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Poker great Mike “The Mouth” Matusow has come to the defense of his friend and fellow poker pro Daniel “Kid Poker” Negreanu, who has been accused of inappropriate conduct by a female poker pro.
The allegations against Negreanu are “lies,” Matusow tells Gambling 911 in an exclusive interview.
Earlier this month, German poker pro Natalie Hof Ramos accused Negreanu of staring at her in an inappropriate sexual manner when the two played in a tournament together in Connecticut more than 12 years ago.
Ramos wrote on social media:“2008/09. It’s my 1st $10k! I sit down at Foxwoods & who is directly on my left? None other than @RealKidPoker. An orbit or two goes around before I realize he’s blatantly staring at me nonstop when he’s not in a hand. I turn to say something to him bc I was uncomfortable. He just says, ‘Yeah I’m staring,’ & never stopped. My stint in this tourney was short lived as I didn’t know how to fold aces. The sting of busting the tournament was overshadowed by the relief I felt of not having someone directly next to me openly gape at me the entire time.”
Matusow tells Gambling 911 that he has discussed the incident in question with Negreanu and the fact of the matter is that the crafty Canadian was just using his tremendous poker skills to read Ramos for tells in an effort to defeat her in a hand.
“What this woman said is just lies,” Matusow said. “Daniel would never ever act like that towards a woman poker player. He told me if he was staring at her it was just to get reads, not because he wanted to fuck her.”
And in fact, Matusow said, Ramos had earlier claimed that she was a big fan of Negreanu.
“He (Negreanu) showed me a thread (a post on the Internet) where she said he was her favorite player and that he did so much for poker,” Matusow said.
This is not the first time high school dropout Negreanu has stirred controversy.
He took heat a few years ago when he publicly called poker pro Annie Duke “a cunt.”
He’s also made racist statements, wondering on his blog why there was no White Entertainment Network and dressing up in blackface on a video that was posted on the Internet.
He even once claimed that he had a racist dog that hated black people.
We attempted to reach out to Ms. Ramos. She has yet to respond.
By Tom Somach
Gambling 911 Chief Correspondent
tsomach@aol.com
