Mike Matusow Containment Thread

Steps to Hall of Fame 1. Stop sports betting 2. Resolve Ted Forrest situation Ted and pay his Mom. Pay all “peanuts”
publicly have him on Podcast and other debts. pay

3. Support Ted for HOF before him.

4) not being a washed up nit for 15 years.

When i saw this bumped I assumed he died. Sad

Ted Forrest isn't in the HOF? Ted might be a strange dude but he pretty much is a legendary degenerate and deserves to be in the hall no?

I got around to watching his documentary. Its not awful but a rambling mess is a good description. The best parts of the doc is his family calling him out on his bullshit. If they could of lopped off a half hour it wouldn't have been so bad.

That was my exact thought too.

Dear Sad,

Were you sad because you assumed he had died or are you now sad because he had not died ?

He explained in post edit.

Someone thinking Mike belongs in the PHOF at all, nvm ahead of Ted, is interesting to me.

“I’ve got a cigar box at home full of bad checks from doctors, lawyers & businessmen, but not one from a gambler.” - Amarillo Slim

because amarillo was too smart to accept a check from a gambler

I spent a night out drinking with Mike once. He was a sad, awkward man with massive insecurity issues. And not very bright.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgJqnNP2...
Its free on youtube.

Appreciate the link. Was about to spend $3 on Prime Video.

Interesting doc on Matusow. As usual, he's a bit delusional about his place in history. Realistically, his story is more about how the travails of gambling can wreck young lives, rather than him thinking he's HoF worthy.

It's a bit disingenuous to see how old timers who completely disregard any caution and live life recklessly, turn around in the aftermath of the destruction to preach to others about staying away from poker full time. But I'm glad the documentary came out. The smart young ones who see it will hopefully learn important life lessons and not repeat the same poor choices. Given the recent Shedeur Sanders debacle, I'm not confident.

Makes me feel better about never going out with Mike.

Dom,

Carr to elaborate? I understand if you got tanked you may not recall the nature of why or what was talked about. However, if you do id be interested to hear the details of this story.

A couple of things:

While Mike is certainly a cautionary tale, its not only about poker. And i think people should realize that Mike is from a generation ahead of theirs and players that are currently respected will certainly end up like Mike. Its inevitable when dealing with the world of gambling.

Regarding his HOF bid, im not an expert or anything but I certainly see why he thinks he's being snubbed. Hes got what? 4 bracelets over a long span of time. Hes "won" millions in tournaments and has had several great runs in the main. Hes on the border, but on the no side of this line imo. It would just feel wrong to have him in for some reason.

Honestly, a poker hall of fame is kind of ridiculous given there's really only one way to truly measure success and that's not the actual method used.

He is a cautionary tale.

As for the poker Hof he's been a washed up nit for 15+ years.

He was in the right place at the right time a long time ago and that's it.

He wasn't a top tier player for long at a game where lots of people are. Once he wasn't only playing against half wits the party was over for him.

It was almost 20 years ago lol ...so maybe he's different now, who knows? But all he talked about was how good of a poker player he was, but massively unlucky. And he knew nothing about the world or culture beyond poker. He was nice enough....seemed like he was in need of a friend

As is usually the case the right answer is somewhere in between the extremes of his delusion and outpouring of hate he gets here

Safe to say the average 2+2er heaps way too much praise on random pencil necks that grew up playing magic the gathering and had a computer tell them how to play every single situation.

And then give zero credit to those who came before them with 0% of tools they have now. Poker wasn’t always the safe space that it is now.

I figured the last two paragraphs would be brought up. But I counter that with you couod argue that about a lot of people in poker. Generations come and go, people improve etc. A similar argument is made regarding sports too I guess.

I don't think anybody would argue that Mike is an intelligent person

the difference is in sports you don't have people playing at a high level for as long as you do in poker. Being elite for maybe a few years when other people do it for way longer means you aren't hof worthy.

People do come and go in poker- and most of them aren't in the hof or clamoring for it bc they were a top player for a couple of years. He's just another guy who came and went. The difference is he was able to making millions in endorsements through sheer luck and he managed to piss that all away.

What your peers do matters. If we had athletes who play great for 40 years than the guy playing great for 10 years wouldn't be that impressive as it is now.
If we had guys hitting 150 home runs and batting .500 then a .300 hitter with 50 home runs wouldn't be anything special. Everything is relative.

I mean even ignoring the UB scam he was a fish online when everyone was terrible.

How many hall of fame poker players are washed in their mid to late 30s?

I do think he belongs in the HOF.

Looks like he was 37 when making 2005 wsop final table at height of boom and then also won the 1M in tournament of champions

And still washed in his late 30s.

I mean cool on the invite only 3 table tournament.

To be fair to the man he sifted through huge fields in 2004 and 2005. And then won a few 5K bracelets in his 40s.

But yeah sure he’s struggling as the years have gone along due to his lifestyle and medical issues.

Like I said he’s surely in the middle between what he may think and zero credit you afford him. And in my book you do get credit for being a personality and marketing yourself as that was a huge lucrative part of game back then.

He got that credit in the form of all the full tilt money he torched.

I gave him credit for being a top player for a few years. But merely a few years isn't the standard for their HOF.

He won an 85 person event right after he turned 40 and a 210 person event in 2013.

He's played basically every wsop event for the last 20 years including all the mix game small field stuff and won 2 of them. That just means he's better than Kessler. It's how many you'd expect to win randomly if you played that many.