Paul Phillips

When things get bad, my mom asks how I will pay bills. I say, "Ma, shut up. Have I ever worried about money?"

Ahh..bless his heart. You can't help but like him.

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Mike has never told MY MOTHER (im his brother) to shut up, thats just the way he talks in interviews. Mike suffers from a slight social retardation at times which causes him to make some stupid comments at times.

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I can't win. I was at the poker table once and made a $5,000 bet with Howard Lederer that Shawshank Redemption won best picture. Doyle Brunson told me not to make that bet because he made it once and lost.

How can you consider yourself even remotely knowledgeable enough to take that bet, yet not know that it didn't win? 1994 was one of the classic donk years for Best Picture - Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction losing out to Forrest fucking Gump, for chrissakes. Not to mention the warning he got from Doyle; I guess MM thought that Doyle was playing some kind of angle. Maybe he bet someone else that Matusow wouldn't take the bet with Lederer?


MM: So, if it's fifty-fifty, would you want to go in holding a made hand or needing to make a hand?

That's easy - I'd want the drawing hand. With a drawing hand you get the added advantage that your range of outcomes goes from neutral (you were "behind" to begin with) to pleasantly surprised. The made hand is just the opposite. Not to mention the fact that as long as you're not an obviously prohibitive favorite with your drawing hand, it can help get you more action later on, even if the drawing hand was a favorite in the first place.

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Absurd, you want the made hand in poker, which puts you as a slight 52 percent favorite. When you make 20 cashes and 2 wsop rings, then you can spout off here. No top player would agree with you and I know many of them.

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Matusow doesn’t seem to really understand get the whole idea of EV. Yet he has good finishes in tourneys and whatnot – he has to be at least a good to very good player. So Paul, is he dumb as a box of hammers or some gifted idiot savant or what?

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Let's just say he's an enigma.

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"Matusow doesn’t seem to really understand get the whole idea of EV. Yet he has good finishes in tourneys and whatnot – he has to be at least a good to very good player. So Paul, is he dumb as a box of hammers or some gifted idiot savant or what?"

Yes he understands very much. I comment on another post about this.

Peace

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Maybe i can put this as a chapter quote in our book.

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He got screwed. Shawshank Redemption should have won the best picture of the century

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"...Citizen who?"

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Mike was chatting on fulltilt one night, he said he bought a new mercedes and crashed it on the first night. Somehow, I believe him.

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actaully was a new beamer(covertible top of the line) and it was on the 3rd day he did in fact crash it, trying to show off how well the car cornered, into a curb causing 5k in damage.

thats actually true, wrong make of car though :)

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Mike, obviously has a gambling problem. I can't blame him. I lost $8,000 while watching the movie Alien vs. Predator.

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Let me guess: you lost it betting someone else that it was directed by Martin Scorsese and that it won the oscar for best original screenplay?

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It's interesting to me that people often believe they can gamble their way out of debt that deep when gambling is what buried them in the first place.

Got to do the cocaine, to do the work, to make the money, to buy the cocaine, to do the work, to make the money....

Seriously though--how ELSE is a gambler supposed to get out of debt? If I read Matusow's character-type correctly, I'm sure gambling is all he knows (a better route than selling dope in any case, and I say that having done both). It's probably just a reflection of my familiarity with addictive behavior, but I can relate to the general level of madness that seems to reside in Matusow.

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I believe PP's point is, if you're that deeply in debt DUE to gambling, you aren't going to be good enough to get OUT of debt and STAY there.

Degenerate gambling is degenerate gambling, no matter if you are currently "ahead"

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That's absolutely right on the money bro and Im trying to get Mike to see the light and he has been TRYING lately to make a change.
I am tring very hard, I love my brother and dont want to see him destroy himself.

Mike rarely ever did Coke, he was into "X" or aka "E". Mike has been clean for over 2 years now.

Trust me, me and my family get rather aggravated at him for this behavior.

Peace

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Hey, it worked for Stu Ungar. Sort of.

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If Mike is really that far in debt he really does need to reconsider a career choice. Here's my idea - how great would he be on a reality show! Poker players would LOVE it because you would no doubt be seeing other top pros all the time on the show, and Bravo has shown a history of wanting to make shows about totally dysfunctional people (Show Whatever Moms and Fucks, Bobby Brown, etc.)

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If Mike is really that far in debt he really does need to reconsider a career choice

Aside from this reality show you're pitching, there really isn't a job I can think of that Mike can do that'll make him as much as poker might.

Even if I were an "investor" in him, I'd prefer the non-zero chance of getting paid back that poker provides to the zero chance that him getting a normal job would.

~Duke

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Mike is only slighty in debt and thats about to change very soon, all i can say.

thanks for the reality tc advice, ill run that by his primary agent :)

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I don't think Mike owned very much of himself in the main event.. so, I don't think his statement necessarily means he is millions in debt. Let's hope!

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Lets hope what, that he is debt? only very slightly, he had 50 percent of himself in the wsop main event.

2 very well known pros which i wont name backed him.

Mike is very slightly in debt, he was well into the black until he decided to piss away a nice wad playing online poker which we have talked him out of playing that much anymore.

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"I believe PP's point is, if you're that deeply in debt DUE to gambling, you aren't going to be good enough to get OUT of debt and STAY there."

I don't agree with this at all. I have a good friend that gambles on horses. He kept meticulous records and his ROI for every $2 bet was $2.02. He was betting about 5 million dollars a year with the turnover and he would go broke quite often. There was always people standing in line to loan him money, including myself, and he always won it back. He then moved to Veags, moved his wagering to offshore sites, they offered him, being a big bettor, a 10 percent rebate on all wagers. He now bets over 40 million a year and is never broke, though he lost 600k on football games last year.

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You sidestep the point:

his ROI for every $2 bet was $2.02.

If someone is buried in debt it is far more likely their ROI per $2 bet is something less than $2.

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Asisde from the degenerate cases of "same" hands which split pots, how many hands are there where N is the number of players and (1/N)+ epsilon (where epsilon is a "small" number) is the probability of winning when played through the river from preflop, flop or turn? N=2,3,... That is, for N=2 what hands played heads up are really very,very close to 50/50?

The odd math question after after reflecting that hand pairings often described as "coin flips" or 50/50 really aren't and the made hand is sometimes a slight, but distinct, favorite, e.g. pair v. overcards.

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And other times the made hand is a slight underdog.

A pair of deuces versus overcard suited connectors, other than 3-4, and "unsuited connectors" (then they need to be over 6), for example.

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