Is Mike playing with someone else's money?

In a recent episode of High Stakes Poker on GSN, an exhange took place between Daniel Negreanu and Mike Matusow. During the back and forth verbal jabs, Daniel made reference to Mike not even playing with his own money. This was a not so subtle reference to the fact that Mike pretty much stays broke and was playing in the high stakes game with a backers money.

A backer is someone who will partially or even fully fund a poker player so that he or she can play in a cash game or tournament. A typical setup will give the player a percentage of the winnings and the backer (or staker) will keep the lions share of the winnings, plus the original staked amount. It's most commonly seen on the tournament circuit but you occasionally see it in cash games. Most often, in a cash game setting the player is technically "borrowing" the money because they are broke. According to Daniel, that's the case here.

We did a little digging around and found that Mike was most likely broke during his appearance on this latest taping of High Stakes Poker. According to sources, Mike had another relapse and lost a few hundred thousand playing online poker. The rest of his bankroll vaporized at the sports book.

There's no question Mike is one of the best poker players on the planet. If only he can learn to manage a bankroll properly he may be remembered as a true world class player. If he stays broke, who knows...

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