Three-time WSOP bracelet winner Matt Matros talks to Jennifer Shahade on the GRID about Jack-deuce suited, in a high stakes heads-up hand where preparation did not meet luck. The hand is set at the NBC Heads-Up Championship in 2013, where Matt faced  four-time WSOP Champ Brian Hastings. Despite the shallow structure, Matt studied rigorously for the opportunity, locking himself in his hotel room for days to work with a heads-up specialist. He explains to listeners what he learned from both his work, and the outcome.

 Matt and Jennifer talk about the philosophy behind Matt’s new book The Game Plan: How Casual Players Become Threats in NLHE tournaments. They also touch on his finalist entry into the PokerStars #MYChessPoker Game Challenge, and how poker compares to solving puzzles.

Matt is also a fiction writer and voracious reader. Matt tells Jen how he became a major character in a book by the great American writer, Colson Whitehead, who wrote the best-selling Underground Railroad as well as the Noble Hustle, a comic take on the world of poker and his foray into the WSOP.

Matt ends by estimating the odds Jen will finish the podcast, as they discuss another Quixotic project of hers, the ABC diet, a 26-day eating plan.

Follow Matt Matros on twitter, his official website and browse his prodigious collection of cashes on hendon mob. You can find his new book, The Game Plan, on amazon.

Now that Matt has discussed jack-deuce suited, 162 combos remain on the GRID.