Thanks to ESPN, The WSOP, and Norman Chad, we’ve been treated to hours and hours worth of prime Matusow entertainment. Matusow telling eventual winner Greg Raymer, “Stop fucking with me! I’ve got big cajones. You’ve got little cojones. And I’ll bust your ass,” informing every table he’s ever sat at that they were woefully out of his class, and of course, my all time personal favorite, Matusow’s impression of Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club, after being penalized for inadvertently tossing out an F-bomb, which was of course followed by many more during the penalization process.
This behavior would be boorish and detested from anyone else, but the truth is that Matusow is somehow also innocently sweet in a Chris Farley way. He could also be called the John Daly of the World Series of Poker, and he’s loved and protected like a teddy bear by many of the more respected names in the game today.
During my second visit to the Series, I got to watch Mike play up close and I wasn’t disappointed. About three seconds into the first event of the 2007 WSOP, Mike went ballistic when he saw how small the numbers were on the playing cards. As Mike carried on his tirade, an amused Daniel Negreanu was heard to say, “I told him three weeks ago that the cards sucked.”
I also found out that Mike’s nickname didn’t come from clever ESPN editing. Mike doesn’t talk occasionally at the poker table. He doesn’t talk in spurts. Mike “The Mouth” Matusow is always talking at the poker table. “You guys better not give me chips ... this Vitamin water stuff is great, I wonder if they would let me endorse it ... hell yes, I’d go on Dancing with the Stars! ... if God had my online account, even he’d be broke!”
But Check-Raising the Devil is about a lot more than a really entertaining, lovable character who has made some big poker scores. It’s literally the story of a man at war with himself, doing his desperate best not to succumb to the same temptations that led to Unger’s penniless, cocaine-induced death in 1998.
Matusow’s book doesn’t bother discussing poker strategy. Instead it focuses on how the game can become a competition to control one’s own worst urges. The bipolar, wired Matusow is capable of being the best poker player in the world on some nights. There are times when he believes that he knows exactly what every one of his opponents is holding. On others, Matusow is nothing but an out of control, desperate gambler giving his money away, a phenomenon that Norman Chad famously coined as the “Matusow blow-up.”
Article comments