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[mattmatros]

Can’t believe I haven’t said this earlier in this space, but buy my book The Game Plan. It’s good. And the ebook is now just ten bucks.

[mattmatros]

Red Noise

On one of the many sleepless nights since this all started, I rouse myself from bed to settle the question of whether I am hearing sirens. I head upstairs, open a window, listen hard, but I still can’t tell. Is that cyclic whine really detectable under the already distant hum of highway traffic? Did it go away for a while and then come back, or had it never even left? Can I even tell anymore?

Our ability to filter and distill is fearsome powerful. We can pick out loved ones’ voices in a crowd, navigate four lanes of traffic on autopilot, follow multiple storylines while eating popcorn and Junior Mints. We can find Waldo. Distinguishing signal from noise and banishing the latter to the recesses of our brains is a big part of what allows us to navigate the world without blowing our circuits. Has this most potent weapon of ours been turned against us?

The Sunday before last, a gunman in Halifax killed 18 people, Canada’s worst mass shooting in 30 years. I’ll forgive you if you missed it. Killing sprees have become so commonplace that our brains have filed them away, factoring them into our everyday lives. Never mind that more people died in Halifax than in Columbine, a story which dominated our national discourse for days in a bygone age before such things were commonplace.

My almost three-year-old sleeps with a white noise machine. It’s loud enough that if we don’t calibrate correctly, it will constantly trigger the monitor throughout the night and contribute to the usual restlessness. But the white noise knocks out the din from streetlife and neighbors and allows my kid to sleep (mostly) peacefully. In other words, it does what it should. Background sounds are supposed to be harmless, irrelevant, and filtering them out should improve our lives. My son’s white noise machine is so effective that sometimes I’ll play in his room with him for two hours before realizing I never turned it off.

The white noise machine, in its natural habitat.

Since January of 2017, we’ve been in a constant battle to reshuffle the various noises, each new signal dropping from our attention and being reclassified as noise with ever alarming speed. Banning travel from majority-Muslim countries. Firing an FBI director for investigating the chief executive. Gutting environmental protections. Gutting health care laws. Provoking war with North Korea. Illegally bombing Syria. Illegally assassinating a foreign military leader. Using the presidency as a money-making enterprise. Separating family members, locking kids in cages, and letting them die. Extorting a foreign leader for personal political gain. Bypassing our system of background checks for unqualified relatives. Concocting inane defenses for these actions, and/or engaging in the sloppiest of cover-ups. Any one of these outrages, all listed off the top of my head, could’ve rightfully dominated our attention. Now they’ve all been relegated to the history books in the face of the latest entry: allowing, through inertia and incompetence, the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, and causing the worst unemployment crisis of our lifetimes.

The term “white noise” doesn’t apply anymore. White noise is anodyne, inherently dismissable. What we’re hearing now is something else, and it’s no longer confined to metaphor. As I sit in the epicenter of the pandemic, down the street from the nursing home with the most deaths in New York, and in listening range of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the sirens never seem to stop. There goes another one. How many have I missed?

My almost three-year-old has adjusted, as kids always do, to the lack of playdates, the end of car trips, the new sonic landscape. Will the red noise soon register to him entirely as background? Will the blares and beeps that signal yet another life in peril, another soul gasping feverishly for air, become part of his surroundings, accepted without thought? This is the fear, and the disservice I do him whenever I don’t call attention to the distant sirens as we’re poring over a puzzle, or reading a book, or taking a walk. Red noise cannot become white noise, even if our brains want it that way. Evil learns from evil, and we’re all but guaranteed to see this horrifying tactic continue to overwhelm us long after the current crisis is over. I can only hope we’ll do better than I have so far, as another emergency may or may not have just echoed past.

[mattmatros]

Bill vs. Phil, Revisited

Trapped in our homes, with online poker still not available in much of the country, many of us have become more poker fan than poker player this spring. But luckily we fans are about to receive a much-needed gift straight from the Ghost of Poker Past.

In the summer of 2010, Dr. Bill Chen—math PhD, personal friend, and all-around genius (although he seems to lose his cash or his phone roughly every other day)—faced the great Phil Ivey heads-up for a bracelet in the $3k HORSE event at the World Series of Poker. Late in the match, the following hand came up during the Limit Hold ’Em round.

