EXCLUSIVE: Mike the Mouth Speaks, Part II

In this second part of Bodog Nation's exclusive interview with poker legend Mike Matusow we learn about how he uses his mouth to his advantage and what he thinks the key to successful poker is

June 5, 2007

By Janice Carroll
Bodog Nation Contributing Writer

Bodog Nation: How do you get into a player's head?

Mike Matusow: The best way to get into a player's head is to analyze what type of a player he is. Analyze if he's a quiet player or a tight player; just try to find his weaknesses. I normally don't try to mess with too many people I don't know. Once I get to know them, I analyze their weaknesses and I go from there.

BN: Can you enlighten our readers and tell them how you use table talk to your advantage?

MM: I talk a lot of people I know who likes to talk a lot of crap with me. If I don't really know them I don't talk to them, but if they come after me or start pulling shots on me, that's when I start talking back to them and try to get under their skin. Then I get them to play bad against me. I usually end up with their chips. Most of the time I really don't say much, but the cameras like to show that I'm really brutal, especially against tough players. I will play with anybody, and fear no one. The tougher the player the more challenging it is to me.

BN: What events will you play at the WSOP?

MM: I'll probably play in about 20 of the 55 tournaments. I like to space them out.

Because of what's going on with online poker, I don't think they're going to be as many participants at the 2007 WSOP as anticipated. I think there'll be around 5000 or less.

BN: Can you offer our readers some advice on poker strategy?

MM: My strategy going into the WSOP is a lot simpler than other people's. I have a rule that I used last year that worked for me. I broke even for the tournament last year, but I felt that I had the best success rate than previously, playing wise. That is if I played more than eight hours of poker during the day, I would take the next day off from playing tournaments. That allowed my mind to reset instead of playing tournament, tournament, tournament and playing at 50% capacity every tournament. I played fewer tournaments and at 90 or 100% capacity at every tournament. I played 17 tournaments at 100% and I thought I played really well. That's going to be my strategy again. If I play more than eight hours of tournament play the night before, I'm going to take the next day off. It worked to my advantage last year and I hope it will this year.

I'm not going to play any cash games during the WSOP this year. I really want to win a bracelet again this year. The tournaments are such a big overlay and you can really make some big money there. If I do play cash games it'll probably be at 50/100, 100 or 200 No Limit and 1000 or 2000 Limit games, but I won't be playing that many hours in cash games.

The best poker advice on strategy that I can offer on Holdem is to stay patient. Pick your spots to attack. Don't try to outplay everybody on every hand. Everybody thinks that Holdem is about outplaying people and it's really not. It's about setting people up and getting them to make mistakes. My direct strategy that I tell people all the time is to make a lot of small bet bluffs or small bet limps so you can set somebody up later and get them to give you all their money. That's basically my strategy. Set somebody up two hours before so you can win all their money two hours down the line. That's what I like to do best. The player who is the most patient player is the one who is going to be the most successful. Every time my patience is real good, is when I win. When my patience is real bad, that's when I loose.

BN: Tell me about your bad streaks.

MM: I've lost two or three million straight before. I've had many bad streaks. As a matter of fact I'm finally coming off of one where I'm starting to win again. I lost 1.3 million straight on the last losing streak. I've won about $400K of that back so far, but yeah it's tough out there. I've literally gone over a year without winning. It's beyond depressing that's why no matter how well you play poker you can still lose. You don't have to win just cause you play well. You literally just have to take it. It's a tough game and a tough way to make a living. You borrow money and things are going bad. You try to survive and it never turns around. You loose confidence and that's the worse thing. When you lose confidence you don't think you can win anymore and that's when you've reached your breaking point. I'd lost my confidence and that's when things really got tough but this week has been a real big week for me and I feel like I've gotten a little confidence back. If I can just keep this streak going where I can win a little bit, maybe things will turn around.

In Poker After Dark, I've been very unlucky there. I really had a good shot at winning a couple of those and it kind of really sucks that I got real unlucky there. We just filmed three more episodes of Poker after Dark last week and my results weren't that good. I don't like the way I really played so I was a little disappointed in that, but that's alright. We had a really good lineup with me and Daniel, Phil Helmuth, Antonio and Phil Laak. It felt like a fun game. I think I just had too much fun playing and didn't play my best.

BN: I've heard stories that you're real congenial when you're away from the table. Is there a real Mike?

MM: Yeah, I'm really a nice guy all the time. I mess around at the table but I'm really not that bad. Everything about me is a nice guy. I don't think there's a mean bone in my body. But I like to mess around with people at the table who play like shit and think they're good. I just like to rib them because I'm just an honest person and I just tell them like it is.

After talking with him for over an hour, I walked away agreeing with him; Mike the Mouth really is a nice guy. When he's not playing poker you can catch Mike on his website, mikethemouth.com. He also has a blog on MySpace. He's presently writing two books, one an autobiography and the other one is titled "Tournament No Limit."

Photo: Mike "The Mouth" Matusow. (AP Images)