Posts Tagged ‘michael mizrachi’
Jonathan Duhamel, John Racener Heads-Up at WSOP Main Event
November 7th, 2010
Just two of these nine players will return to play for $8.9 million on Monday evening.
After well over half a day of poker in the Penn & Teller Theater at the Rio hotel in Las Vegas, the heads-up match at the WSOP Main Event is finally set.
Anyone expecting a sedate affair at the Rio got a rude awakening, as there was action throughout the day. Just 23 hands into the final table, Jason Senti scored the first knockout of the day. With Soi Nguyen all-in preflop, Senti’s Q-Q flopped a set and faded Nguyen’s gutshot straight draw with A-K to send the amateur home in ninth place ($811,823). After a quick break, Italy’s Filippo Candio doubled up when his A-A held up against chip leader Jonathan Duhamel’s A-K, moving him into third place.
But the first significant fireworks of the table came when Michael Mizrachi called Duhamel’s opening raise holding A-Q of diamonds, Matthew Jarvis shoved behind him with 9-9, and Mizrachi made the call after Duhamel folded. With 31.5 million chips in the pot, the flop came Q-Q-9 to give Mizrachi the lead. Jarvis then turned a 9 for a full house, but Mizrachi rivered an ace to send Jarvis home in eighth place ($1,045,743). That was the momentum that Mizrachi needed to get right back in the middle of things, as he began seizing on his opponents’ weakness with three- and four-bets to eventually move up into the chip lead.
After a long stretch without an elimination that saw him double through Cheong in a blind-versus-blind confrontation, the next to go was Senti. As impressive as he was riding the short stack all day, Senti’s fate came down to a coin flip after the players returned from dinner. His A-K jumped out to a big lead against Cheong’s T-T on the K-K-Q flop, but the turn and river came a J and a 9 to make Cheong a straight, sending Senti home in seventh place with $1,356,720.
John Dolan came in with the second-largest stack but found himself bring three-bet with regularity all day. He stayed patient, but once he was down to 12 big blinds at the 500K/1M blind level he moved all-in from the small blind holding Q-5 of diamonds. Duhamel made the call from the big blind with 4-4, and the small pair held up to send Dolan home in sixth place ($1,772,959).
John Racener’s patience paid off with two nearly consecutive double-ups. The first came at the expense of Mizrachi, whose A-8 was no good against Racener’s A-K. Then Racener caught lucky with A-Q against former chip leader Duhamel’s A-K, moving himself over 40,000,000 and dropping Duhamel to last place. But Duhamel turned right back around and doubled through Mizrachi; he opened, Mizrachi shoved with 3-3, and the Canadian called with A-9, hitting two nines. Though it took quite a while, Mizrachi would eventually bow out in fifth place ($2,332,992) when his Q-8 was no good on a queen-high board against Duhamel’s pocket aces.
With Grinder gone, Cheong and Duhamel had the big stacks while Candio and Racener were trailing by a big margin. Then, two hands later, Candio moved all-in from the small blind holding K-Q, and he got a call from Cheong with A-3. An ace on the flop was all it took to send Candio home in fourth place ($3,092,545). Then, rather than waiting for Racener to bust, Cheong and Duhamel began taking each other on. Each took significant pots from the other before the biggest hand of the night (and WSOP history), where Cheong decided to six-bet all-in holding just A-7 against Duhamel’s Q-Q. The queens held to leave Cheong with just about three big blinds, and shortly afterward his Q-T fell to Duhamel’s A-2 to eliminate him in third place ($4,130,049).
Jonathan Duhamel and John Racener, the remaining two players at the WSOP Main Event, will now take a well-deserved day off before commencing with their heads-up confrontation at 8 p.m. PT on Monday evening at the Rio. Duhamel has a monster chip lead, but it’s still no-limit hold’em and anything can happen.
Just One Week to the WSOP Final Table
October 30th, 2010
Michael Mizrachi will be looking to add to his WSOP player’s championship win.
The one week countdown is on for the final table of the World Series of Poker main event. That means just a few days for the members of the November Nine to sew sponsor patches onto shirts, pray to whatever god they think will help and get a few last interviews in. And it means the sizeable crew at ESPN are resting up in preparation for their own WSOP marathon.
The players will make their way to the Rio in Las Vegas, and see their first cards at 12pm PST on November 6th. From then it will be a marathon of heartbreak and glory until just two players remain. At that point, heads-up play gets going at 8pm PST on November 8th, with a champ crowned and enriched a few hours later.
But just when the winner is counting his millions, and the losers are licking their wounds, the ESPN crew will be neck-deep in footage as they struggle to turn it into a TV show in just a couple days. Their coverage of the event starts November 9th, just three days after the event starts. To put it together so quickly requires twenty-one cameras, and a crew of seventy-one coffee-chugging commentators, camera operators and editors.
