Matusow’s need to self-medicate came to a head when he first tried crystal meth. The drug gave him incredible focus and the ability to play for hours on end without making a mistake - for a while. After an incredible run that saw Matusow win a million dollars online in about five months, the drug’s effects wore off and he found himself once again the sucker at the table, only this time one with an expensive habit to feed.
Matusow’s description of winning his second WSOP bracelet while going through meth withdrawal here is riveting and one of the greatest stories of individual determination that I’ve ever read. While at times barely able to stand up, Matusow endured the tournament, so unsure of his ability to carry on that he was carrying a packet of the drug in his shirt pocket at all times.
Without a doubt though, the number one reason to read Check-Raising the Devil is Matusow’s retelling of the events that led to his arrest, conviction, and subsequent six month prison sentence for drug trafficking. Matusow’s entrapment by an over-friendly undercover DEA agent is everything that is wrong with our current treatment of drug users in America today.
Matusow’s Judas actually helped and encouraged him in his efforts to get clean, before stepping in and lowering the boom. Shortly after Matusow had kicked his drug problem, the undercover agent started to repeatedly beg Matusow to get him a large quantity of cocaine. Matusow, who is nothing if not loyal, eventually gave in and complied with the request. He refused to make any money on the deal and strongly told the man he thought to be his friend that it was something he’d never again do under any circumstances.
When I first heard about the incident, I wondered why Matusow had taken the plea bargain, if indeed he had been so obviously entrapped. Check-Raising the Devil explains the pressures and deep depressions Matusow went through in this period, his fear of wearing a wire for the DEA, and his eventual decision not to risk a ten-year jail sentence against an unfeeling judge and a lying, determined DEA agent. Like the similarly, absurdly jail-serving Tommy Chong, Matusow was set up and blackmailed into a place he was never meant to be.
Like John Daly, Matusow has made some huge financial blunders in his life. Before his stay in jail he was offered a piece of Full Tilt Poker by Howard Lederer and instead decided to pass up on being set for life in favor of having a few hundred thousand dollars to lose (and Matusow seems to always be losing when he bets sports) on football while in jail. Nevertheless, he’s done his best to turn his life around and avoid falling prey to the temptations that dragged Stu Unger down. Matusow credits his bipolar and ADHD diagnoses and their subsequent medication treatments with saving his life and seems to finally be on his way to financial stability, but one nevertheless gets the impression from his book that life remains a day-to-day struggle for the man, as he fights with his prescribed meds with the same fervor he once battled his crystal meth addiction. One of the things that makes Matusow compelling is that he seems to fully understand that despite his recent successes, he is by no means out of the woods.
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