Bill raised from the small blind button and Phil called from the big blind. Phil led with a bet on the flop of As Th 2h and Bill called. Phil continued with a bet on the 9c turn, and then Bill raised. Phil called and checked the 7h river. Bill bet, Phil check-raised, and Bill folded. Action-packed hand, no? Don’t you wish you knew what they both had?

Well, now we will. Reliable sources tell me all hole cards will be revealed during Bill’s appearance on Jennifer Shahade’s The GRID podcast. We’re about to get a glimpse into the ten-year-old strategies of two of the top Limit Hold ‘Em players at the time, and rumor has it the results are more than a little surprising!

In advance of the podcast, I thought I’d do an analysis the usual way—without knowing the hands. While Limit Hold ’Em is my best game, I don’t have a ton of experience with heads-up play, so cut me some slack if I miss a trick!

Preflop, Bill will be raising his button with around 90 percent of hands, and Phil will be defending his big blind with at least that many. About all we can say so far is that Bill cannot have the very worst starting hands (72o, 93o, etc.), and that Phil is unlikely to hold a premium hand like a big pair or a big ace. Three-betting from the big blind is much more common heads-up than in a ring game, and Phil would want to build the pot with his best holdings, but we can’t completely rule out the possibility that he is slowplaying for deception.

Phil’s lead on the As Th 2h gives a hint of just how ahead of his time Mr. Ivey was. Limit players in 2010 (and indeed, most players in the $40-$80 games I play in today) were extremely reluctant to lead out from the big blind into a raiser, especially on an ace-high board. We now know from seeing solver solutions that this play should be a fairly normal part of the arsenal, but in 2010 this was the bet of a confident, world-class player bucking “standard” lines. That said, it’s hard to narrow Phil’s range very much based on this bet. He’s probably weighted toward weak aces, flush draws, and other one-pair hands, but he could have just about anything with at least some frequency. There are a relatively large number of hands in Bill’s button range that he simply has to fold to a bet on this flop (undercards to the ten, random queen-highs, suited jacks without the backdoor draw, etc.), so Phil potentially has good bluffing value with any two cards getting 4-1 on his money.

Bill’s call tells us nothing except that he doesn’t have one of the folding hands I mentioned above. Bill would likely slowplay his monsters here, as I know he subscribes to the (very solid) idea that it’s good to disguise information in the first two betting rounds before the bets double in a Limit game. Bill could have anything from queen-high to a set, and he could have any backdoor flush draw or gutshot straight draw or better draw.

The turn is where it gets interesting, and where we can finally start to narrow the ranges. Phil continues with another bet when the 9c falls, which means we can now pretty much rule out his total bluffs. But he can probably still have any gutshot, open-ender, flush draw, or any of the made hands he led the flop with.

When Bill raises, suddenly his range goes from very wide to quite narrow. His minimum value hand is probably a strong ace—say AQ—or better. With any worse one pair hands or hands with showdown value like king-high, Bill probably just calls. Any open-ender or flush draw could potentially be in his semibluff range (note that Js8s, a hand with which Bill would’ve peeled the flop, is now an open-ender, as is QJ). If he raises with all those possible bluffs he would be raising too many hands and Phil would likely show a profit calling down with anything. So Bill has to keep his frequencies in mind when picking his semibluffs. Whether he will assign those frequencies based on some predetermined, game theoretically sound method like looking at his watch, or whether he will decide based on game flow or opponent tendencies, or whether he will pick only certain hands to bluff with is something only Bill knows for sure. If Bill took the last approach, then he could, for example, choose not to semibluff QJ, and give himself a balanced-looking raising range of Js8s, flush draws with no showdown value, and his strong hands.

Phil calls the raise, which probably means we can rule out the very strongest hands from his range, as top two pair or better would like to three-bet for value on this draw-heavy board. How stubborn will Phil get with his calling range? He is probably hanging on to almost any pair getting 6-1 on his money, but he can safely fold his weakest draws like the 54 or 43 gutshots. If he did bet the turn with any low pocket pairs, he can probably fold those as well, since they often have only two outs.

