– Where were you born and raised?
– Best high school for poker players in the world. Really? We probably have like seven at least that have made over a million dollars from my graduating class
– Who’s the most famous one outside of you, obviously?
– So, a lot of them don’t play as much now, but like Joel Mika, who got second at PCA. At one point he was playing 1K heads-up matches against Olivier Busquet and stuff. He got to the top of that ladder during the heyday of online (Ed. – played under the nickname JMProdigy).
Charlie Coltus plays a lot of cash games. We’ve got Jordan Westmorland, who was JW Prodigy. At one point he got to number one on PocketFives, or at least way up there. He won a bracelet this summer online. He’s been around. He moved to Australia, did the whole Black Friday move out of the country thing, and he’s been traveling the circuit a lot recently.
There’s a lot more that people wouldn’t know about. Like, six or five guys went to Thailand, rented a house, and just played online.
– Did you grow up gambling at all? I mean, if your high school was like this, was there even a football team, or was it just like a poker club?
– We had a good football team. Well, one year we had a good football team. Yeah, we played a lot in school. That’s how I got introduced. I feel like the first time we really played was last year of middle school. So that would be 8th grade.
– So what year was this? Around the Rounders time?
– Yeah, right around Moneymaker.
– So were you playing illegally or legally in high school?
– We would play in the back of the class sometimes. There were some Acey-Deucey games going on. I don’t remember the rules of that game, but I remember the name Acey-Deucey. And then yeah, little home games. I remember at lunch it started off as a $2 sit-and-go poker game, then $5, then $10. It was super turbo, gone in 12 minutes.
– That’s nice. So did you have aspirations to go to college and have a respectable job?
– Yeah. I went to University of Washington. So yeah, I was always going to go to school. I went for a finance degree, and it wasn’t until junior year of college that I knew I was going to play poker. But I finished school, graduated. That was always the deal.
– That was junior year. That’s when you knew you were going to make it easy.
– Senior year of high school, I was already playing. I won a $20 PartyPoker tournament for like $12,000 or $15,000 back then. And then I was playing sit-and-gos at the time—not big, maybe $10 sit-and-gos—playing six at a time, eight at a time, whatever. And I was making more money then than I was working at the grocery store pushing carts.
So I kind of presented it to my parents: I don’t want to work during college. I want to be able to experience college and not have to worry about going to work on a Friday night or Saturday night. They pushed back at first, but the deal was clear.
– I kind of remember—didn’t you rip off a SCOOP in college?
– Yes. That was junior year.
– So that was never a question at all.
– Yeah. So I quit my job, and that was the last job I ever had—pushing carts.
Cashier at the grocery store. The résumé is not that strong if things go south right now. I have a finance degree, and I used to push buttons on the cash register. And then by sophomore year, even freshman year of college, I was a regular 20-tabling, up to the $60 or $100 sit-and-gos, putting in a lot of volume.
– Always tournaments and sit-and-gos? Never cash really?
– Not online. After Black Friday, there were four or five years where I only played live cash. But never online. I’ve always been of the mindset that tournaments are best for online and cash is best for live. That’s always been my mindset.
– How’d your parents take it? Obviously the deal was that you had to graduate, but were they apprehensive?
– They’ve always been supportive. At first, they thought it might just be a phase. And by like junior year, before I won a SCOOP, I had built up to maybe a 40K bankroll or something like that. Thirty or forty thousand.
– And you were like 21 at this time?
– Yeah, I was 21. I was splitting costs with school. Luckily, in-state tuition and stuff was really cheap. I had told them I wanted to live—I ended up living at a fraternity—and the deal was, “You can pay for that if you want to do that.” So I was paying for all my expenses and stuff there.
And then junior year, I won a satellite to a 2K SCOOP event. I remember I offered a friend, “Do you want like 20% of a chunk of this?” And he was like, “Nah. You’re going to get crushed in that event probably.” And yeah, I ripped off a SCOOP event back when PokerStars SCOOP events were really big.
– Wow. That’s a step change there.
