I have lost whatever little respect I had for Mike. His twitter responses make him sound like such a scumbag. He has no consistency to his side of the story and half of his statements are contradictory. FTP getting shut down has ZERO relevance to the fact that he still owes Ted Forrest for the bet. He is trying to use this as a cop-out for paying. And the drug test thing? There was no stipulation on the bet and if this made the bet void then why did he pay 70k? Ted should sue Mike for this. I doubt Mike could ever raise 1.9 Mill but he should be making payments to Ted for the rest of his life. This is what he deserves for making an idiotic bet that he thought he couldn't lose.

Also, how the hell can you make a multi-million dollar bet with a friend who at the time had no more than a net worth of a few hundred k and then get upset when he can't pay? Yeah no ****.

I've seen Mike playing in the high limit at the Bellagio multiple times over the last few weeks. If you can play, you can pay. Even if it's not in full.

This news is not at all surprising.

How the hell can you make a bet that really endangers your friend's life and then not pay up?

FYP

I don't know either of the guys personally obviously so I can only make a guess about who's in the right, but they both sound like idiots in this amusing Twitter argument. However, Mike's response is one of the most ******ed things I've ever seen and it puts him pretty much of par with Eric Lindgren.

I think the funniest part is that these guys are poker players... so what the f is going on with their maths? £5k every month for 18 years? That is not anywhere near 1.8 mil. And apparently 10% of 1.8 mil is apparently 93,000? lol

Can any lawyers verify if it is possible to sue someone for not paying up on an illegal wager?

No you can't sue for illegal gambling debts.

Not a lawyer but I am not a zoologist either yet I can tell a tiger from an elephant

ok...sounds reasonable....Let's move on to contract law. If a person enters into a contract when they are drunk, is the contract legally enforceable.

short answer = yes. however, a wager is not an enforceable contract. this is not about the law. it is about integrity, and mr. mike is losing on that score.

the guy makes my skin crawl, one of the worst faces of poker for sure

So can someone explain how is Mike in the running for any sort of poker hall of fame nominations? That would be the biggest joke of all.

kristy's reaction after seeing showdown is pretty amazing/funny I thought.

Yeah, poker would be a lot more fun, if all players would act and be more like Shaun Deeb, than this Mike Matusow guy. Players shouldn't open their mouth at the tables, and just communicate by slow-rolls, where they lack the balls to laugh in opponents face, as well as short-message-services and online-forums...

Mike Matusow has beaten all variants of poker, starting from LHE, going over NLHE to Mixed-Games, cash-games as well as MTT's, and has won several Braclets in different variants, as well as playing high-stakes Mixed-Games cash profitably since ages.
These are the things that, as officials say, count for being nominated for the poker Hall of Fame. Not to mention a lot of heart, which is the key-point, which makes him a good, and Ted a bad vote for HoF, imho.

He always is always a pleisure to meet at live-events, used to chat to the rail on old FullTilt, and wrote a great book about his life and his troubles, which will now will become a movie. Tell me one other pokerplayer, of whom you could say all of that?

Ted, on the other hand, seems to me like either a gambler with the mental capacity of a kneeling ant, if he thought he'd ever get the whole money for that bet -regarding the circumstances it was made under- or, way more likely, like an ice-cold-hearted opportunist, who would sell his own grandmothers oxygen-tank - and all her other oxy's - to make money, no matter how much he already has, imho.

IMO, there is no way that Ted Forrest has any other reason than his ego to bring this bet back into public at the time of Hall-of-Flame nominations. If he would be close ot be parched in the desert due to a prop-bet, I wouldn't give him water.


Aside of all the possible arguments that might make sense regarding this prop-bet, Mike is a better human being for anyone around him than Ted is, and that at least has to have some value, whhich ofc cannot be measured in plain EV...

It's the Hall of Fame, not some measly Hall of Shame, Flame or Blame ! ! !

So because Mike didn't save his FT money wisely he shouldn't have to pay ted lol. Surprised there was not an escrow for this.

I would stand behind Mike Matusow over 99% of any other poker player. Stand up guy.

How could they escrow? Mike Matusow has never had 2 million dollars cash at any time in his life.

What part of confessing you've gone from playing nosebleeds to busto do you think was to serve his ego?

What about the reason of "I'm broke and owed nearly $2m from a guy who seems to have written off ever paying me back, so I'm gonna air it out in public to see if that does any good, + at bare minimum let the poker world know that MM can no longer be trusted to honor his debts"?

This bet seems like an insane amount of stupidity and greed from both parties.

Ted Forrest clearly thought Matusow was a mug who would take the bet because he had won the previous one. He probably knew he was very likely to make the bet.

He took no account of that Matusow wouldn't have the money to pay him. Surely he realised with Matusow being a massive addict to everything under the sun that he should not take part in a bet where the likelihood of getting paid was very low. The bet amount could've been 2m or 100m. Getting someone to pay up when it would involve all they own is never exactly gonna be easy.

Mike looks like an idiot for taking the bet on, for not cancelling it as soon as he sobered up and for being manipulated. It's hard to say how scummy he is for not paying up because the bet was so large and we don't know how much money Mike has. He probably feels he has been cheated and swindled (which he probably has been) so it is debatable how much he should pay up anyway.

If Ted Forrest had any sense he would agree a smaller amount with Mike that he pays in the long term. This revised amount will take account of the absurdity of the bet (and probably silly odds), whilst having Mike owing an amount that he can foresee himself somehow being able to pay back. If Mike agreed he only owed 400-500k total (which is still an obscene amount of money considering either's financial situations), then you can see him paying back as there is an endpoint where he can get this ridiculous bet behind him, rather than owing an amount which he realistically can never hope to pay off.

I guess you didn't read his Twitts.

This

If Ted agreed to take less like 500k it should only be in response to Mike paying something in an arranged time. So if for example Ted said if by years end you pay 100k then I will drop it down from 1.8m to 500k otherwise, if you pay 100k by end of Jan. it goes from 1.8m to 700k, etc.
But to just say poof, you only owe me 500k is stupid because mike isnt going to pay anyway so now he just got a free credit of 1.3m without any effort or payments.

You can't really have too much sympathy for Forrest, I mean did he seriously expect to get 1.8 mil from someone like Matusow for a silly bet? It was never gonna happen.

Doesn't make Mike any less scummy though obviously.

Agreed. Both players definitely free-rolling. I am surprised they didn't bet 10 million on the next situation and then twitter about it.