There is a good chance this is how it will end too.

I like how there's all this talk about the 98 WSOP for pages and pages, and then all of a sudden, a stand-alone paragraph sentence says "Scotty Nguyen won the WSOP 2007."

Quite lol. Book makes me a bit sad, I'm about a third the way through. I also had a nightmare last night that I was a downward spiraling Stu Ungar.

I also don't really understand his crappy staking deal with Neil. He made 140k for Neil in his first year staked for him, and 140k for himself. Why wouldn't he get out of the staking deal much earlier, since he should have had a very strong roll? I mean, it seems the only thing Neil really did was get Mike to not sportsbet, which I guess was the best part of it for Mike.

I also find it funny how he regrets taking the deal with Nguyen and Forest, but he DID come 2nd, which means the deal did score him 50K or so more than 2nd place, and there's no guaranteeing in any way that not taking the deal would've resulted in a different outcome.

Also, lol at Hellmuth talking about folding aces preflop because 4.5-1 isn't good enough. Man I'd love to find a game that soft.

Based on reading this book, I'll make the sad prediction that Mike doesn't live to see 55.

I read the book last week and found it quite interesting. I have followed Mike for the past few years now and I just love the amount of adversity he had to overcome just to sit at a poker table! I hope he wins the big one, that would be a site to see!!

i dont think so mike is kind of not so good if you want my opinion

Also, as someone said, there's so much talk of hands played, and also about the history of each player at the final tables (ie, how many final tables they had made int he past, etc), and you just know that Mike can't possibly remember all that stuff, and it's hard to imagine him ever looking up that stuff on people.

Great read. I'm almost finished and it's been hard to put down. Love the book.

Also, I can't see Mike really having a happy ending. He has pretty much no connection to reality, and so many times he gets 500k or 300k together and you think, "great now he's learned his lessons, he can live responsibly and be well off." But it'll never be that way. He blows through 200k on sportsbetting like it's nothing. It's not like the guy even seems to care about sports, he just has a destructive addiction to throwing away his money. Underneath his poker winnings the guy is really just a destructive gambling junkie, you could give 10 million $ and he'd just blow through it and be too stupid to realize what he had down. Then he'd start over, get 500k again, blow it again, repeat. It's really pretty sad. He'll probably eventually be one of those guys constantly begging for a stake, then losing it, then repeating. Once his poker skills are gone or are far behind other players (which may have already happened), he'll be just a sad waste sticking quarters in a machine like he was when the book started, or something like that.

Give any reasonable person 5k and he'll play 200nl or 400nl or something, Mike will go straight to 5k nl, and go broke immediately, or occaisonally run it up big. 700k in 2 weeks he said. But then when things go bad, he just sits and loses until the 700k is all gone. It's almost comical.

I also like how he'll mention his massive suckouts that get him to final tables or to big chip leads, but then whine like crazy about the suckouts later that knocked him off.

I don't know Mike well, but I've hung out with him. I am friends with Scott and I can say that Mike really is a great guy and cares about people but he can be his own worst enemy. Reality is all of us are at one point. Is there anyone here that has never stacked em off on a ridiculous draw? From what I know the temptations got to him pretty bad. Living in Vegas doesn't help thats for sure!

I read this book, i thought it was good read, although I think it could of been even better.

What was Mike thinking when his doctor's friend came to his party and asked for meth or some type of drug? How would you not find this weird? At least I would think most doctors and there friends would be opposed to unprescribed drug use.....

Having said that I like him more after reading the book, seems like a genuinely good guy.

You two are suckers for sure for buying that garbage. Matusow is laughing all the way to the bank!

FYP

i loved his book, lil boring in spots but still good.

love the story about the woman on his couch after the big blow out party.

chris moneymaker's book was actually better. lot of haters probably would scoff at that but it was the best non-strat poker ive ever read

very exciting hearing about all the behind the scenes stuff leading in to the poker explosion

I just finished reading this book. I never followed Matusow or really cared one way or another, but when I was at the WSOP, they had an autograph signing for the book, so I figured for $25, it might be interesting.

I thought it was pretty good - a little too much of the hand history stuff in the latter half, but still really good. It seemed pretty honestly written, and it was a nice break from strategy books, but still relating to poker.

Okay I'm ordering this.

Ordered and read.

Good book, I can honestly recommend it.

I just ordered it from Amazon.
Can't wait to read it. Successful poker players live interesting lives imo.

Mike's book was a fantastic read ...read it in two sittings....3rd best non-strategy non-fiction poker book ever written behind "One of a Kind...The Rise and Fall of SU" and The Prof, Bnker & The Suicide King".....

ordered today.

Maybe this should be a new thread but....

If Mike's autobiography were made into a movie would you spend the six or seven bucks to go see it?

Yes, I have a vested interest in the question. I am a co-author.

^^^ absolutely, assuming it was a major film with good actors

otherwise i would wait for the DVD

great book btw, got it with my FTPs

That bird with the swelling breasts in the orange dress on the cruise she sounds so hot

bought this recently.

Read the first nine chapters last night and it's an enjoyable read, one of those page-turners.

However dare I say he exaggerates a little?

For example, he claims he was making $100 a day working and then every single night without fail he was losing the $100 into the video poker machines, for months.

I can't see how a guy as smart as Mike could seriously lose his entire wages at video poker for months, only the very biggest morons on the planet would be capable of that sort of feat.

Also, his story about staking Scotty and the dream.
I'd imagine he took a lot of liberties there. For example he staked him 5K for 5 different sats, one after the other, and Scotty lost every one but he kept giving him another 1K as it was "in the dream". Then with his last $500 he gave it Scotty and told him he'd have to raise the other $500 himself, hence how the Mouth came to 1/3 of the 1 mega Scotty won for eventually winning.

Maybe that's what went down but I doubt it. Seems to me to have a bit of a hum of bullsh|t off it.

This happens every day to thousands of people who are addicted degenerates, so it may well have been true with Mike. Being smart has nothing to do with compulsions that are much stronger than one's will power. It's not much different from the cocaine addict who spends his wages on drugs daily.

many intelligent people do many unintelligent things

was the book cowritten by 12 year olds?

read like a grade 5 book report, weak!

Absolutely.

great read, highly reccomended