– There’s a good story. So I was in the fraternity. It was a two-day event. It was a Monday, and I can’t remember how many were left at this time, but maybe like 30 or something. The internet goes out at our fraternity, which—I was a stupid kid at the time. I knew our internet was bad and didn’t really ever have a backup internet plan.
Yeah. So I threw everything into a backpack and jogged, sprinted three-quarters of a mile to the library, a half mile to the library. I mean, I’m a big guy still. I was a much bigger guy back then.
And it was a nice library. They had little—not cubicles—but study rooms you could rent. And I rented one of those and played it in the library on campus.
Won it and then walked back and told my parents, “Oh yeah, I won a tournament online.” Called my mom.
“How much?”
And she didn’t really believe me at first.
She was like, “How do you get the money?”
I’m like, “Oh, we’ll take care of that.” Secondary.
And I just remember getting back to the fraternity, and it’s basically like a 40-room apartment building. We had 70 guys that lived there. I just got on the intercom and said, “Whoever wants to go to the bars, come downstairs.”
– So, okay, the bankroll is huge right now. Your friends were too dumb to buy a piece of you. That’s great. Having the discipline to finish college seems like a superhero trait to me. I ripped off a $3,000 tournament and then I quit college. I’m like, “I’m a pro. Here we go.”
– Yeah, I was playing a lot online. I was full-time. I was known as a regular online already, and still going to school. A lot of guys had dropped out and stuff at this point because online was so good.
I remember I finished out junior year, and senior year I was always a good student. School—I had good grades and stuff. And I had a class in business school I hadn’t taken. It was not in my major, but it was a required business school class. So I was in a class with a bunch of sophomores and juniors just starting their business school.
First day of class we got a group project, like “You’ll work on this all semester” and everything like that. I already knew at this point—I already had a conversation like, I’m going to try playing poker after college. This was second to last quarter or something. I explained to the group, “Hey, I’m good. I get all my grades and everything. I’m going to do my part, but I’m a senior. This is an elective. I have a couple work trips here. Just don’t give me the most important parts of the project.”
– What was your online nickname?
– Mcmatto.
– So at some point you graduate and your bankroll is just half a million plus.
– So even right after the big score my junior year. I went to school for finance, and when I was a freshman in like ’06, guys were getting $30,000 or $40,000 signing bonuses with Goldman Sachs and all those companies. And I thought that’s kind of where I was going to go.
And even when poker was going well grinding, I still thought I’d eventually go the finance route. But then the financial downturn hit, and suddenly there were a thousand people applying for one job. I had been spending my summers at the World Series instead of doing internships, so it was like, well, I’ll give poker a shot for the summer.
That was right after the big score, near the end of junior year. I knew the job market was going to be [__] at that point. So I told myself: I’ll give poker a year, see what happens. I’ve got a degree, a good degree, and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll figure it out.
I literally went to my graduation, had lunch with my parents, and two hours later I was in a car driving to Vegas. We were on the quarter system, so school ended late—like June 12th or June 15th—two weeks after the Series had already started. I was jonesing to play. Got down there and promptly went like 0-for-30. Then came the Main Event, my first real deep run. I finished somewhere around 80th or 81st.
– So were you just a hold’em guy then, or did you dabble?
– I can play all the games. Yeah. I’d say right now I’m probably a favorite in most $20/$40 mix lineups. But back then? Strictly Hold’em. Actually, my first-ever World Series cash was in Razz. I was jonesing, feeling good, and I’d watched a training video. Entered a Razz event having never played a hand before. There were like 30 left, and I ended up tangling with Landry, who went on to win all three stud events that year. We played a huge pot—like, it could’ve ended his run. About an hour in, I was like, “Why are you raising me? My board is locked. You can’t even see my cards and I’ve already got you beat.” People were raising in spots that made no sense.
– So that Main was your first deep run. Describe what that felt like.
– I still remember the hand that crippled me down to short. Flop came ten-ten-five. I check-raised, he min-clicked, I four-bet clicked it back, then he five-bet. I thought, “There’s no chance he has it.” So I shoved. He tanks for 10 minutes. I’m sure he’s folding. And then, right as the cameras roll over, I’m thinking, “Damn it, now he’s never folding.” He ends up calling with jacks. Did I induce him, or did I just torch it? Who knows.
