Mike Matusow on High Stakes Poker - Daniel Negreanu's Blog

Daniel Negreanu's Blog
February 1, 2007
Negreanu blogs about his
comments in regard to Mike
Matusow on High Stakes Poker

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Mike Matusow on High Stakes Poker

February 1, 2007

I just got a strange phone message from Mike this morning. He sounded
legitimately upset at me for my comments during a recent episode of High
Stakes Poker where I supplanted Gabe in the booth to do the commentary.

I guess Mike felt like I was crossing the line by badgering his play on a
consistent basis. At one point in the booth, I even said, "I promised myself
not to say anything nice about Mike while in the booth," in order to make
light of the fact that I didn't like the way he was playing.

I found the phone call strange, only because I didn't say anything while in
the booth that would have been different from what I'd say if I was at the
table. I wouldn't mock or poke fun at just anybody. Mike, is an easy target
because he regularly pokes fun at his opponents, me included. It never
bothers me, as I'll usually try to come up with something clever to get him
back.

So knowing our history, I couldn't figure out what exactly set him off about
this particular incidence. I did some thinking, and figured that the key
difference was that I was in the booth and Mike didn't have a chance to
either A) defend himself, or B) come back at me with a funny comment or
two... or three... or four... or five, lol.

Anyway, while I was in the booth I did my commentary as if I were at the
table. I was obviously poking fun at Mike, but that's mainly because I've
known him for years and we have been friends for a long time. Up until this
point, I didn't think there was ANYTHING I could say to offend Mike!

I make it a rule to only poke fun at people I consider friends or people that I
like and think can handle being needled. That's another reason I was so
surprised to see that Mike took my comments to heart.

Anyway, I called Mike back and let him know that I was sorry if he took it to
heart, and also explained to him that I was messing with him the whole time,
hence my, "I promise not to say anything nice about Mike," comment.

In some ways, I'm not even sure if it was Mike that was really bothered by it,
but more so, friends of his who don't understand how long we've been
friends, how long we've been grinding it out in Vegas, and how much crap we
give each other on a consistent basis!

I like needling him and Hellmuth both. For one, they are such easy targets :-),
they dish it out, and are both good guys at heart who know that I'm messing
with them.

After getting off the phone with Mike I'm pretty sure he knows that I didn't
mean to actually hurt his feelings with comments about his play. It's no
secret that we play a completely different brand of poker, both of which can
be successful when done properly. He makes plays I'd never consider
making, but that's part of what makes him a successful player.

He'll often take rather large risks fighting for smallish pots. When he is on his
game, he wins those pots a very high percentage of the time. When he is off,
he can often look foolish, making what's known as a "Matusow Blow Up"
when he bluffs at the wrong pot, a la the pot against Phil Laak from season
two.

Anyway, Mike asked me to let people know in my blog that we are cool, and
that I don't think he is a complete donkey... all the time! :-)

*************************************************************

As for me, I spent the other night at the bowling alley with my brother and
some friends. The last time out I bowled terribly, averaging around 115. On
this night, I had my mojo, with a 157 followed by a 133. The last two games I
fell apart and gave all of my winnings back, with a pitiful 100 and a 107.

From there we headed to my friend Ted's place for pool and Mille. I ended up
making a deal with Zvi, probably the best Mille player in the world, that we'd
play three games of $1000-$3000 Mille, followed by a heads up no limit
hold'em freeze out for whatever the figure was after Mille.

I was actually ahead of Zvi in Mille up until this set of games, but man was he
ridiculously lucky this time out. He beat me the first game worse than any
beating I'd ever seen. The game is played to a total of 1200 points, and he
smoked me 1320 to -70! So sick.

I ended up losing all three games of Mille and was stuck $49,000 going into
the heads up hold'em match. To increase my chances of holding him off, I
made sure to put together a really slow structure:

10,000 each in chips, 20 minute levels:
25-50
50-100
75-150
100-200
150-300
200-400
250-500
300-600 etc.

He started out with a bit of a lead as he caught me trying to bluff about four
hands in a row. That ended up being a really good thing for me in the long
run, though, as the bluffs were cheap and it allowed me to switch to a very
simple strategy of value betting with the best of it since he essentially turned
into a calling station, despite the fact that I completely abandoned bluffing.

The final hand was a doozey, and it could have gone either way: Blinds were
100-200 and I made it 500 on the button with 7s 4s. He called in the BB with
2d 6d. The flop came 10h 4d 3d. Zvi checked, and I bet 800.

Zvi check raised me to 2000 and I called the bet. The turn was the Jh and Zvi
bet out 2500. Based on the way he'd play hands up until this point, when he
bet that Jack on the turn I felt strongly that he was on a draw. He had close
to 3000 left after betting the turn, so the dilemma was whether or not I
should just call to see if the draw hits first, or to raise him now before he
gets there.

It was close to 5:00am by that point, which made me lean towards moving all
in. I did, and he called obviously. The river blanked, and I escaped a rather
significant beating of close to $100,000. Phew!

*************************************************************

My sleep schedule is back on being a bit of a mess, especially considering
that I've been waking up when my wife is off to bed! 5:30am this morning I
woke up, and have been doing hockey research for a couple hours. Soon
after this blog I'm going to try and write about 3000 more words for my book.
If you want to read an unedited excerpt from the upcoming book, you can
find it in the Poker Books section of the FCP forum.

Tonight, I'll be taking my family to a show, La Femme at MGM. Before then, I
have an important meeting this afternoon which I'm looking forward to.

Tomorrow at noon I have a lunch meeting about another project that I'm
excited about (no, I can't tell you what it is!), and aside from that, I'll just be
sweating the hockey games, and the Raptors games too. The Raptors, at just
23-23 are leading their division! Man, are those two conferences lopsided or
what?

If you are interested in Fantasy Hockey at all, my team, the Cheap Thieves
are looking really solid right now in every aspect

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