The Two Mikeys: 'Mr. Chaotic' and 'The Mouth'

by Michael Craig | Published: Jan 10, 2006

Watching CardPlayer.com on Nov. 7, I see that Mike Matusow has made the final table of the World Series Tournament of Champions. I call him to leave a message, to add my "good luck" to the hoard of voice-mailing well-wishers.

To my surprise, Mikey picks up. (I don't call anyone else on the planet Mikey.)

Seeing my number on the caller ID, he says, "Mikey, how are you doing?" (No one else on the planet calls me Mikey.)

"No, how are you doing?"

He tells me he has been playing well and is just watching TV in bed and getting some rest before what promises to be a long final day.

I start to give him "the pep talk." I am sure all his friends are doing the same.

Mikey, you are a great player. You are mentally so tough, tougher even now than the last time. It's your turn to be the lucky one.

I cried with Mike when he told me the story of how he got sent to jail. I cried with him when he busted out of the main event.

I may think I'm special, but I'm not alone. Mike Matusow has legions of friends. Almost everyone who gets to know him forms a bond with him, a personal stake in his success. In fact, the pep talk isn't even for him. It's for me.

This may be the experience of his lifetime. I'm 300 miles away, with business obligations on the other side of the country in less than two days. I'm not there with him, but I want to believe I'm somehow a part of it.

He interrupts me in mid-pep: "You mean you're not coming out?"

It's Monday at 10 p.m. On Wednesday at 8 a.m., I fly to Connecticut. I am speaking before a group of brilliant, poker-crazy students, and I have no idea what I'm going to say. I have a redraft of an article for Golf Connoisseur due by Wednesday, two Card Player columns due on Friday, and my agent is deep in negotiations for my next book. I need to be available to answer questions, provide details, and (hopefully) dance a jig.

It's just impossible for me to go to Vegas now. I know what I have to say: "You're inviting me? What time? You want me to come by your house?"

On Tuesday at 7 a.m., my wife, Jo Anne, says, "Good morning. Time to wake up if you're driving to Las Vegas." I don't know it, but this is the last rational thing any adult will say to me for the next 40 hours, and the last time I will lie in a bed for 42. My life will spin out of control in a series of long drives, taxi rides, car rentals, airplane trips, airport searches, cancelled flights, and missed flights. Almost every moment I spend not in transit, I am in a darkened room, either under cover of the night or because the property's owner doesn't want guests to mark the passage of time.

Near the end of the five-hour drive, as I pass the Hoover Dam, I call Mike to ask if I should bring lunch. There's no answer on his cell, and no answer on his home phone.

I arrive at his house at exactly the time I promised, 12:30, one hour before he has to be at Caesars Palace for interviews. Mike lives in a nice, large, modern house in a prosperous neighborhood. I wonder what the people on this street think of Mike, if they know him at all. A guy who just spent a half a year in jail? A professional card player? A TV star? A sick gambler? A stranger? A guy who leaves his garage door open just enough so that if his cat escapes, it can return without distress?

I knock on the door. No answer. I ring the bell. No answer.

I don't walk into people's houses unannounced. If I arrive at someone's house for a party and there are 200 people inside and a band playing in the backyard, I will still ring the doorbell.

I open the door and walk in.

Mike's house could be a subject for a photo spread in Modern Poker Player, if such a magazine existed: nice; new; lots of white walls, rugs, and countertops; lots of black marble. It's expensive, purchased during the good times. Many of the rooms are empty, from the combination of no spouse, no family, and no decorator. I hear his 60-inch TV in his bedroom upstairs. I know its size: poker-player standard. Poker players watch a lot of sports, and it's less than a single big pot in the $400-$800 game.

I call out, "Mikey, you home?"

Walking through the house, now I'm yelling, "Mikey, you awake?"

Upstairs, the "beast" turns in his lair.

"Mikey, is that you?" the Mouth croaks. "Come upstairs. I'm just waking up."

I walk up because I need to use his computer to e-mail all the people I'm stringing along or letting down by coming out to Vegas. They won't understand.

There is a big empty space where the computer used to be. Mike lies under the covers of the giant canopied bed, shaking off sleep, languorous. He hasn't shaved in several days and I can see he's working on a wicked Zapata mustache. He shares his bed with two telephones, a fast-food bag, and an empty milk carton.

Incredibly, Rounders is on his TV.

The sitting area next to his bedroom, once home to "the computer that cost me eight hundred thousand dollars," houses only CDs, business proposals, mail, old poker magazines, and a couple of sports betting tickets from 2003.

"Online poker is the devil," he tells me, not for the last time that day.

I wonder if this opinion will jeopardize his negotiations with FullTiltPoker or other online sites, but I realize it is not an issue: Online poker is his devil. Before that, it was sports betting. Mike has told me of his terrible, huge sports-betting losses since I met him in spring 2004. Still, he lost six figures betting sports while in jail. I never even asked how you bet sports in jail. I don't want to know.

Before that – long before he was set up for a drug bust – it was drugs: coke, speed, Ecstasy. He trips off the names casually when telling me about those bad old days, when he had so much success that he practically dared himself to lose all his money.

Ha! He did it.

Is this the day Mike finally slays his demons, once and for all? Maybe not even once and for all – how about just for one day?