When Matt Matros won his first WSOP bracelet last year it was one of those cases where players in the know said that he had been one of the best poker players without the coveted hardware. Now things seem to be falling in to place as Matros has taken down his second WSOP event with a win in this year’s $2,500 Mixed Holdem event and walking away with the $303,501 that came with it.
Matros is the author of “The Making of a Poker Player,” a chronicle of his move from being a student and employee to a full-time poker pro. He graduated from Yale with a degree in mathematics and from Sara Lawrence with a Masters in Fine Arts. He has five WSOP final tables and 23 WSOP cashes under his belt which contributed greatly to his more than $2 million in live tournament winnings.
Regarding his latest and greatest cash, Matros stated to ESPN that he felt Limit players, like himself, held a distinct advantage. Since the mixed tournament format saw the game switched from Limit to No Limit Holdem every half hour, there was a lot more Limit Holdem played since hands of Limit tend to move quicker.
“You have to ante every hand and decisions just take longer to think about, so we ended up playing a lot more limit hands than no-limit hand,” stated Matros. “Another thing is the blinds are so much bigger in limit. Early in the tournament it doesn’t really matter how big the blinds are because you have tons of blinds in both games so they do not really play big. When you get late, if you can pick up a couple of blinds here and there it is just huge for your stack size.”
Matros entered the final dinner break with 4 other players as the short stack, but when he came back he took down a monster pot to vault himself back into contention. He then went on to knock out Brandon Meyers in 4th place with pocket Kings against Meyers’ pocket Queens. After that he knocked out Matt Hawrilenko with a made flush draw against two pair.
Matros began heads-up action against Jonathan Lane with nearly triple Lane’s chips but then lost the chip lead briefly. A monster pot later and Matros found himself well in the lead again. The final hand ame when Matros made a pre-flop raise from the button and Lane pushed all-in. Matros made the call and had Lane’s J-10 dominated with his A-10. With no help from the board Lane was eliminated and Matros became one of less than 100 poker players with more than one WSOP bracelet.
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