Like pretty much every year, the 2010 WSOP final table features players from the two extreme ends of the experience scale. This year, Michael Mizrachi plays the role of the seasoned vet looking for the ultimate poker prize. Last year it was Phil Ivey, but Mizrachi will be hoping to do better than Ivey’s early elimination. And this year’s Darvin Moon, the no-name player who’s suddenly appearing on the game’s biggest stage, will be played by amateur Soi Nguyen.
For those who like their WSOP viewing a little more raw, but timely, ESPN3.com will also be airing a delayed “live-stream” of the action.
Michael Mizrachi Gets Front Page Treatment in South Florida
October 28th, 2010
Mainstream press love for Grinder and family. (Photo: Mike Stocker, Sun-Sentinel)
November Niner Michael Mizrachi has attracted mainstream press attention several times this year already, but with the focus on his tax problems and lawsuits against him, the attention has rarely been positive. Now The Grinder is finally getting his due in his home region of South Florida with a profile of him and his family in the Sun-Sentinel.
The front-page feature, authored by the Sun-Sentinel’s gambling reporter Nick Sortal (who also writes the excellent Action gambling blog), tells about the Mizrachi brothers’ youth, when they used to play cards and keep track of their debts to each other on pieces of paper. Mother Susan Laufer Mizrachi – known to the Twitter and online poker worlds as “MommaGrinder” – says she didn’t mind when that penchant grew into a passion for poker, because “they made good grades and they had good character.”
MommaGrinder continues to be her sons’ biggest fan after all these years, as anyone who’s watched this year’s coverage of the WSOP Main Event (or older footage of Grinder’s multiple WPT final tables) already knows. “She cheers like most people would at an NFL game,” brother Eric Mizrachi told Sortal. “Only it’s much more intense because it’s family.”
The article also touches on Mizrachi’s run-in with the IRS (“when the news got out, it kind of helped me,” says Grinder), and what he and his four brothers have been up to since the Main Event went on hiatus (traveling the world). Anyone who already dislikes Michael Mizrachi probably won’t be won over, but there are likely to be plenty of new converts among the undecided throughout South Florida. It remains to be seen whether all the love, new and old, will help to push Grinder to a better finish than his seventh-place chip stack, but if he falls short it certainly won’t be for lack of support.
John D’Agostino Leads WPT Borgata Poker Open
September 21st, 2010
A familiar face from years gone by leads the field at Borgata.
Just 165 players will return to the tables today as the Borgata Poker Open continues to work its way toward a final table, and the man at the top of the chip counts should ring a few bells for poker fans who have around since the beginning of the boom. John D’Agostino ended Day 2 of this year’s Borgata Poker Open with 681,200 in chips, good for the overnight lead. He has enjoyed plenty of success at Borgata World Poker Tour events in the past. He finished second to Michael Mizrachi at the 2006 Borgata Winter Open, and in 2005 he took fourth when Al Ardebili won the Borgata Poker Open.
Those two scores came within a four-month period and seemed to indicate that D’Agostino was one of the game’s hot young talents. But after 2006, his poker schedule slowed down as he took more family time away from the felt. He cashed only twice in 2007 and then didn’t cash at all through 2008 and 2009. He returned to the felt this year at the Borgata Winter Open, cashing in a preliminary event before making the money in three WSOP events this summer.
There are still plenty of serious poker players left in the field, though, giving D’Agostino a lot of hurdles yet to clear. Lars Bonding (521,900 in chips) won three events at this years Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza, Jeffrey Papola (447,000) finished first and second in two six-max events at this year’s WSOP, Dwyte Pilgrim (400,000) is one of the most successful players on the WSOP Circuit – and those are just the most notable players in the top ten.
The plan is to play down to 27 players today. You can get follow the John D’Agostino comeback story with either the WPT or the Borgata.
IPPA To Host $250,000 Poker Tournament in November
September 9th, 2010
The high rollers will get a little higher at Casino Monte Carlo later this year.
If you’re a high roller who can’t get enough action in the world’s biggest poker tournaments, you’ll want to book a trip to Monaco in November for a tournament with a higher buy-in than any other in the world.
The International Poker Players Association, an organization founded by long-time high-stakes poker player Yosh Nakano, is holding its first Monte Carlo Championship at the end of this year. Playing out in a no-limit hold’em shootout format, the tournament sports a $250,000 buy-in, easily trumping the $100,000 buy-in at the Aussie Millions High Roller event and the $50,000 buy-in at the WSOP Poker Players Championship and simply crushing the buy-ins at other “high roller” poker tournaments around the world.