The 7h on the river completes the flush draw, and also completes two straight draws—86 (which is an unlikely holding for either player) and J8, which either player can plausibly have. After Phil checks, Bill will likely show down with his one pair hands, and maybe even with his weakest two pair hands on such a scary river. With a good two pair or better, though, he’ll be compelled to bet for value. And since all his flush draws have now converted to value bets, he can probably go ahead and bluff with any busted straight draws in his range. But if he doesn’t raise the turn with QJ, he really doesn’t have any bluffs here! This is an example of why it’s usually better to tweak frequencies than to pick and choose specific hands to bluff with. As long as Bill threatens to have QJ, then he has a few bluffs to go with all his value on his river. Bill did say on Twitter recently (with no memory of what he had, by the way!—we’re relying on his friend Matt Hawrilenko to remember Bill’s cards for us), that “with QJ I may not bluff vs Ivey, just show down. That’s why it’s a little inconsistent.”

Indeed, if Bill would show down QJ here, then it’s even harder to find his bluffs, which means that when Ivey check-raises the river and Bill folds, Bill would’ve had to have a value hand! It’s rare in Limit Hold ’Em that you bet for value and then fold to a raise, but it is definitely correct to have this plan occasionally. Did Bill really make a thin value bet with something like AQ, only to fold it to Ivey’s raise? It seems hard to believe, knowing how much Bill hates folding.

Phil has some obvious value hands in his raising range (namely flushes and straights), which means he can and should have some bluffs to go with them. Like Bill, Phil’s most likely bluffing hand is QJ, but it’s at least possible to imagine him also holding Q8 with some small frequency.

Knowing that the results are going to be “fun”, as the insiders seem to be saying, I’ll risk looking very silly and make a guess as to what they both had. Bill: QJ, Phil: Q8.

Looking forward to listening to the big reveal on The GRID!

Matt Matros is a three-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, poker instructor, and the author of the strategy/memoir The Making of a Poker Player. His new book, The Game Plan, is available now from Amazon. Want to see how the Game Plan would apply to a hand you’ve played? Write Matt at jacksup@mattmatros.com.

Sign up for Matt’s mailing list here.

[mattmatros]

Capitalism and the Coen Brothers

In Fargo, the Coen brothers’ 1996 masterpiece, a suitcase filled with one million dollars gets buried in a snowy field, the currency never to be spent. In Hail, Caesar!, the filmmakers’ 2016 entry, a suitcase filled with one hundred thousand bucks (the old-time Hollywood equivalent of a million) gets dropped to the bottom of the sea.

Despite the similar fates of the luggage, it turns out these two films offer fundamentally different philosophies. Fargo’s characters hurt friends, family members, and accomplices in pursuit of the almighty dollar. Officer Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) actually says aloud to the captured perp in the backseat of her cruiser: “There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’t you know that?” In Hail Caesar!, the characters do know it, you know? But they also know they have to acquire a little money somehow.

Hail Caesar! is billed as a comedy, and looks like one—gonzo musical numbers, outlandish characters, and enough absurdist elements (poisoned chalices, lassos made of spaghetti) to qualify as “camp.” Sadly, I spent more of the film’s running time getting ready to laugh than actually laughing. Some viewers may thus dismiss this supposed comedy for not being funny enough, and I could hardly blame them. But in staying with the movie, and all its subplots of adoption paperwork and staged romances and twin gossip columnists, I found there was more to it than a lack of jokes.

The central players in Hail CaesarI wrestle with a version of the same question—how do we keep our morality intact while also providing for ourselves and our families?

Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), to keep himself going, confesses his sins daily. When he’s not strong-arming his employees in an effort to protect Capitol Pictures, he seems like a faithful husband and attentive father. He’s doing OK. But in the midst of various crises on various film sets, Mannix gets offered a job at Lockheed Martin. The pay would be great, the hours easy, and if he can just avoid thinking about the Bikini Island mushroom cloud photo that the Lockheed recruiter uses as a sales pitch, Mannix can envision himself in a new career.

The prize commodity of Mannix’s current employer, Capitol Pictures, is Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), who has skated through life as a talented pretty boy. Whitlock has blindly followed a path to stardom, enjoying all the booze and benefits such stardom confers, and has had little reason to consider the consequences of his actions. But after he’s kidnapped by a consortium of Communists (calling themselves The Future) intent on disrupting the “means of production,” Whitlock is perfectly ready to view Capitol Pictures—the studio that has provided him every luxury—as the enemy. There’s no telling what someone will think the first time he attempts thinking.

