and that was the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life. I became completely addicted to video poker.



MK: Literally addicted?



MM: Literally. I was a compulsive degenerate. It got to the point where I would steal money so I could go play.



MK: You must have realized that it was a losing proposition.



MM: I'm telling you, I was addicted. And I enjoyed it. There was something about the speed and compulsiveness. Finally, I went to G.A. – only twice, though – after I realized that I couldn't quit. But then I found real poker, and it helped me to wean my way off this sickness.



MK: It's pretty funny that a guy would use poker to wean himself off gambling.



MM: I first learned to play poker in 1991. I was playing video poker alongside Steve Samaroff, a guy who grinds it out at $20-$40. He asked if I'd like to learn something that would keep me from ever having to work again. I looked at him like he was nuts. But he taught me how to play.



MK: Did you get right into the high-stakes games?



MM: No. I played $4-$8 and built $200 into $10,000. I was grinding for like $400 a week. I lived in a trailer park, where I owned a $5,000 trailer – my parents bought it for me – and I paid $200 a month rent there. I was trailer trash, but I didn't care. My bills came to a few hundred a month and I lived a very nice lifestyle. Then, I got sick of grinding and dealt cards for a while. Eventually, I found the $10-$20, $20-$40, and $30-$60 games. I made $500 or $600 every night playing $20-$40 back in 1993. But then I had a new degenerate problem.



MK: What was that?



MM: Sports. I would put together a $30,000 bankroll and blow it all on a football Sunday on a ritual basis. Then I would sit in the box and deal, earn $600 or $700, build it up to $30,000, blow it all, and start over again.



MK: That sounds pretty self-destructive.



MM: I loved football. I still do. I'm still a degenerate. Come football season, the bookies all call me. I go off for anywhere from $200,000 to half a million every football season. I know I will lose all the money, but I can't quit because I love it so much.



MK: At least you never needed to get over a high regard for money in order to succeed at big-league poker.



MM: I used to have a huge regard for money. In high school, I sold candy to make $75 a week. I used to love money. But I lost my regard for it somewhere between video poker and making a lot of money at high-low. Right now there is probably not a human being in the world with less regard for money than me. I make bets for thousands of dollars that I know I can't win. I was at the poker table once and made a $5,000 bet with Howard Lederer that Shawshank Redemption won best picture. Doyle Brunson told me not to make that bet because he made it once and lost. Of course, I didn't listen, and had to give Howard $5,000.



MK: Any weight bets?



MM: I made a $20,000 weight-loss bet with Erick Lindgren. I dropped 17 pounds and still lost the bet. That sucked. He lost an extra 2 pounds and sandbagged me. He told me he couldn't lose any more weight; he looked like a fat pig, and I believed him. I was pushing him to work out, trying to motivate him as a friend, and he was trying to win money. But that's how gamblers are.



MK: One undeniably good bet you made was when you backed Scotty Nguyen in the 1998 World Series championship.



MM: The weirdest thing happened that year. A guy by the name of Neil was backing Scotty [Neil also used to back Matusow]. Scotty had won $65,000 during the Series, but Neil didn't want to put up $10,000 for Scotty in the last event. Then, I had a dream of Scotty winning the World Series. He was busted and I put him in four satellites [in reality, not in the dream]. Scotty lost them all and begged me to put him in one more event. I gave him $500 and he found two other guys to put up $250 apiece. He won the satellite, then he won the Series, and I got one-third of the money, $333,000. Neil was irate. I offered him $5,000, but he wanted $100,000.



MK: What about your own World Series final-table experiences? I actually was at the Horseshoe for your first one. I remember a hand prior to your being knocked out, in which Carlos Mortensen ran a bluff on you. What happened?



MM: Carlos was in the big blind and he reraised me real fast. He happened to be the only player I was keeping an eye on at that final table. Phil Hellmuth was such a good player that I didn't want to get involved with him. Dewey Tomko was a weak player with no chips; I knew that if he entered a pot, he had to have a big hand. Phil Gordon had a big tell – he still has it, so I won't say what it is – and as a result, I knew what he held. So, my only focus was on Carlos.