The IPPA’s tournament is offering $5 million to its winner. Normally that sort of sum is reserved for tournaments like the WSOP Main Event, with thousands of players’s buy-ins making up the top prize. But the IPPA tournament is limited to just 48 players, and the winner will only have to beat a small portion of that field thanks to the shootout format. Of course, with a six-figure buy-in the field will be of the highest caliber; Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, Michael Mizrachi and a dozen or so other top poker pros – and Gus Hansen – are already reported to have registered for the event.
The IPPA Monte Carlo Championship is scheduled to run from November 29 to December 2 at Casino Monte Carlo in Monaco.
Michael Mizrachi Faces Breach of Contract Lawsuit
September 9th, 2010
When you’re on top of the world, someone will always try to take you down.
Michael Mizrachi was having a pretty rough go before this year’s WSOP rolled around. He’s been on top of the world since then, winning one major event and becoming a member of this year’s November Nine thanks to a brilliant Main Event performance. One thing you can expect when you’re on top in America is that sooner or later someone will sue you – and now Mizrachi has firsthand experience thanks to a suit filed against him in federal court in Texas by a company called Deliverance Poker.
According to the complaint, Mizrachi agreed to his deal with Deliverance in July 2009. For signing, he received $150,000, a 1.75% interest in Deliverance, and “advance expenses related to poker tournaments in which Defendant Mizrachi would participate.” He wore Deliverance patches and hats for some 20 tournaments and things were copacetic. But after his deep run in the WSOP Main Event had begun, Mizrachi signed another deal with Tiltware – and it’s from that deal that the complaint stems.
Deliverance claims that the deal with Tiltware constitutes breach of contract, because Mizrachi had agreed when signing with them that he would “exclusively wear site logoed shirts and caps during all Tournaments and Public Appearances” and that he would grant Deliverance exclusive right to his name, voice and likeness. It seeks to recover its lost earnings, profits and earning capacity, as well as any other damages the court might award it.
Michael Mizrachi and Tiltware have yet to comment on the lawsuit.
Ratings Up for ESPN’s First WSOP 2010 Broadcast
August 1st, 2010
The Grinder reacts to winning the $50,000 Poker Player Championship. (photo courtesy of WSOP)
ESPN just aired its first broadcast of the action from the 2010 World Series of Poker, and so far, the numbers are looking good. Viewership of the two hour broadcast of the $50,000 Poker Players Championship earned ratings 15% higher than ESPN’s first WSOP coverage from last year.
The final table of this year’s championship had no shortage of top pros and great poker action. Michael Mizrachi, his brother Robert, John Juanda, David Oppenheim, Vladimir Schmelev, David Baker, Michael Thuritz and Daniel Alaei all made the final nine as they vied for the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy and a top prize in excess of a million dollars.
The two hour broadcast, at 8pm and 9pm earned a combined 0.7 rating, up from last year’s 0.6 rating. That’s good news for poker and for the WSOP, especially considering ESPN only aired this year’s championship after a change in the tournament’s format. Up until the final table, the players compete in a rotation of eight different poker games: No Limit and Limit Hold’Em, Pot Limit Omaha, Limit Omaha Hi-Lo, Limit Stud, Stud Hi-Lo, Razz and Limit 2-7 Triple Draw. But once they got it down to nine players, the remaining poker was all played as NLHE. This was an effort to make it more accessible to TV audiences, and it seems to have worked.
In the end, Michael Mizrachi won the bracelet, his first WSOP hardware, and the top cash prize of $1,559,046. It was the first big sign that the 2010 WSOP would be a great one for Mizrachi, as he followed up his PPC win by earning a seat at the yet-to-be-played final table of the Main Event.
Who’s the Odds-on Favorite for WSOP November Nine?
July 23rd, 2010
November Nine-ist Michael Mizrachi is listed at 5/1 to win the WSOP Main Event. (photo courtesy of WSOP)
By now you already know this, but the November Nine is set. Nine men, ready to battle it out in November for the ultimate poker prize… the WSOP 2010 Main Event championship, a bracelet, and just under $9 million in cash.
So who’s going to win?
Well, the oddsmakers will tell you that Jonathan Duhamel is the favorite. And they figured that out through a complex algorithm that took into account past performance, age, bluffing ability and- Actually that’s all b.s. Duhamel is the favorite because Duhamel has the biggest stack.
His odds to win currently sit somewhere around 2.8/1. That’s what happens when you have almost 20,000,000 more in chips than anyone else. Duhamel will sit down in November with 65,975,000 chips. In second place, both for odds, and chip counts, is John Dolan. He comes in at around 3.6/1 and has a chip count of 46,250,000.
Michael Mizrachi, who’s already sporting a shiny new bracelet from this year’s WSOP, is listed at 5/1. His chip count puts him in 7th of the 9 finalists, with 14,450,000. Based on his stack alone, he should be a bigger dog, but obviously the oddsmakers noticed how awesome he was at this year’s series.