– What did you have?
– Oh, total airballs. I think I might have had a back door overcard.
– Obviously we’ll get to the famous hand or whatever at some point, but let’s start with the lead-up again. You said you were day four chip leader back-to-back, which is nice.
– If it wasn’t chip lead, I was top three for sure. It was me and Tony Dunst — that was the only swap I had. We were one-two in chips on Day 4. I can’t remember which year it was — one of the two years — but I remember on the bubble, Day 4, hand-for-hand went 25 hands.
I won all 25 hands. Like literally every single one. It was just the perfect setup where I kept raising, applying pressure. I remember one hand specifically: I opened cutoff, got three-bet small. I call. Flop comes, I’ve got some weak draw — maybe a bad flush draw or a gutshot — and he bets half his stack. I just jammed. He tanks for like four minutes, folds top pair — something like ace-jack on a dry board. And then he says, “You better watch your back on break. You’re out of line.” He was serious too.
I just laughed. That’s how I deal with stuff. I literally started laughing at him. Poker brings out all types.
– All right, take us through the hand. We don’t have to dwell on it, but it’s a famous one.
– Oh, I have a good story about that. It was like two years ago, maybe three. First big event of the Series, Mystery Millions. They’re showing PokerGO highlights while we’re on bubble. Mystery Millions bubble is insane — like 1,500 people — and they don’t have the app, so they’re hand-counting. Hand-for-hand drags on, and what comes on the screen? My hand.
Everyone starts looking over. I might’ve had a drink or two. I just stood up and yelled, “That’s good!” Whole room started clapping for me. I’m not usually a funny guy, but that time I got a whole room going. Felt pretty good.
Yeah, all my friends just kept sending me videos with laughing emojis. I was like, “Fuck off.”
– All right, let’s talk about the hand itself.
– Yeah. We were basically one-two in chips. If I didn’t have 100 bigs, I had 85 or 90. Way more than third place, big gap.
He opens hijack, makes it 575K.
I three-bet the button to 1.55M with pocket aces.
He four-bets to just over 3.9M.
And in my head, being a dumb 21-year-old, I’m like: I’m going to take three minutes here, make it look like I’m doing pot-odds math, try to Hollywood him. Total idiot. Finally, I just called, and the flop came ten-nine-seven. He checked. I bet, he called.
The turn was a queen of diamonds. Duamel checks again. I’m in my familiar pose, and I check. I had maybe three-quarters pot left at that point, and I remember saying in my head, “Please don’t snap.”
Yeah, he could definitely have queens there.
Yeah, for sure.
Then I shove. “All in for 11.6 million.” He doesn’t snap, and I’m like… then it goes on. People don’t realize it from the broadcast, but it was like eight minutes of him thinking very seriously. It felt like 30 minutes.
Then he calls. I’m like, “Oh my god.”
It was something like a three-million-dollar equity pot. And then there’s the final table bubble factor and all that.
So he rolls over two jacks. The day before I’d done an interview, and I wore glasses back then. Afterward I left them on the desk where we did the interview. I never got them back. I played all of Day 7 without glasses.
Yeah. I literally couldn’t tell clubs from spades. I was counting pips on the cards for this much money. How could I win back then? I couldn’t even see.
If you watch the video, you’ll see me stand up, the card comes off, and you see me squinting at it. Yep, that’s it.
There were a lot of funny things that happened after, though. Like I still get crap for throwing the water bottle.
I walk out and I’m leaning against the wall in the hallway, and I feel a tap on my shoulder. Random guy in a hat, doesn’t speak English. Two minutes after I bust. He just holds out a marker and paper like this.
So I sign a “f— you.”
I had a lot of friends around. Adam Levy was still deep. That final two tables was pretty crazy — almost everyone is still around poker or has been since. Levy, Mizrachi was there, Jarvis, Dolan who still plays cash in Florida, Joe Cheong, and I think Matt Racener too. Almost every name is still recognizable. Super unusual for a final table.
