FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#091 – Accumulation of Items, Part I (of II)

Posted by Editor | Filed under Family Life, Me in online tourneys, Mike Matusow

I have ambitions. I want to get back on the poker circuit, connect up with my friends there, and tell you about what’s going on – and why. I want to complete the reproduction of my 88 pages of notes from the epic heads-up match between Ted Forrest and Andy Beal on Valentine’s Day 2006. I want to collect and share my thoughts about the legal and legislative issues relating to the future of online poker.

I haven’t done any of that since I got back from Hawaii. I did, however, do the following, some of which I want to share with you:

1. I hauled robotics tools and parts to San Diego.

2. I’ve been playing a lot of online poker.

3. I’ve talked with Mike Matusow and almost visited him – twice.

4. I painted my garage door.

5. I found that getting back on the poker circuit is more difficult than it seems.

6. I got my avatar.

7. I got the pre-production version of THE FULL TILT POKER STRATEGY GUIDE: TOURNAMENT EDITION.

8. I’ve mulled over a lot of ideas for my next book.

Let’s take these one at a time, okay? None of them is a treatise on vital legal developments or an unforgettable time with a poker personality or a piece of vital strategy. But there’s some interesting stuff in there, maybe a little insight, an anecdote or two.

PAX ROBOTICA

I had planned on going to Reno last week to play in and write about the WPT event. Just as I was making my travel plans, my son Barry asked me if I’d like to come with him and his robotics team for their regional competition in San Diego.

I had to say yes. Barry’s seventeen. How much time do we really have left to be a dad and a son? I wanted to be there for him and, more than that, I wanted him to WANT ME to be there for him.

Then it turned out he wanted me to haul tools and spare parts. He was mostly occupied with his friends and the competition so I kept my distance. But that’s okay. It was nice to be asked, and I felt no guilt over sleeping through the preliminary rounds after staying up until after 2 AM playing tournaments online.

TOURNAMENT DEMENTIA

I’ve been playing a bunch online, and I can share two insights: (1) You have to lose a lot to win. At least, I hope that’s the case. I finished second one night in San Diego playing the $30,000 Guarantee 6-handed tournament. It’s my fifth time at the final table of that event in a month. On the other hand, there was a time when I felt I was automatic to make a profit on the big Sunday tournaments, and I’m negative about $2,000 the last three weeks. The particular relevance of this “revelation” is that I think you need to make a lot of marginal plays to succeed. I’d be interested in whether it’s possible to succeed over the long term playing only good cards and betting only with the nuts. Against good opponents, I think probably not. So there are times when you have to call a bet on the river with top pair when an opponent could have two pair or a straight. Or call with A-9 when your raise gets called and you get raised after an ace hits the board. I lose a bunch of those, but I also pick off a lot of bluffs and make a lot of correct calls. (I play a lot of hands, so opponents frequently think it’s impossible for me to have even a decent hand.)

(2) It makes sense to chat at the table and listen to what other players say – the nastier the better. I’ll engage in a discussion with anyone at the table. I’m writing a blog for Full Tilt and releasing a book with Full Tilt, so I want to “represent” the site. I’ve also learned that players will tell you a lot about how they play, especially if they’re mad or disgusted. Let me give an example. I think the ideal situation is to have an opponent who always plays straightforward. A lot of how I play is designed to encourage opponents to play that way (like when I call in marginal situations). The guy who gripes about you calling a raise from the big blind with 7-5 suggests he WON’T call a raise when in the big blind without a quality hand. Likewise, the player who beats you with a big hand and tells you how you stink for calling him is pretty likely to be playing big cards whenever he’s in a hand. At the very least, you can look back and see whether that’s the case.

I can’t tell you the number of times other players have trashed my play, only to tip me off that they play ONLY big cards and bet ONLY when they hit on the flop. Sometimes they practically come out and say it. Other times, the banter alerted me to look back at the hands they’ve been playing. Sometimes, players not even in the hand will join the discussion and you can learn important things from how they talk about the hands.

MIKE MATUSOW IS NEVER FAR AWAY

One of the reasons I wanted to go to Reno was to visit with Mike. It seems like we’re past the issues that got in the way of our collaborating on his autobiogrphy, but we hadn’t spoken much lately and I wanted to make sure there weren’t any hard feelings.
Mike called me while I was in San Diego and it was clear he felt the same way. His agent is in negotiations with a new collaborator and Mike wanted to know if I would share the three days of recorded interviews we did back in December.

It’s a touchy subject and Mike recognized that. I am very protective of all aspects of my work product, as any writer-researcher-author-journalist should be. In the usual situation, without a specific agreement to the contrary, I’d consider anything connected with the interview – notes, summaries, recordings – to be my property, to either be kept private or exploited by me as I chose.

But that’s the usual situation. Mike is my friend and, while I wouldn’t want to cheapen the feelings toward my brother by saying I love Mike Matusow like a brother, I feel very close with him, in SOME WAYS that could be described as “brotherly.” So notwithstanding that we had a disagreement because we were both looking out for our financial interests when it came time to negotiate an agreement to write his autobiography, I still want what’s best for Mike.

I truly want to see Mike’s book get written, be good, make a lot of money, get made into a movie, and win Ben Stiller a Best Actor Oscar. I thought the best chance for all that was for me to be the author. But we had a good-faith difference of opinion on my relative worth to the project. (What it actually came down to, for me, was how much I could make writing some other book instead of owning a piece of Mike’s book, and this was something neither he nor his agent could gauge, so it didn’t really come down to any kind of personal “what are you worth?” confrontation.)

So what’s the best way for me to help Matusow now? By giving his collaborator, whose identity I don’t yet know, those three days of interview tapes. As Mike pointed out in our discussion, he’s not the easiest guy to get to sit down and work. It took a year, during which several interviews were declared “false starts” because Mike was (a) watching sporting events he had bet on, (b) playing poker online, (c) sleeping, (d) groaning over losses from (a) and (b), (e) entertaining his interesting and sometimes odd circle of friends, or (f) all of the above.

The biggest obstacle the collaborator will face, ironically, is getting Matusow to talk. I hope giving this person three days of Mike telling his story – which, by the way, is even more interesting than I imagined – gets them off to a good start. They’ll need it.

Mike also told me that a potential appearance next year on Dancing with the Stars is still in the works. I still think he’s pulling my leg on this one, and pulling my leg is the closest Mike comes to dancing talent. “They want people without talent,” he told me.

In that way, and that way alone, it’s the perfect career move for him.

I’m against it for purely selfish reasons. If Mike becomes a member of the Dancing with the Stars cast, I may have to follow Phil Gordon’s advice and move to L.A. and blog about Mike Matusow every day for three months.

After I returned from San Diego, I saw that Mikey was going deep at the Reno WPT event. I was set to fly there for final table day, but he went out in 23rd.

But let me tell you this: Mike Matusow is starting to hang around in some tournaments. He’s made it into the money a few times recently, contrary to his go-out-early-or-go-all-the-way style. I think his game might just be getting into great shape in time for the WPT Championship and the World Series.

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