Book Review
New poker autobiographies "tell all"
By Raymond T. Akers

Not every poker book is filled with instruction on how to become the next Doyle Brunson or Mike Matusow. In the case of two new volumes, they show what it’s like to be Brunson and Matusow.

In “Check-Raising the Devil” by Mike Matusow with Amy Calistri and Tim Lavalli (Cardoza Publishing) you get to see “The Mouth” in all his messed up glory. It starts with him living in a trailer park in Las Vegas, working at his parents’ furniture store and chasing away quarters at night playing video poker.

One fortuitous day someone told him about Texas Hold’em poker and showed him the basics. “As I sat there and watched, it was like someone was showing me a jigsaw puzzle piece by piece. I had to learn more about the pieces, but I could already see the big picture.”

From there it was a pretty straight upward trajectory for Matusow into the poker elite, but not one that would entirely avoid some of life’s pitfalls too. While he attained a life filled with big money, women, and eventually drugs he began a downward spiral just as he should have been hitting his peak. The drug stories are both the saddest and most compelling in the book as he uses drugs to help his poker playing and then ruin his poker playing.

It’s no secret that Matusow did some time in jail over drugs a few years ago. The story of how it happened makes you feel bad for how he got screwed and yet makes you want to slap him upside the head for getting himself into that position in the first place.

Then there are his battles with ADHD and bipolar disorder, both of which were adversely affected by his drug use. That he managed to come out the other side of this story in one piece and still able to play the game that made him famous is a testament to his resilience.

The book is an interesting read. Matusow’s story is compelling most of the time and it helps that you can hear his unique voice in the writing.

The other recently released poker autobiography is “The Godfather of Poker” by Doyle Brunson with Mike Cochran (Cardoza Publishing). It makes for an interesting contrast with Matusow’s book for two main reasons: Matusow has about 17 years to cover in his tale while Brunson has about 70, and Matusow’s troubles are mostly self-inflicted, while Brunson’s arose from the life he chose, the paths he crossed, and the people he encountered.

Brunson’s book starts with his earliest years growing up on a West Texas cotton farm and follows him through his high school and university years as a star athlete whose dreams of playing in the NBA are shattered with his leg just before finishing school. He discovers poker and, despite the stigma against gambling to the folks back home, becomes a Texas road gambler based in Fort Worth and deals with all the trials, tribulations and gunshots that came with it. There were murders, robberies, and everything else you could think of going on around him, but he somehow managed to keep his compass pointed north and avoid the worst of it.

Not that he wasn’t in his share of scrapes. Of all the stories he tells, some of the most gripping are his encounters in Las Vegas with Tony “The Ant” Spilotro. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Casino” just remember the character played by Joe Pesci. That was Spilotro and Brunson, living as a gambler in Las Vegas during those years, had to deal with him.

There are plenty of other colorful (and scary) characters, robberies, crazy wagers (especially on golf) and much more in this volume. You will come across everyone from Minnesota Fats to Howard Hughes to Benny Binion to Stu Ungar to Pamela Anderson and on and on and on.