As for The Future, they’re a collective of screenwriters and other non-famous Hollywood functionaries who have enough money to live in a swanky house on the Pacific Ocean and hire a maid, but are still united in their belief that they’ve been screwed. These are not starving revolutionaries breaking windows for a crust of bread; these are intellectual revolutionaries who worship at the altar of economic fairness. Think of the oldest, richest, and most disgruntled of Bernie Sanders supporters (and not the massively underemployed millennial Bernie Sanders supporters). The Future doesn’t need Whitlock’s ransom money for itself. We know this because the money is earmarked directly for the Soviet Union. Then, when true believer Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) is about to abandon America and join his comrades aboard a Russian sub, Gurney’s dog jumps from a rowboat to follow his master. Rather than see the mutt drown to death, Gurney drops the suitcase and catches the dog in his arms. The rowboat full of The Future contingent simply stares, with nary a thought to retrieving the suitcase before it falls to its watery grave.

Whitlock eventually gets returned to the studio, where he tries to convert Mannix to the red side. In the middle of Whitlock’s argument, Mannix slaps him in the face. Mannix may be passing on the Lockheed job—drawing the line at earning his salary by way of nuclear proliferation—but he’ll be damned if he’ll let his meal ticket turn commie. It never occurred to Whitlock that thinking for himself might be construed as disloyalty, and Clooney, open-mouthed and unblinking (there might as well be a “!?” floating over his head), plays his shock for all it’s worth.

Mannix offers no rebuttal to the academic theory Whitlock has memorized, but only insists that the films they make have value—that Whitlock is producing something of worth. Whitlock can believe this, and maybe Mannix can even convince himself. If he does, it’s easy for Mannix to ignore questions about how this worth gets measured, how the value he creates gets turned into wealth, or how that wealth becomes divided among those who helped to create it. He has to ignore these questions, because otherwise he’d have to confront them. After all, no one from The Future would deny a film’s inherent worth—they would only insist that everyone (especially the writers) get their cut.

Following Mannix’s diatribe, Whitlock quickly falls back in line and returns to the set, but not before Mannix issues one final directive: “Go out there and be a star.”

Fargo, a “black comedy,” ends in the happy home of Marge and Norm Gunderson, an expectant married couple who find joy in each other and in their careers. The greedy have been punished with death or jail, but we’re meant to believe that the world has plenty of rewards for those who aspire to do good. Darker, perhaps, is the ending to Hail, Caesar!, in which Baird Whitlock gives an impassioned, star-worthy speech on the set of the big budget Biblical epic (titled Hail, Caesar!, of course), only to ruin the take when he can’t remember the word “faith.” Whitlock doesn’t believe in what he’s saying or doing any more than Mannix believes it reasonable to assault his actors in the name of making a motion picture. But in Hail Caesar!, even good people have to pretend to believe in something. It’s the only way to get paid.

[mattmatros]

More Talking

Start your holiday off right with the second episode of Beg to Differ. 

Matt and Jess welcome Young Adult author Heather Demetrios, who tells us what YA is and why it's important. In the later segment (beginning at 31:00), Matt and Jess review the film Mockingjay Part Two.

[mattmatros]

New Podcast!

My friend Jess Welman and I are trying out a new podcast. It’s called Beg to Differ, and our premiere episode is about a topic near and dear to our hearts--Gambling!

In our first segment, guest Dave Tuchman joins us to discuss Daily Fantasy Sports, and specifically to react to the recent John Oliver segment and to the New York attorney general’s stance on the issue.

The second segment begins at 34:00. Jess and I review the recent film Mississippi Grind, the story of an unlikely friendship between two poker players trying to piece their lives together. (Warning! At 59:30 we start revealing big-time spoilers. Re-join us at 1:16:50 if you don’t want spoilers, but you do want our final thoughts on the film.)

[mattmatros]

Some updates

I had a blast doing commentary for the Borgata Winter Poker Open million-dollar guarantee event with Mike Gagliano and Tyler Patterson. Give a listen if you've got seven hours to kill.

If you only have one hour to kill, make it this Friday at 7 p.m. to hear me read fiction at BookCourt. I'll be joined by Mallory Kasdan, Rachel Heiman, and Jamie Berk, and while I haven't spoken to the other writers yet, I'm pretty sure we're all planning on stirring things up. Hope to see a few crossover fiction/poker fans in the crowd (although my reading will have nothing to do with poker).