MK: And he reraised you.



MM: Yeah, and I was 100 percent certain that he had nothing. So, I reraised him. That's when he looked over at my stack and went all in. I sat there and studied him for what felt like an hour. I had ace-deuce of hearts in my hand, ace f—-ing high. There was $1.2 million sitting in the pot, and I knew he had nothing. But as I got ready to call him, I wondered what would happen if I was wrong. I'd be the laughingstock of poker. I couldn't take that chance. I folded and he showed the whole world his queen-eight offsuit. It devastated me. For six months I couldn't live with the fact that I didn't call him – even though I knew what he had. I came to within not following my read of winning the World Series that year.



MK: Don't take offense at this, but it seems like you have trouble closing tournaments, like you make a lot of final tables or get close to the money, but often run into snags when it comes to winning these things.

Mike Matusow (left) chats with Andy Bloch (right) while Greg Raymer (second from left) and another player look on.

MM: I do have trouble closing because I get tired. I can't play for days and days at a time without some drug like Ritalin. By the second or third day of a poker tournament, my brain shuts down. That's where I struggle. I have ADD. The Ritalin helps – it's a formulative of methamphetamine – but it's too harsh on me. I need to find something else.



MK: After you lost that hand to Mortensen, I remember you standing up and jackknifing your torso to a degree that it looked as if you had been stabbed in the back. What's the deal with the way you show all of your emotions so intensely?



MM: I ride myself real hard. Nobody rides himself harder than me. If I play bad, I can't get it out of my system. I hate it when I play bad.



MK: Last year you were verbally confrontational with Greg Raymer, not long before he knocked you out, and it got a lot of play on ESPN. Do you regret that at all?



MM: No. I did it for the cameras. I was having fun. He's the only guy who was coming after me. So, I was talking a lot of s—- to him, and he had a tell from here to China. Once I found the tell, I waited to pick up on it. He raised me $100,000 and I came over the top for another $200,000 with 5 high and told him, "Buddy, I got big cojones, you got little cojones; you better stop f—-ing with me. Keep f—-ing with me and I will bust you." He had been trying to come over the top of me and rob me. I was so sure what his two cards were.



MK: You may have been right that time, but your last hand against him was pretty much a coin flip, with your pair of nines against his two overcards and four to a flush. That was when he outdrew you.



MM: So, if it's fifty-fifty, would you want to go in holding a made hand or needing to make a hand?



MK: Let's finish up here by talking about online poker. You love playing online and I know you've had some big swings there, but, presumably, you're a winner in the long term. I'm wondering what you see people doing wrong online.



MM: They play too many hands. The speed of the game is so fast that they think they have to play every hand. But the game doesn't change. The mathematics of the game don't change. If a guy is robbing you blind, who cares? When you have a hand, he will pay you off.



MK: Doesn't sound like you have much respect for online players.



MM: Online poker players are the worst poker players in the history of mankind. I play against really bad players who just give their money away. Guys put in $13,000, $14,000 when they can't beat anything. Only online do you see that. That can never happen in a live game. I crush the no-limit online.



MK: And your online involvement goes beyond playing. You have a deal with FullTiltPoker.com. What is the nature of that arrangement?



MM: FullTilt takes care of me. But they don't look at [my value to the business] the way I do, because of the fact that they've got Ivey and Ferguson and Howard Lederer. Let's be honest, though. Those guys are all dry toast. They have no personalities.



MK: And you?



MM: When Mike Matusow is wearing a FullTilt jersey, everyone is interviewing Mike Matusow, everyone wants to talk to Mike Matusow. And that's not my ego speaking. I don't know why [the poker world finds me so interesting]. Maybe it's because of my mouth. It's probably because I tell it like it is and don't ever hide anything. People like that.