EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY:
MANSOUR MATLOUBI — LAS VEGAS, NV (1997)
I came across this old photo, which inspires several memories. I’ll share a few here and now.
I snapped this picture late at night in a high-stakes cash game at the 1997 World Series of Poker. The photo shows Mansour Matloubi, the 1990 world poker champion. Matloubi was born in Iran and living in London at the time he won. He broke traditions and shattered old barriers of the poker elite. Matloubi was the first “foreigner” to win the WSOP Main Event. Ironically, another Iranian-born player, Hamid Dastmalchi, won just two years later.
Matloubi wasn’t well-liked and frankly didn’t care. I think some of that nativist bias was from being Iranian. After all, this wasn’t so long after the Iran hostage crisis of the late 1970s. Matloubi wasn’t colorful and charismatic in the way other famous winners were, such as Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson, and Stu Ungar. But he played a fearless game and his talent was widely respected.
About a year after this photo was taken, Matloubi came to Atlantic City to play in the United States Poker Championships at the Taj Mahal, which I covered for Card Player magazine. Given his reputation, I didn’t have any expectations of connecting with him. But poker is an odd culture of mixed personalities, filled with surprises. Over several days we hung out a bit and even had dinner together. Matloubi shared several stories with me for a book I was writing and was very helpful, even encouraging. The more we talked, the more interesting and likable he became. After a while, he was laughing and not at all the same intimidating person I was used to seeing inside the poker room.
One takeaway from that experience was — spending time with someone can open things up. Sometimes, you might even be surprised by how perceptions change. I can’t speak to Matloubi’s character (he was close friends with another former world champion Russ Hamilton, who orchestrated a major cheating scandal) and have no idea what he’s been up to in the last 20 years. Nevertheless, I was grateful to have shared some time with him. Matloubi disappeared from the poker and gambling scene many years ago and his whereabouts today are a mystery. That’s probably the way he wants it.
There’s an old saying — “familiarity breeds contempt.” With some people you meet, the closer you look and the better you get to know them, the less interesting they become. Some people even rouse distaste. Surprisingly, to me, Matloubi was just the opposite.
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Note: We held a garage sale recently and I’m going through lots of stuff, including old photographs which I’ll be sharing in the coming days and weeks. My philosophy is — a photo does no good tucked away in an album or stored inside a box. A great photo should be shared, especially when it tells a story. Quoting Rod Stewart, “every picture tells a story (don’t it?).” This is Day 8 of the project.