[mattmatros]

My 14 Favorite Books of 2014

It's become a tradition that half-dozens of people look forward to--my end-of-year book list! These were my personal favorites I read in 2014, regardless of publication date. Here they are, in alphabetical order by author:

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Middlemarch by George Eliot

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante

The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

The Last Illusion by Porochista Khakpour

10:04 by Ben Lerner

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Florence Gordon by Brian Morton

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

Tenth of December by George Saunders

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman

The Noble Hustle* by Colson Whitehead

* - OK, so that's the 15th book, and it would probably show too much bias to include it, but I loved it so I'm placing it in its own category: Best Book That I'm In

And for completists, here are the other books I read in 2014 (35 more, for a total of 50! A personal best! And a lot of these were very good too...):

Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Speedboat, Renata Adler Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin Lexicon, Max Barry Lucky Us, Amy Bloom Follow Her Home, Steph Cha The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler The Awakening and Selected Short Stories, Kate Chopin Invisible City, Julia Dahl Duplex, Kathryn Davis William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope, Ian Doescher The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens Silas Marner, George Eliot The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, Joshua Ferris Cutting Teeth, Julia Fierro Ride Around Shining, Chris Leslie-Hynan The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link Is Just a Movie, Earl Lovelace The Assistant, Bernard Malamud The Lola Quartet, Emily St. John Mandel My Life in Middlemarch, Rebecca Mead The Dog, Joseph O'Neill The Patron Saint of Liars, Ann Patchett The Leftovers, Tom Perrotta Yes Please, Amy Poehler The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy Frankenstein, Mary Shelley The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt Zero Fade, Chris L. Terry Annihilation (Southern Reach Trilogy, #1), Jeff VanderMeer   This Boy's Life, Tobias Wolff              

[mattmatros]

I have a new piece up, and it's about overcoming an inability to solve puzzles through strategy. Check it out!

[mattmatros]

Julia Fierro guest-curates our September reading, presented in partnership with PEN America. RSVP on Facebook or just show up. 

Julia Fierro is the author of Cutting Teeth, which was recently included in Library Journal’s “Spring Best Debuts” and on “Most Anticipated Books of 2014” lists by HuffPost Books, Flavorwire, Marie Claire, and the Millions. Fierro’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Guernica, Glamour, Poets & Writers, and other publications, and she has been profiled in the the Observer and the Economist. In 2002, she founded The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop in Brooklyn, New York, which has grown into a creative home for more than 2500 writers. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow, Fierro lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two children. 

Myung Joh​ graduated from the University of Virginia’s MFA program in 2008. In her day job, MJ manages content for a social media marketing website; by night, she works on her young adult novel and teaches for The ​Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop​.

Matt Matros's writing has appeared in The Washington Post, CNNMoney.com, UCSB’s Spectrum, and CardPlayer magazine. He is seeking representation for his novel Electives & Extracurriculars, a big-hearted send-up of college in the late nineties, and he’s at work on a new project loosely based on Bob Bradley’s tenure as coach of the Egyptian national soccer team.In his other life as a professional gambler, Matt has won three World Series of Poker bracelets, and he is the author of The Making of a Poker Player (Kensington, 2005). Matt has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and lives in Brooklyn with his wife Ivy.

Orli Van Mourik is a Brooklyn-based writer. After graduating from NYU’s Journalism School in 2006, she ghostwrote a nationally syndicated daily money column, served as a stringer for the New York Times, assisted New Journalism giant Gay Talese in researching a nonfiction novel about his 50 year marriage, and wrote a blog detailing breakthroughs in neuroscience for SEED magazine. Her work has appeared in Psychology Today, Discover Magazine and The New York Observer, among other venues, and has been anthologized in The Open Laboratory. She is a regular book reviewer for The Brooklyn Rail and Brooklyn Based and is working on a novel. She teaches for The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop.

​About PEN America:

 Founded in 1922, PEN American Center is the largest of the 145 centers of PEN International, the world’s leading human rights and literary organization. PEN works to advance literature, to defend free expression, and to foster international literary fellowship. Its 2,000 distinguished members carry on the achievements in literature and the advancement of human rights of such past members as Langston Hughes, Arthur Miller, Susan Sontag, and John Steinbeck. www.pen.org.

[mattmatros]

Want a long, rambling quote from me on how poker is like writing? Dig through this review long enough and you'll find it!

[mattmatros]

My first competitive poker in five and a half months. No turning back now! Updates on Twitter, naturally.

