WSOP 2017: Year Of The Mouth?

(Photo: Bluff.com)

2005 was probably the biggest year in the life of Mike ‘The Mouth’ Matusow. He went to the final table of the the 5,619 player Main Event taking home $1,000,000 for 9th place. Just a matter of days later he beat out Hoyt Corkins heads-up to take another $1,000,000 as the winner of the WSOP Tournament of Champions.

Since then, it’s not been the smoothest of rides for The Mouth. He’s struggled with gambling and drugs, did a little time in prison for supplying ecstasy to an undercover cop and was nearly paralysed in an accident that left him with a long term pain problem. But despite the injury he’s back with a positive attitude, making the best of it and proving haters wrong.

And it is working. The last few weeks he seems to have popped out of his chrysalis as a gobby butterfly with hundred-dollar bills for wings. He’s running good, playing good, and doing what mouths do best: talking up a storm.

Of the 12 events he’s entered at the time of writing, he’s taken the following cash finishes: 11th in the $3,000 HORSE for $12,723; 6th in the $10,000 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw for $35,532; 5th in the $10,000 Dealer’s choice 6-handed event for $59,827; and 8th for $37,120 in the $10,000 Omaha hi/lo eights or better. 

He is positively on fire. Even his choice for president won the election despite getting fewer votes.

Those aren’t massive money scores by some WSOP standards, but those $10,000 buy-in events involve playing deep-stacked against the best players in the world. Even marking the cheap WSOP cards can’t help you there.

And with three final tables already he is also on track to hit his goal of beating the record for most FTs in one year at the WSOP.

Steaks For Sale

He’s also been putting himself out there, drumming up investment with a massive mark-up of 1.20. In fact you can still get some of his action in the $50,000 Player’s Championship on his Tasty Stakes account.

He’s also been sneaking in on the peripheries of the new poker vlogging revolution, which has kicked into overdrive this WSOP. He popped by to be sold some merch on Jeff Gross’s recent vlog and seems pretty upbeat about everything at the moment.

On top of this, his Twitter feed has exploded to life again in a way we haven’t seen since the somewhat madcap election period which saw Daniel Negreanu run into trouble for bringing up Matusow’s issues with drugs in the middle of some light political razzing with Erik Seidel.

Player of the Year

Now it isn’t so much Clinton Matusow wants to see hang, but the Player of the Year. Like several other players Matusow, is outraged by his ranking under the new points system.

It is not an unreasonable bugbear to have. He’s currently at 68th (as at the time of writing) with 288.38 points. Compare that to Barry Greenstein’s 13th place with 441.92, where Greenstein has had an 11th and 14th place finish $1,500 events and a 61st th place finish in a $1,000 event. 

It does seem like the system is a bit screwy.

Matusow seems to be everywhere at once, running deep, getting back in the game and courting the cameras in way we haven’t seen in awhile. It is nice to see one of the more entertaining personalities in the game getting back up to speed.

All we need now is a couple of Hellmuth inspired flip-outs and some uncalled for needling, and it’ll be just like he never left.