Then I remember there was a PokerStars blog following me. I didn’t even know. They shadowed me for an hour and a half. After busting I went out, sat on the Rio stairs outside the parking lot. Next day I read a blog: “He sits on the stairs. He stares at the sky as the plane flies overhead.” A full play-by-play. I was pissed, like “That’s messed up.” Some reporter hiding behind a post.
– Have you had any random people coming up to you after that? Not to make fun of you, but to say they can relate.
– This summer people asked me at the table all the time how often I get asked about that hand. And not exaggerating, every single day. Like, this summer, every single day. I remember one day laughing because it was 11:30 at night, and we bagged in 20 minutes, and someone asked. Revisiting the Main Event heartbreak and the story behind one of poker’s most replayed hands.
“You know what, you’re the first person today. You would have broken the streak.”
– Well, as a consolation, they did give you some money for 15th.
– I went back to Seattle, and that fall I bought a condo in Seattle. That was a big thing I did with it. I put a down payment on a condo and we just went back to playing online. I bought that condo in the fall, and then six months later, Black Friday happened. I had the best setup ever for online. I had a window that looked out, I could see the water and everything. And then Black Friday happened. I’m like, “All right, well, let’s go there then.”
Seattle had a pretty good live poker scene, and for the next—trying to think how long, like seven or eight years—I mostly just played live cash. In Seattle we played 5/10 no-limit like three days a week. Then there was a PLO game that was like 5/10/20. There was more than enough live poker there to play. I have to preface this: we have a $500 max bet in Seattle, so spread limit. We were playing 10/25 PLO with the spread limit. It was the most fun game ever. No tanking, average pots way bigger than your normal PLO pot. I would much rather play that game than a PLO game without the rule. It was just a lot more fun.
– All right. So when you moved out here, were you still cash-centric? I know you still traveled for some tournaments, but did you kind of give up on that? Not give up, that’s the wrong word, but just saw all the tournaments were out in Vegas constantly?
– I thought I was going to come out here and play a lot, like be a 5/10 Bellagio reg, be one of the cool guys and stuff. And then I was just in the coal mines of the Bellagio 5/10. Yeah.
And I did some. And then when the pandemic hit, that’s when online poker reboomed. Even a little before then I had kind of gotten back into playing a ton online. Maybe the year before the pandemic. And then when it hit, the games were insane.
I remember when the pandemic happened, I was so freaked out, thinking poker’s dead, the economy’s going to go to shit, no one’s going to want to invest, all that. And then I just remember the first week of the pandemic, ACR had like a $55 for 30k. And then the second week it went to 80k, then 100k, then it was a 200k every single day.
And I just dove in. I played seven days a week online, every single day. I hadn’t seen poker like that for a long time.
– Some people are just good at teaching, but others would be terrible coaches. Did coaching help your own game?
– It helped my game a lot. I’m a thousand times better coach now than I was back then. I probably wasn’t a great coach at first. It’s definitely a different skill. There are a lot of really, really good players who are awful coaches, and a lot of mediocre players who are really, really good coaches.
– Did you have a good World Series or a bad World Series?
– I had a good series. The first weekend I got third in an online event for about 80k, which was nice. I was planning on playing around 80k in buy-ins, so that basically set me up with a nice roll. After that I had a bunch of 10k scores, a few in the $1,500s, and some decent runs in the 3ks.
– So what’s now? For most poker players I know, it’s usually a time of rest, a break from poker.
– I’ve never been big on full breaks. I slept and relaxed for about a week, then last night I fired up some online stuff. It wasn’t a full serious session—I turned my monitor around, sat on the couch with seven or eight tables going, and watched some baseball while I played. I’ll probably play again tonight.
Right now my schedule is three or four nights a week online, plus maybe one live trip a month. I’m heading to Thunder Valley next weekend for a $2,500 there.
– So ACR and WSOP—are those the two main sites?
– Right now about 80% of my volume is on WSOP and ClubWPT. I also play a little on BetOnline, ACR, and some CoinPoker. So five sites total.
