I’m very excited to share with you all my new book, The Poker Brain: Improving Your Process at the Table Through Optimal and Exploitive Thinking. Since you’ve taken the time to visit my site, I thought I’d share the Introduction with you here. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you’re excited to read […]

Can’t believe I haven’t said this earlier in this space, but buy my book The Game Plan. It’s good. And the ebook is now just ten bucks.

On one of the many sleepless nights since this all started, I rouse myself from bed to settle the question of whether I am hearing sirens. I head upstairs, open a window, listen hard, but I still can’t tell. Is that cyclic whine really detectable under the already distant hum of highway traffic? Did it […]

Trapped in our homes, with online poker still not available in much of the country, many of us have become more poker fan than poker player this spring. But luckily we fans are about to receive a much-needed gift straight from the Ghost of Poker Past. In the summer of 2010, Dr. Bill Chen—math PhD, […]

In Fargo, the Coen brothers’ 1996 masterpiece, a suitcase filled with one million dollars gets buried in a snowy field, the currency never to be spent. In Hail, Caesar!, the filmmakers’ 2016 entry, a suitcase filled with one hundred thousand bucks (the old-time Hollywood equivalent of a million) gets dropped to the bottom of the sea. Despite […]

Start your holiday off right with the second episode of Beg to Differ.  Matt and Jess welcome Young Adult author Heather Demetrios, who tells us what YA is and why it’s important. In the later segment (beginning at 31:00), Matt and Jess review the film Mockingjay Part Two.

My friend Jess Welman and I are trying out a new podcast. It’s called Beg to Differ, and our premiere episode is about a topic near and dear to our hearts–Gambling! In our first segment, guest Dave Tuchman joins us to discuss Daily Fantasy Sports, and specifically to react to the recent John Oliver segment and to the New York attorney […]

I had a blast doing commentary for the Borgata Winter Poker Open million-dollar guarantee event with Mike Gagliano and Tyler Patterson. Give a listen if you’ve got seven hours to kill. If you only have one hour to kill, make it this Friday at 7 p.m. to hear me read fiction at BookCourt. I’ll be joined by Mallory […]

It’s become a tradition that half-dozens of people look forward to–my end-of-year book list! These were my personal favorites I read in 2014, regardless of publication date. Here they are, in alphabetical order by author: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier Middlemarch by George Eliot My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante The Story […]

Secrets of the U.S. Puzzle Championship I have a new piece up, and it’s about overcoming an inability to solve puzzles through strategy. Check it out!

The Melancholy HustleWant a long, rambling quote from me on how poker is like writing? Dig through this review long enough and you’ll find it!

I know I promised World Cup travel updates from Brazil, and you’ll get them eventually–but erratic internet and a busier-than-expected activities schedule have conspired to keep the updates at bay. (My basic laziness has played a part too, surely.) In the meantime, I want to chime in quickly with a few quick tactical thoughts about […]

After a few days of touristing in Rio, my wife and I headed down to the coastal town of Paraty to watch the opening World Cup match with the fine folks pictured above. They were pretty devastated by the own goal (speechlessness translates in any language), and even the win didn’t seem to completely revive their spirits. […]

The World Series of Poker (WSOP) begins today. Here’s how you should play it. In an ironic footnote to this story, I won’t actually be heading to the WSOP anytime soon, but I still stand by the advice I just gave to The Washington Post.

The universe is in luck, as two fantastic reads are now finally available for purchase. First, Julia Dahl, my friend of seventeen years, is today celebrating the publication of her debut novel–Invisible City, a murder mystery set in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. Julia has been honing her craft ever since I’ve known her, and it’s insanely […]

Welcome! Greetings, salutations, and welcome to the newly re-designed mattmatros.com! Please look around and follow my tumblr, twitter, or public Facebook page (or all three) as you see fit. And while you’re here, why not see where some of the links take you? There’s writing and more writing and maybe a movie to be found, […]

Look what I found at a bookstore not very near me–apparently it’s still for sale somewhere! (And that somewhere is the great Powell’s City of Books.)

 …our tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear.  — George Eliot, Middlemarch (to be remembered the next time a politician or one of your friends says something dumb)

Fifteen Years Smoking Crack: Life in the Space Between Abstinence and Rock Bottom My brave friend Shaniac wrote this. It will be interesting to hear what the universe thinks.

I may not have finished NanoWrimo, but I did set a goal of reading 50 books this year…and so far I’ve read 46. But I’ve also read two manuscripts of completed drafts for friends, and I plan on finishing two more books before the year is out, so let’s say I met my goal. Yeah! […]

I’m not saying it’s impossible, and I will still do my damnedest to finish, but hitting 50,000 words will take something of a Thanksgiving miracle at this point. A head cold has slowed me down considerably over the last week, and as result I need to average 4,000 words/day over the next four days, one […]

 I said I wanted to be at 15,000 words by Friday of last week. Well, I’m there now! Actually that’s a lie, but I’m damn close! It turns out that even when you don’t have a real job, and even when writing a book is your number one priority, there are still plenty of things […]

They say NanoWrimo doesn’t start until the first weekend passes and you’ve written only half the words you meant to. Actually, no one says that, but that’s what happened in my case. The game plan was to write 800 words after midnight on Thursday night, and then 4,000 words during a big day on Friday, […]

To whoever is reading this, thanks for finding the latest iteration of my online presence. I hope this one sticks for a while, but that darn internet seems to always want to change things up every few years. At the very least, I hope I can get back to blogging regularly, something I used to […]