[mattmatros]

What I'd Do Without Jozy

I know I promised World Cup travel updates from Brazil, and you'll get them eventually--but erratic internet and a busier-than-expected activities schedule have conspired to keep the updates at bay. (My basic laziness has played a part too, surely.) In the meantime, I want to chime in quickly with a few quick tactical thoughts about the US team.

OK fine, you want just a few photos? Here's a crowd of Brazilians (and a few Mexicans) lining up to enter Arena Castelao in Fortaleza.

And here's a selfie of me at my seat.

Satisfied now, Mom?

So as I was saying, we can talk about the ecstasy and the deliciously unexpected heroism of the win over Ghana some other time. For now, the U.S. has a big problem. I'd never realized how laughable the calls to bench Jozy Altidore after his disappointing EPL season were until the second I saw him clutching his hamstring. I knew right away the rest of the game would be a nightmare. Using Bedoya, Beckerman, and Jones all essentially as defensive mids has worked out really well in the last two matches (Nigeria and Ghana), but that was owing in large part to Jozy's ability to hold up the ball while waiting for the cavalry to arrive. Young Aron Johannsson clearly wasn't up to the task in Jozy's absence. Someone on Twitter stated that we had just two touches within 20 yards of Ghana's goal after Jozy left. One of those touches was our second goal. We obviously need a new strategy against Portugal, as simply pretending that Johannson is Altidore won't cut it. Here then, are a few ideas.

1) Abandon the three defensive mid alignment we've all so recently fallen in love with, and go back to the diamond midfield we've been using forever. I've come around on Beckerman as a player, but I just don't see how we generate any offense if he's in the lineup on Sunday night. Bedoya can stay at right mid (or replace him with Zusi, either is fine), but I'd bring in Brad Davis and his magic left foot to try to give us some run down the opposite side. 

2) Push Dempsey up to pure striker. It seems a lot to ask of a guy who just got his nose broken, but Dempsey has the skills to hold up the ball with his back to goal, and we need them immediately. 

3) Start Wondolowski over Johannson. We know we're not going to generate a ton of chances anyway--might as well put a poacher in the lineup in the hopes he creates a goal out of nothing. 

4) Tell Bradley to play better. Yes this is a big tongue-in-cheek, but Bradley was not at all himself against Ghana. A quick return to form for our most important player would go a long way toward righting the attack.

So my plan would be:

Howard Johnson-Besler-Cameron-Beasley Jones Bedoya-Davis Bradley Dempsey-Wondolowski

We'll see what Jurgen does...good luck, Yanks!

[mattmatros]

After a few days of touristing in Rio, my wife and I headed down to the coastal town of Paraty to watch the opening World Cup match with the fine folks pictured above. They were pretty devastated by the own goal (speechlessness translates in any language), and even the win didn't seem to completely revive their spirits. Of course, that didn't stop the party from continuing well into the night--it goes on even as I type this. Tomorrow (Friday) is a long day of travel to Fortaleza for us, but once there I should get a chance to blog about the soccer here (and maybe elsewhere, stay tuned...) for a good solid week before I head home. Graças a Deus para a Copo do Mondo!

[mattmatros]

In an ironic footnote to this story, I won't actually be heading to the WSOP anytime soon, but I still stand by the advice I just gave to The Washington Post.

[mattmatros]

A Great Day to be Literate!

The universe is in luck, as two fantastic reads are now finally available for purchase. First, Julia Dahl, my friend of seventeen years, is today celebrating the publication of her debut novel--Invisible City, a murder mystery set in Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish community. Julia has been honing her craft ever since I've known her, and it's insanely gratifying for me to see her success. I've read the first chapter of Julia's novel and it's awesome. Can't wait to devour the rest. Also of note, Colson Whitehead's new book The Noble Hustle has just dropped, and it's non-fiction, and it's about poker, and I'm one of the central characters. Obviously I'm biased, but the book is great and everyone should read it.  There you have it--stop what you're doing and buy these books. Then read them. I'll wait... MM

[mattmatros]

Welcome!

Greetings, salutations, and welcome to the newly re-designed mattmatros.com! Please look around and follow my tumblr, twitter, or public Facebook page (or all three) as you see fit. And while you're here, why not see where some of the links take you? There's writing and more writing and maybe a movie to be found, and in the future there'll be more writing still (including blog posts like this one).  Meanwhile, thanks for stopping by--and if you're a poker player, remember to bet the river. (If you're a civilian, simply carry on living your life.)

MM