Ups and downs just a way of life for poker stud

LAS VEGAS – Poker professional Mike Matusow began 2005 in jail and finished the year by winning the World Series of Poker’s Tournament of Champions and $1 million just two blocks from the bars that imprisoned him.

In between he won another $1 million by finishing ninth in the WSOP’s main event and lost at least as much playing poker and betting sports, mostly the NFL. Except for the six-month jail term, 2005 was normal in his world, where millions in poker winnings vanish as quickly as they accumulate.

In poker parlance, Matusow lives “on tilt,” where rational behavior doesn’t always play into the equation. On the poker table, it can lead to undisciplined action when things are going bad. In life, it means living on the edge, regularly going for broke and ending up broke.

“I don’t care about money,” Matusow says in front of a 60-inch big-screen TV in his 3,600-square-foot home in Henderson, Nev., a few miles from the Las Vegas Strip. “If I won $7.5 million, it would be life-changing. When I win $1 million, I go through that fast.

“I go broke nearly every other day, and I don’t care. I’m a great poker player, and people will always loan money to great poker players. And I know I can borrow $300,000 on my house in one day.”

This year, Matusow lost nearly $500,000 in 15 consecutive days in May playing poker. In July, he won $250,000 by finishing third in the WSOP’s Tournament of Champions. He’s hoping for another big payday in the WSOP’s main event, which started Friday, where first place could be $10 million.

Even Matusow, 38, would take a long time blowing that kind of cash.

He’s currently negotiating for his as-yet unpublished autobiography to be turned into a film. It’s a cautionary tale of high-stakes poker, sports betting, drugs, strippers and jail. A story of a gregarious, generous man with attention deficit and bipolar disorders who begins his poker career as a dealer, goes to the other side of the table and becomes one of the game’s best, ends up at Gambler’s Anonymous twice, becomes a speed addict but kicks the habit, accumulates and evaporates a few fortunes and loses $250,000 betting NFL games in six months from the jail phones.

“Mike lives in fantasy land, but it’s his reality,” says Barry Shulman, publisher of CardPlayer Magazine and a professional poker player. “It’s a heck of a way to live. He’s always winning a million or losing a million. He’s a terrible role model — and he’s the first person who will tell you that.”