Mike Matusow is the All-American poker player.  This professional player was born in Los Angeles, California, but formerly resides in Henderson, Nevada.  This man spent hours and hours being a dealer before finally deciding to play poker himself rather than just deal to other players.  A small amount of success in playing at a Las Vegas Casino, Matusow decided to start playing poker full-time and is known as a member of Team Full Tilt.

Mike has not always been the trash talker that he currently is now during poker play.  During school, he was bullied and ended up not even attending college.  Matusow amazing learned to play poker by playing video poker at the Maxim Casino at age 18.

In 1998, after generously paying 1/3 of Scotty Nguyen’s entrance fee in the $10,000 no limit Texas hold ‘em main event, Matusow was paid by Nguyen the amount of $333,333 due to the fact that he won and was paying Mike back for paying part of his entrance fee into the game.  Obviously, without that partial payment of Matusow’s, Nguyen would not have competed, therefore, resulting in a non-win!

Matusow finished 6th place in the 2001 World Series of Poker, was the talk of the show on ESPN in the 2004 WSOP main event, and in 2005, Matusow earned a 9th place finish in the main event of the WSOP.  A few months later, Matusow competed in the WSOP Tournament of Champions and defeated Hoyt Curkins in this event winning $1,000,000.  The following year, Matusow finished 3rd place taking ¼ million home in the same event.

In 1999, Matusow won a World Series of Poker bracelet for the $3,500 No Limit Hold ‘em event.  In 2002, he won the WSOP bracelet in the $5,000 Omaha Hi-Low Split 8 or Better event then followed a third bracelet in 2008 in the $5,000 No Limit 2-7 Draw with Rebuys where he defeated Jeff Lisandro for winnings of $537,862.

Matusow made his very first appearance at the World Poker Tour final table in 2004 at the UltimateBet Aruba Classic where he finished third place with winnings that totaled $250,000.  During the World Poker Tour Bad Boys of Poker II event, Matusow finished second while Tony G took home the win. 

Matusow has appeared in season 2, 3, and 4 of High Stakes Poker.  Although Matusow was eliminated the very first day of the event, he did make his debut appearance on the European Poker Tour in September of 2006 in Barcelona.  Then in July of 2007, Matusow was defeated by online poker player Kevin Saul in the World Poker Tour Bellagio Cup III Championship, but took home winnings of over half a million dollars.

It is said that as of 2008, Matusow’s total live tournament earnings well exceed $6.5 million.