Matt Salsberg is a professional poker player and the executive producer of the Showtime series Weeds.
Matt Salsberg grew up in Montreal, Canada, where he enrolled in Concordia University. Before he had aspirations of being a professional poker player, he was an experienced writer. A meeting with a professor of screenwriting turned into an obsession.
Around the time that he took up poker, he also began working as a writer for the hit Showtime show Weeds. The show took off and he managed to pay the bills with his day job, but poker was still a large part of his life. He played in LA’s poker clubs on a regular basis and was a fan of both tournaments and cash games. Just like his obsession with writing made him successful, his obsession with poker led to a fast improvement in his game, even if he was still only playing part time.
For most of the time that he was working as an executive producer on Weeds, he never turned much of a profit in poker. He entered various tournaments, but never recorded any major wins and he didn’t see the same return that he did in cash games. However, around the time that the show ended its eight year run, he made a deep run in the 2011 WSOP Main Event and cashed for $108k. With that, he saw what could be possible with poker. In fact, it wasn’t long before he had a major win under his belt.
There was a joke in an episode Weeds involving winning a satellite into the Grand Prix De Paris, but Salsberg never thought he would actually attend the tournament. In 2012, he entered, won, and took home $478k. This trip to Paris resulted in the largest cash of his career.
Since then, he has been a regular in games across the world. Each year, he travels to the WSOP and plays a variety of games, although a bracelet has remained out of reach for him so far.
Most recently, he entered the DeepStack Extravaganza in Las Vegas and won the $1,100 event for $36k.
In total, he has earned $1.9 million in live tournaments, in addition to his cash game winnings at various poker clubs across North America, including Playground, Seminole, Borgata, Commerce, and Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club.
He plays much more poker now than he has in the past, but he still doesn’t know if it is going to be a full time profession for him. He hasn’t ruled out writing for another show if something becomes available, but for now he is working hard, grinding the circuit, and turning a profit in something that was just a hobby for so long. He says that he hopes he will find a way to bring the two together with a show he has pitched to the same network that produced Weeds, in which friendship and lifestyle are the focus, although it will be more about the environment of poker than the game itself.
