[2Tone]

Just finished “Check Raising the Devil” Mike Matusow’s autobiography. It’s a fun/very quick read, full to degeneracy. A few notes …

His account of the sting/entrapment that led to his drug arrest seems fairly credible.. Did the LVPD cross the line in setting him up? Yes, probably. Did he deserve that much prison time? No, probably not But, at the end of day, did he do something incredibly stupid that violated some major drug laws? Yes, he sure did.

It was interesting to read about how much he relies on reads/tells. He’s definitely more of an intuition player than an intellectual one (I’m thinking of Jesus, Lederer). At one point he even minimizes the importance of pot odds, saying that when playing limit, if he is certain he is beat, he’ll lay his hand down and save the extra bet, even if the size of the pot would seem to justify a call. That he can do this despite being drugged/medicated to the gills is all the more bizarre.

No doubt he’s a great player, but is a total degenerate. The starkest evidence of this was that before he went to jail, Lederer offered him the chance to invest $200k in Full Tilt. Instead, Matusow took that money and gave to a friend, with whom he placed huge NFL bets. By the time he got out, he had lost every cent of it

It’s this contempt/complete disconnect from the actual value of money that seems to be a common theme for so many of the name/TV pros, what with their crazy six-figure prop bets in which there is no edge, etc. To win at the stakes they play, you have to be completely fearless. But to not be fearful at the prospect of losing a vast sum of money, no matter how rich you are, you have to be more than a little nuts.