Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
Everyone in the poker world is familiar with Mike Matusow and his famous “meltdowns” from the coverage on TV and stories all over the internet. He had the famous flip out on WSOP Champion Greg Raymer, the time spent in prison shortly afterward, then his victory in the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions. These stories are well known and well publicized.
The mistake most make is judging Matusow completely on the stories and his reputation. As with most, his life is much more than his reputation. It’s been several years in the works but you will finally have the chance to read Mike Matusow’s story straight from the man himself.
Mike Matusow: Check-Raising the Devil, his new autobiography, is due out on May 12th and will give the reader more background into the man you only see on television or the internet. Short review after the jump.
“Daniel Negreanu says the players today are harder to read because they play so many hands. Maybe they’re better now. Or maybe they’re just tougher to read because they’re a bunch of idiots who don’t know what they are doing. Nobody folds now. They think every raise is a bluff.”
“I couldn’t get a new read on him because it never occurred to me that someone who could play solid poker would bring his bankroll to a tough poker game while he was doing drugs.”
It may seem like the easy way out to compare the life of Mike Matusow with the sad ending of Stu Ungar. They both battled their problems with drugs and gambling and over-indulgence. They both succeeded under less than stellar circumstances and found themselves too deep into the dark side of Las Vegas. However, any book written about Ungar is done posthumously while Matusow seems to have his demons under control and there is still a future to be written.
Amy Calistri and Tim Lavalli worked with Matusow to bring his story to the public. It was a long process that seemed forever to get off the ground, but the final product was worth the effort and wait. You will get a look behind some of the stories you’ve heard before in more depth and from the man himself. You’ll read about his different WSoP wins when he was tweaking out on meth, going through withdraw, and stone cold sober. His remarkable streak of WSoP final tables beginning with his very first year. The years where he went from avoiding the most basic medication to experimenting with any street drug he could get his hands on. His battles to get sober then a betrayal and subsequent arrest.
The book flows perfectly from his times playing small stakes at Sam’s Town to the card barns in Los Angeles up to the biggest games and tournaments on the Las Vegas strip. You’ll hear in his own words about his rise in poker and decline into the world of drugs. Victories and defeats, sex and drugs, pornstars and poker chips.
I was unable to stop reading and I believe this book will be the talk of the 2009 World Series of Poker and beyond. It’s sure to be hailed in the poker world as one of the best autobiographies in existence. The book is released on Tuesday, May 12th and gets my highest recommendations.
Update: Both Amy Calistri and Tim Lavalli have released what was considered for the first chapter but eventually removed. There is talk of using this chapter at the beginning of a the Mike Matusow yet un-named movie.
Tim Lavalli – Matusow Chapter One
Amy Calistri – The Matusow Book: The Crossroads
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(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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