Matthew Higgins' only constant is change
A hurricane, questions of morality and a timely fire all pushed Higgins in different directions.
Spend any time with Matthew Higgins and sooner than later, you’ll realize that nothing in his life came easy. His life’s been defined by a series of moves around the country, some wanted, some too young to have a say and one by a natural disaster. He’s an Oklahoman by birth, Southern by choice and he’s part of a new crop of players charging up the all-time WSOPC ring list after winning his eighth this month at Cherokee.
Just two days later, he finished runner-up for in a bid for a ninth against his friendly rival Preston McEwen in the Pot Limit Omaha event. “Just missed it – it stings,” Higgins said while McEwen prepped for a group winners’ photo. “It would have been nice to get this one too.”
Higgins is the father of two teenage boys and resides outside Chattanooga, TN. He technically lives on the other side of the state line in Rossville GA – population of 4,000 – so we wondered if he picked there because of small town life.
“No, not really,” Higgins said. “I moved there because it’s a suburb of Chattanooga; but I moved there after Hurricane Katrina.” Higgins’ family moved to Mississippi from Oklahoma while he was a child and lived there until the historic storm destroyed his home of Gulfport, MS.
The natural disaster reshaped much of the Gulf Coast and his path in his life. Then, a question of morals changed the trajectory of his life a second time. “Growing up, I was going to be a lawyer,” Higgins said. “That's what I always thought I was going to do. I was in pre-law classes at college and had an internship at a law firm.”
Higgins paused, “While I was there, they represented a guy that (allegedly) raped a little girl. You don't know if the guy is really guilty or innocent or not, right? But I got this bad feeling from the guy, that he was absolutely guilty.”
“When you have money, you can probably get away with anything,” Higgins said. “Money wasn't really that important to me, you know? My conscience was worth more than that.”
A new start
He left law school, moved in with his mom due to her failing health and started over at community college. Higgins bartended at night to make ends meet and his personality made him a natural fit for the job. While burning the candle at both ends, an economics professor pulled him aside and asked if he ever thought about selling real estate.
“He knew I was bartending and saw I was great with people. Talking to people always came naturally to me,” said Higgins. “I started and loved it, then Hurricane Katrina hit.”
Higgins and friend had a mutual friend in Chattanooga that helped them out with a place to stay and a restaurant gig in the aftermath of the hurricane. A couple of weeks turned into months and then into a year.
A new home
The friend was ready to move back home but life dealt Higgins a curveball. “The girl I was seeing got pregnant,” he said. “I already had my jobs in Mississippi back and I even put down a deposit on a new place to live there. But I stayed in Chattanooga; I stayed to be a dad.”
Higgins lived a 20-minute drive from Biloxi casinos while in Mississippi and that’s where he and his friends would cut loose. “I’ve been around casinos my whole life and we went all the time on Friday and Saturday nights to party,” he said. “We went to the clubs, played blackjack and shot dice, but I never once played poker.”
Graduating up the game
But now in Chattanooga and several hours drive to a casino, Higgins found himself in small poker games after work. “It was just fun, we were drinking and having a good time. It was right when the Moneymaker Boom happened,” he said. “I started killing these small games for $500-$600 and making $1,200 in the restaurant on the weekends. Then, it began to grow a significant amount of my income.”
Higgins graduated from $.25/$.50 home games after work to tournaments at his local VFW. He started competing in fields of 100-130 people twice a week and started burning through them. Then, through an act of God, or natural force, the nightclub he was working at burned down.
He had a little nest egg from the VFW and played his first tournament at the Goldstrike in Tunica. “It was wild – every TV wizard I watched was there – Negreanu, Scotty Nguyen, I did pretty well but busted. I went across the street; saw they had a $10k guarantee and won it. No problem, right?”
“Then for the next year or so, I never went through a significant downswing,” said Higgins. “I didn’t really see what losing was like for more than a year. It was a sun run before I knew what a sun run was.”
Higgins dabbled around the South; picking up cashes in Biloxi, Tunica and Cherokee. He won his first WSOPC ring in April 2018 for his first six-figure score. “I was mostly playing cash early on and a few small tournaments,” he said. He would join his friends on trips and stick to the cash games because he liked the action. But then he started studying.
A pro’s pro
“It was 2018 where I realized I could make some real money at this and decided to try and figure it out,” said Higgins. “Blake Whittington elevated my game more than anyone. We traveled together, talked hand histories and dissecting spots over and over again.”
Higgins figured out tournament poker in 2018, but it was 2019 when he really got reps under his belt and hit the Circuit hard. Then Covid derailed poker in 2020, but he still managed a six-figure year by bookending the year with a pair of final table runs.
When Covid restrictions were lifted, he the road and went on a yearlong tear from June 2021 to 2022. He won a Gulf Coast Poker event, cashed in the WSOP Main Event and won his second WSOPC ring in Cherokee for $111,858.
Higgins put tens of thousands of miles on his car between Florida to Mississippi to North Carolina over the next few years climbing the ranks. He’s already eighth in Georgia’s all-time money list and must leapfrog poker royalty keep climbing – Billy Baxter, Josh Arieh, Daniel Weinman and Cary Katz to name a few.
Can’t go at it alone
Higgins emphasized how important it is to have a support system at home and on the road. His fiancée at home, Amber, is a rock for him. His oldest son lives 15 minutes away and his youngest just moved to Norway. “He’s going to be there for two years, I just got my passport renewed and I’m looking at times to go over there,” he said. “My oldest will come over on the weekend if he’s not too busy riding four-wheelers with his friends.”
Higgins found a way to not let poker get in the way of fatherhood. “When I’m home, I’m at home,” he said. “I don’t do any home games – I ran one for four years – I get all the calls,” he finished with a laugh.
“From the outside, people can look at my poker results and think it’s all flowers and rainbows,” said Higgins. “But before this last win, I was in an $80,000 downswing. You see these small scores here and there, but they don’t see how bullets I fire in these tournaments.”
“It was a year since I had a significant score,” he said. “Luckily, I have that great support system and people that believe in me. I knew this day would come and I’d snap out of the downswing.”
Despite having cashed in the WSOP Main Event three times, Higgins hasn’t been able to translate his success to the felt in Las Vegas. “I just run terrible there,” he said. “I don’t know – it’s like a black cloud over me out there. I’m not doing any different there than I am out here.”
“I don’t take a lot of high variance spots in Circuit $400 events and that’s how I treat the $1ks and $1,500s,” said Higgins. “But if I’m playing a $5k against somebody that I think is capable, I’m going for it. Most people just can’t go three streets with nothing, they’re shutting down. A lot of my game is live reads, betting patterns and sizing – which a lot of people don’t realize they’re doing.”
Higgins is hopeful and preparing for a profitable summer in Las Vegas. Poker works for him for now, but he’s not married to the game. He’s preparing for a life after poker and wants to renew his real estate license.
“But what I’d really like to do is go to a trade school,” he said. “I’d love to do body work on cars; I’ve always found that really interesting. A buddy of mine’s dad owned a transmission shop and he’d let us watch.”
“My dad passed away when I was 18, so I didn’t get a lot of life and man skills that you learn from other men,” said Higgins. “You learn how to change your oil or rotate tires, simple stuff. My passion is to learn little things like that. I want to buy houses, fix them up and flip them.”
All photos courtesy of 8131Media.