Mike Matusow places second in most recent World Poker Tour "Bad Boys of Poker"

The most recent World Poker Tour episode was taped just this past Saturday night at the Commerce Casino is Los Angeles. This was not your ordinary WPT poker game though, for this they brought out the bad boys. Namely Mike Matusow, Phil Hellmuth, Jean Bobby Belande, and the infamous Tony G. You may recall that Tony G was the very caustic personality at the table at the WPT Paris a few years ago. He was constantly giving Surinder Sunar the trash talk treatment and it made for great TV, although his actions were borderline bad sportsmanship.

To kick things off, Tony G shows up to the table wearing a traditional Kimono purchased on a recent trip to Japan. It looks to me like he was trying too hard to get some extra TV time but he claimed it was "out of respect". After his entry the pros at the table got down to business with the blinds starting out at 3,000/6,000 and each player with 250,000 starting chips. Other players at the table were Gus Hansen and Men The Master.

They were playing for bragging rights and a free entry into the $25,000 WPT Championship later this year. They were also playing for face time on TV and of course, several of them started the trash talk early-

For the first two hours Phil Hellmuth was the target of the verbal abuse. He took it well but you could tell he was getting a little drained after awhile. In fact, after two hours of constant chatter, Mike looked up at Tony G and said "Man, you talk more than me, and that's pretty hard to do!".

I'll save the best of the exchanges for after the show airs but suffice it to say, there were some classic lines born out of this match. The hand that ended it all? Well, Mike was heads up with Tony G for the win but Tony had a 3-1 chip lead. With that kind of lead you can expect Tony to play ALOT of hands and really press his opponent. He did just that by bullying Mike for several hands. That is until Mike looked down to find two Kings and put Tony all in. Tony remarked that he was holding his "magic hand" and called with 10 8 of diamonds! The flop brought a 10 and an 8, Mikes hand didn't improve and that was that. Mike sat and stared at the cards for about 5 minutes while Tony ran around high fiving people in the crowd.

Did a Matusow Meltdown follow? You'll have to watch it later this year to find out ;)

You can play poker online with Mike at Full Tilt Poker. Mike plays there weekly along with pros like Phil Ivey, Jesus Ferguson, and Jennifer Harman.