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Posted by Editor | Filed under 2010 WSOP, Doyle Brunson, Justin "Boosted J" Smith, Mike Matusow

Written today, two months later -

Mike Matusow approached me from Amazon Blue #295, his island in a sea of about 20 tables contesting the $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship. Mike didn’t know I was going to be here and we had spoken just once so far during the Series and not about this tournament. Even so, he approached me as if we had been in contact all evening about his progress and I was anxiously awaiting the next update.

 “By some kind of miracle I might make it through Day 1. I drew the worst fucking table in the tournament. Four of the guys are regulars in the $400-$800 game at the Commerce. Their playing off the wall and two others are Todd and Doyle Brunson. I can’t play any fucking better. I was down to 3,000; now I’m up to 24,000.”

He looked a little off-kilter, even by Matusow standards. I heard he got up from two straight days playing at Aria, immediately sat down for the noon PLO event, busted in one hand, used his first add-on chip, busted on the next hand, used his remaining add-on chip, and busted from the tournament one hand later. Two days with no sleep plus that experience doesn’t seem like good preparation for the Limit Hold ‘Em Championship, but he was also freerolling, from having won a high-stakes pool by guessing the exact number of entries in the Championship, 171.

Mike’s table was, indeed, a difficult one, but hardly unusual in these Championship events. As I oriented myself to the space, I glanced at nearby Blue #291 and noticed, in the two seats on each side of the dealer, Nick Schulman, Gabe Kaplan, Chris Ferguson, and Andy Bloch.

A few minutes later, as I passed by Matusow’s table, he stood and took me aside. “Can you do me a huge favor? I need someone to drive my car to my house. I’ve been up for two days and I don’t think I can drive.” I started asking about logistics – Did the car need to go to Mike’s house immediately, or could I drive it home and pick him up with it the next day? Was this a two-person job? Did Mike need to be driven home or just his car? Did he want this done now or at the end of the night’s play? – but he jumped back into his seat to play the next hand. That turned out to be the last hand before the break and I lost sight of him in the exodus.

The main reason I lost him was because I took a moment to say hello to Doyle Brunson. We’ve been only casual acquaintances but Doyle has always been helpful when I’ve asked, and I am forever in his debt for introducing me to Andy Beal.

When Doyle arose from his seat for the break, he looked around, uncertain. I could tell in an instant that he was looking for the crutch he uses to aid in walking around poker tournaments.  I spotted it several tables away, retrieved it, and returned it to him. We exchanged greetings and he smiled and said, “Thanks.”

I grinned “You’re lucky I didn’t see it before. If I had, it would have been up on eBay by now.”

I found Mike Matusow just as the break was ending. Rather than help me figure out the logistical puzzle of transporting him and/or his car, he looked at me with glazed eyes and asked, “This is what I stayed up forty-two fucking hours to play in? This fucking hell hole?” Then it was time to play again.

In the meantime, Shauna had been looking in on the pockets of players in other ongoing tournaments and had run into Daniel Horowitz. They were going to get a salad and asked if I wanted to join them.

I was stumped for an answer. There was nothing particularly exciting about the first day of a three-day limit tournament. I had no particular assignment, except maybe to keep an eye on Matusow after the last two levels or if he busted. I didn’t exactly need to stay but I wasn’t sure I should leave.

When Daniel noticed my indecisiveness, he asked, incredulous, “So what you want to do is watch Limit Hold’em?”

God that sounded pitiful. Even more pitiful, I stayed behind. And this wasn’t even the last time on this evening that I felt like a boob defending my decision to watch these guys play.

On the other hand, the early levels of the Limit Hold’em Champion were just as boring as you’d image, so I checked the progress of the other tournaments in the Amazon Room. Frequently glancing back to Blue #295 to make sure Mike Matusow was still playing, I took stock of the last five tables of the 6-max in an adjacent corner.

The first thing that I noticed was that Justin “Boosted J” Smith had a monster stack. I didn’t know what he had studied in college but, based on his chip-stacking predilections, it could have been architecture. I didn’t want to interrupt Justin but he stood up and put out his hand so we shook and I said hello. I took a few pictures of his castle and complimented him on his design work. He took the compliment in stride and added, “Before they took the (500-denomination) blue chips out, I had a moat.”

I noticed Matusow’s seat was vacant in the other corner so I raced over to keep him from wandering the building (or, worse, the Las Vegas highways) in a stupor.

Whew! Mike hadn’t been eliminated, just moved. I immediately noticed Greg Mueller in Seat 5 and Shaun Deed in Seat 9. Greg, who always has a kind word for me, asked, “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be going for the Final Table in the Stud Eight or Better?”

I deflected his compliment by saying, “Are you kidding? It’s been so long since I busted from that tournament that Mike Matusow has slept since then.”

Shaun asked Mike, “Did you ever find someone to give you a ride home?”

I answered preemptively, “Me, I got that job.”

 “So that’s why you’re here?” Deeb asked, implying that I needed a reason to be hanging around a Limit Hold’em tournament at 2 AM.

 “No,” I told him. “I’m here because I want to watch Limit Hold’em.” The table laughed at that joke but I didn’t because it was actually true.

Because my tolerance for watching Limit Hold’em ended at one hand, however, I again roamed to another tournament. They were down to the final three tables in Stud Eight-or-Better but while trying to understand the details, I saw that Matusow had busted so I walked briskly to help him out.

I didn’t need to rush. It’s not for nothing that Mike is nicknamed “the Mouth.”  He delivered a closing address to his table, and repeated it when he passed the table from which he’d been moved earlier. I got to hear the speech three more times, as players stopped Mike as he passed to ask him what had happened. Then I got to hear it once more when he looked in on Justin Smith in the 6-max. Each time, however, Mike ending the speech by looking in my direction and imploring, “Can we finally get out of here?”

Shauna drove Mike in his BMW convertible while I followed. We made sure that he got into his house okay, took a couple of cheesy posed pictures in his garage, and listened another speech about how much he hated poker and Limit Hold’em. “After this year, I may never play another poker tournament.”

We’ll see, but I think he’ll get a lot of action if he offers that prop bet.

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3 Responses to “My Day Begins at Midnight, Part II – Driving Mike Matusow – #1134”

1. KenP Says:
   August 18th, 2010 at 5:16 am

   Congratulations on your SEO triumph in again turning one article into three.

2. PokerLion Says:
   August 18th, 2010 at 10:30 am

   Nice stack indeed. Its great to see more banknotes starting to be used in more and more tournaments as yeahh its great to have a huge stack of chips but in reality a pain also.

3. poker king Says:
   September 30th, 2010 at 5:30 pm

   Great story. Mike is a madman. There is no way he will stay away from poker tournaments. I think he likes the attention.

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