And if you’re looking for the biggest underdog, look no further than Jason Senti. He has 7,625,000 in chips, which puts him at about 18/1 to win the whole thing.
WSOP Main Event Has Its November Nine, Michael Mizrachi Among Them
July 18th, 2010
Michael Mizrachi is the marquee name in this year’s November Nine.
The 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event is down to its final nine players, and for the third year running we’ll have to wait until early November to learn who will conquer it to become poker’s world champion.
Norwegian online poker pro Johnny Lodden was the first to go, busting in 27th place ($317,161) early in the day when his 8-8 couldn’t hold up against Matt Affleck’s A-T. In the first four hours of play he was joined on the rail by another seven players including William Thorson, who failed to improve on his 2006 13th-place finish when he busted in 22nd place ($317,161). By the dinner break there were only 15 players left, thanks partially to the eliminations of tournament pros Scott Clements (18th, $396,967) and David Baker (17th, $396,967).
After dinner Affleck, who had nearly 21 million in chips and looked to be one of the favorites to make his way to November, suffered a brutal beat to end his run in 15th place. He and Jonathan Duhamel got four bets for 8 million chips in the pot before the T-9-7 rainbow flop. With a queen on the turn and the pot up to 18 million, Affleck moved all-in for 11 million total – and after five minutes Duhamel called with J-J. That
was a big dog to Affleck’s aces, but an eight on the river filled in Duhamel’s straight and sent Affleck home in 15th place ($500,165).
From there Duhamel’s stack would get as high as 58 million while Hasan Habib (14th, $500,165), Duy Le (13th, $500,165), Adam Levy (12th, $635,011) and Pascal LeFrancois (11th, $635,011) fell aside. The tournament took one final break to draw for seats at the 10-handed, unofficial final table, and then it was on to poker’s biggest bubble.
Brandon Steven came into the unofficial final table with about 12 big blinds in his stack and was in desperate need of help, either in the form of cards to help him double up or someone else’s misfortune to push him one step higher to the November Nine. Michael Mizrachi was at risk a few times but managed to stay alive and even pick up some chips toward the end. Steven, for his part, managed to stick around much longer than anyone would’ve expected, going five hours before running his A-K into Matthew Jarvis’ pocket queens. With no help on the board Steven was knocked out in 10th place, earning $635,011.
So this year’s November Nine is officially set. Jonathan Duhamel will be the chip leader for the next three and a half months, Jason Senti will the short stack, and Michael Mizrachi will be the man who gets all the poker media’s attention as he looks for his second bracelet this year. Now get ready to hear about those three and their six tablemates until the WSOP Main Event final table gets going this fall!
WSOP: A Good Year for Michael Mizrachi, Brothers
July 16th, 2010
It’s been a great WSOP for Michael Mizrachi and his poker-playing brothers.
There are few tickets to easy money at the World Series of Poker, but the closest thing this summer was to share a particular last name. Four brothers from the Mizrachi family from southern Florida have had themselves quite the run at the WSOP.
Michael Mizrachi was the first of the brothers to make a name for himself on the poker scene when he won the 2005 LA Poker Classic. He followed that up with the 2006 Card Player Magazine Player of the Year award. But it wasn’t until this summer that he finally won his first gold WSOP bracelet, taking down the $50,000 Poker Players Championship event for $1,559,046.
That single score was enough to make Michael the winningest player of the Series outside the Main Event, but he made two more final tables in stud games and grabbed one more cash to boost his winnings by another $125,000 or so. He is currently second in chips in the Main Event with just 78 players left, and if he can win the tournament he will tie Frank Kassela for WSOP Player of the Year.
Eldest brother Robert Mizrachi saw his Main Event run cut short on Day 6 when he ran A-T into A-K. His 116th-place finish was worth $57,102 and marked his sixth cash of this WSOP. Previous to that finish he made three final tables, including a fifth-place finish in the Poker Players Championship won by Michael. All told his winnings this summer total $500,144.
Michael’s fraternal twin brother, Eric Mizrachi, had just one cash during this summer’s preliminary events, a 43rd-place finish in one of the first $1,000 donkaments. But he finished up his Series on a good note, cashing 718th in the Main Event. His two cashes combined gave him winnings of $35,224.
And last but not least was brother Danny Mizrachi. A professional magician by trade, Danny showed up to play the Main Event and for a time looked as if he might outdo all his older brothers at the tables. He eventually busted out in 345th place, earning himself a $36,463 payday.
In all, the four Mizrachi brothers have won $2,130,877 at the 2010 World Series of Poker – and with Michael Mizrachi still alive in the Main Event, that number could eventually climb as high as $11,075,015 if he were to win the tournament and his second career WSOP bracelet.
