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#888 – Adrift in Vegas, Part III – Under Cover of Darkness
We almost had several close encounters with Mike Matusow. Mike’s opinions about the Final Table would be valuable because (a) he has opinions about everything, (b) he has twice appeared at the Final Table in the last decade and in 2008 came extremely close to the Final Table, and (c) he is a good friend and frequent competitor with both Phil Ivey and Jeff Shulman. Matusow is easy to reach, generous with his time, and visiting with him is always an adventure.
Several days before the trip, I reached Mike by phone. He said, “I have to call you back in ten minutes,” and we hung up. It’s a good thing that I didn’t try to stay awake for that return call because I would have collapsed from exhaustion long ago.
I called Mike after we were in Vegas, on Tuesday. To my surprise, he was booked solid. Since when do poker players have appointments and obligations? What happened to the good ol’ days when Mike Matusow hung around his bedroom like Howard Hughes until I visited or he had a tournament to play? Mike was doing several hours of taping for some promotion at the Venetian and then he planned on playing in a $400-$800 mixed game at the Bellagio. I said we would try to call or visit later.
We never got to meet with Mike but we did see Ted Forrest, Andy Bloch, and Howard Lederer. (I will share their insights about Phil in my “Looking for Ivey” Series.) Shauna and I visited with Howard at his new house. It was very nice, and as you would presume of anything from Howard Lederer, carefully designed and executed. Shauna’s greatest joy was Howard and Susie’s artwork. Rather than doing something safe or lacking imagination like not putting up art or buying expensive works by well-known artists as an investment, they took their time and trusted their judgment to choose eclectic works they really liked from a number of talented artists who are not yet household names.
One of their favorite artisits – and now one of mine – is Hannah Starkey. Starkey specializes in photographs of everyday people and settings shot through reflection. We enjoyed the pictures so much that we started snapping pictures of ourselves and each other reflected through my hotel room window. While we were working later that evening, Shauna took the reflected picture of herself that appears in “The Night Clerk.”
But all that art stuff was primarily Shauna’s thing. I was looking for good cigars (which Howard usually has) and poker artifacts to steal (which I thought might be carelessly left around after the move).
I saw at least two items I considered stealing. The first was a Ted Williams autographed baseball. I collect autographed baseballs but decided to pass on pilfering this one after I remembered I originally gave it to Howard.
Howard also showed us a really cool wall clock that he won at the Bicycle Club in 1991. When Howard told us it was the first tournament he ever won, I decided to have Shauna photograph it instead of stealing it. (I also couldn’t get any time alone with the clock but let’s just say that I was too considerate to take it.)
After our meeting with Howard, we called Mike Matusow at the Bellagio. Mike told us that he was just ordering dinner at that moment. Doug Dalton takes great care of poker players at the Bellagio and I know that Mike was ordering something good. When he forgot to ask what to order for me and Shauna, I decided we should meet some other time and get back to work.
We stopped to grab dinner at that all-time great poker hang out Naked Fish’s. That, you may recall, is the place where I either met Jon Turner for an interview during the World Series or had a psychotic episode in the desert. If nothing else, visiting this restaurant on Rainbow would help me figure out how much of it happened and how much I hallucinated. Visiting the restaurant turned out to be no help, first, because it turned out to be on Durango, not Rainbow as I had originally written. (I subsequently changed the original post.)
We did, however, eat an excellent meal and took the following photographs to confirm why poker players love eating sushi at Naked Fish’s.
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