Matt Matros
While the entire poker world hung on every card that was placed on the felt in front of Tom Dwan and his final two oppponents in the nearby $1,500 No Limit Hold’em event, New York’s Matt Matros was busy doing something he’d never done before: winning a World Series of Poker bracelet.
Matros conquered a field of 625 players in Event #12, $1,500 Limit Hold’em, to win the first WSOP tournament title of his career. With it comes $189,870 and the satisfaction of having showed his class in overcoming “The King of Limit, ” third-place finisher Terrence Chan, who has won three major online limit hold’em tournaments in the last year. But probably more impressive is that Matros came from the back of the pack to win; he had the second-shortest stack of the nine players remaining when the final table was reached.
Going into heads-up play the New Yorker had better than a 2-to-1 chip lead over Ahmad Abghari. After thirty minutes of play Abghari had managed to jump ahead, but after another thirty minutes of going back and forth Matros was able to begin pulling away. With a commanding lead, he managed to outflop his opponent on the final hand to put this tournament in the record books. Abghari took home $117,272 for his runner-up finish.
Matros’ tournament resume dates back to the early days of the poker boom. He finished in 3rd place in the 2004 $25,000 WPT Championship, winning more than $700,000, and subsequently wrote a book called The Making of a Poker Player: Ho w an Ivy League Math Geek Learned to Play Championship Poker. In the intervening years he has cashed twice more on the World Poker Tour and 14 times in WSOP events. His career live poker tournament earnings now add up to $1,448,530.
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