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 Right
this second, wherever he is, awake or asleep, Mike "the Mouth" Matusow is talking. When Mike stops talking,
you feel like you should call the paramedics, just like if another person had stopped breathing.
You couldn't write a soap opera that would do justice to the rollercoaster that Mike calls a life. He began his poker
career as a dealer, and like a small minority
of dealers, he turned his observations of players to a more lucrative use at the other side of the tables. From there he backed
Scotty Nguyen in 1998 when he won the World Series of Poker main event. Since that windfall, Mike subsequently has accumulated
and evaporated a dozen fortunes.
If you only know Mike Matusow from seeing him on television, you might come to the conclusion that he is a wee bit
self-absorbed. This hole in Mike's game is big
enough to suck a small star system into. Not many players handle bad breaks worse than Mike. At the same time, Matusow's lack of
focus on other players hurts his ability to exploit them at their low ebb, or his ability to read them when they are supremely secure
-- hence, the notorious Matusow "blow-ups", self-destructive moves that appear to come out of nowhere.
Mike Matusow is one of the great Omaha tournament players in the world. One of his two World Series of Poker bracelets is
in Omaha HiLo (the other in No Limit Holdem). At the 2005 $5000 Omaha HiLo championship, Mike prophesized to the room that
a "known player" would win the $10,000 main event, since (up to that point) "known" players had been
surprisingly dominating the tournaments, despite the greatly increased entrants over the previous years. Well, when it
came down to the final table, there were eight relative unknowns (some actually were "known" to some degree,
but not to the general public) -- and Mike "the Mouth" Matusow. It was up to him to fulfill his own prophesy,
but unfortunately for Mike, the second hand of the final table his KK fell to an opponent's AA, and there was no happiness
after that... but no meltdown either.
Don't let the "show" fool you: Mike Matusow is a great guy, even if his own worst enemy sometimes. If you
run into him, ask: "why do the pigeons love your house so much?" Also see Shirley Rosario's
Mike Matusow profile.
You can play with Mike at
Full Tilt Poker.
-- Steve Badger |
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