Mike Matusow may have made them famous but he is certainly not the first poker player to succumb to a meltdown at the poker tables, nor does he have the market cornered when it comes to poor decision making in the heat of battle.
Even the most even-tempered and tilt-proof among us are prone to making the types of unforced errors that to the outside observer look like a classic “blowup.”
What exactly is a blowup?
Unlike tilt or even a bad read, a blowup doesn’t have to be a bad play or occur after you’ve been emotionally battered down following a bad beat. A blowup is simply when you take a needless risk; when you let your ego and your perceived ability to outplay your opponents get the better of you.
Blowups can occur when you catch a bad run of cards or when you seemingly are hitting every flop.
Additionally, they can occur at any point during a tournament, and while you are in any state of mind ranging from dejection to elation.
A well-known example of a blowup
A lot of people don’t necessarily consider this one of his trademark blowups but I certainly do.
In the 2004 World Series of Poker both Greg Raymer and Mike Matusow were cruising along with fewer than 100 players remaining and had been sitting at the same table for quite some time, with quite a lot of jawing (mostly by Matusow) taking place, when this hand came about:
Honestly there was no reason for Mike to call a 230k chip bet on what was likely to be a coinflip at this point in the tournament. He was right to call considering the overlay that was already in the pot (but wrong from an equity perspective) but he took such a significant hit on a hand where he was at best slightly TC EV.
He kept repeating that he was playing to win, but this is the type of play a mediocre feels they need to make to win. Someone of Matusow’s ability back in 2004 could easily find much better spots to get his chips in.
This is a classic blowup. Matusow took an uneeded risk because:
- He was playing aggressively (to win as he would say);
- He disliked and had been jawing with Raymer all day at the table and felt he could outthink him
A random blowup in a random tournament
Not every blowup has to be for big money, or at a critical juncture in the tournament. I was once playing in a private local tournament with about 30 players, and like Mike the Mouth was cruising right along when I took a needless risk that cost me my comfortable chip lead.
I was the overwhelming chip-leader with 15 players remaining and had the perfect seat with two calling stations to my right, and three incredibly tight players on my left, a situation I should have milked for all it was worth when I decided to have my own Matusowian blowup.
Here is how it went down.
Calling station #2 came in for a raise and I looked down at JJ (continuing my tremendous run of cards) and I three bet expecting him to fold as he had done many times before.
It folded around and he called (he actually mentioned how he wasn’t going to let me push him around this time, and made what looked like a reluctant call), which I figured was fine because I’ll just take this pot down on the flop most of the time as he’s afraid to call.
The flop was Q44 and he bet out.
Thinking I could just run him off the hand (as I had done many times before) I made a foolish raise putting him all-in and watched as he flipped over QQ. But this wasn’t the hand that did me in, it was just the unnecessary risk I took to setup my bustout hand.
There was no reason for me to even call his flop bet, let alone try to outplay a passive calling station in this spot.
On my bustout hand I made a three barrel bluff on a very dry board only to have him check-call the whole way with trips. During my bluff I never considered that he was check-calling with a monster because of the blowup from a few hands before.
I had wanted to reclaim my chips so badly that like Mike Matusow I never considered what my opponent might have and was focused on what I felt he didn’t have.
I never would have even been involved in my bustout hand if I hadn’t sent 2/3 of my stack to my opponent on a completely unnecessary risk. I was cruising along and lost site of the fact that this was a very passive calling station and a raise-call pre-flop should have set off alarm bells for me, but I was playing so well it never registered this weak player could be setting me up.
Furthermore, I never took the time to register that his stack was as large as it was.
Avoiding blowups
So what can you do to prevent these blowups?
Here are two rules of thumb I like to follow.
Rule #1 of avoiding blowups: Be alert to all possibilities.
The one thing I have learned over the years is to never underestimate your opponents, and to always be cognizant of the what-ifs. Sometimes we get so tuned into “likely ranges” that we forget to even consider the possibility that this hand is the outlier.
While the outlier hands won’t happen very often, when they do they can often be brutal.
Like Mike Matusow discovered, a blowup can mean the difference between an 87th place showing in the WSOP Main Event or a potential seat at the final table.
And as I learned, overestimating the skill gap between you and your opponents and not considering all the possibilities, and just focusing on the most likely, is the difference between cruising into the money and playing for a few hundred bucks and sitting in a cash game playing Follow the Queen with the rest of the eliminated players.
Rule #2 of avoiding blowups: Understand the situation
Sometimes when you’re getting short-stacked you have to start looking for any chance to get your money in the pot even if you have only the slightest advantage.
Other times you have a huge chip lead and nobody remaining at your table can do you any damage even if you wind up all-in.
But other times you neither need to force the issue, nor is your standing in the chip counts untouchable, and it’s in these scenarios where a blowup is most likely to occur.