Some people called Saturday’s final table “The Grinder and the Eight Mizzas” at poker’s World Series main event Michael Mizrachi, known as the “grinder,” thinks this analysis is a misstep. “This is a tough lineup of players. I can’t take anything away from them,” said Mizrachi, a 29-year-old from North Miami Beach, Florida. “We had an incredible game about this.”
Mizrachi is easily the most professionally decorated player among the nine players who are looking for an $8.9 million first prize in the tournament’s $10,000 unrestricted Holdham World Championship. He has a career income of $2.3 million in World Series poker, including six trips to the final table.
Mizrachi won the $50,000 Poker Player Championship in May, earning nearly $1.6 million. He will also receive the 2010 Player of the Year Award. Defeat John Racer, who qualified for the fourth place in the mix. He won $1.4 million in tournament poker, and he won’t be able to hit the big blinds if the other seven players’ total poker income is combined. Still, Mizrachi, who finished seventh, 51 million chips behind leader Jonathan Duhamel, realizes that he has to live up to his nickname to capture the jackpot and gold and diamond bracelets awarded to the winner.
“They are not well known to the general public, but they have a lot of recognition in the poker community,” Mizrachi said. “Some of them have become famous online. This will probably be one of the toughest final tables the tournament has seen in a long time.” The nine lasted longer than the 7,319 players, the second-most in poker history, who spent 11 days from July 17-18 and about 14 hours at the Penn and Teller Theater in Rio to take the final table seat in front of 1,500 spectators.
This is the third year that the World Series of Poker has taken a four-month break between qualifying and the final. Ty Stewart, Harrer’s vice president of interactive entertainment, which oversees the tournament, said the 2010 finalists seem to be embracing the break. Eight of the nine went to London to play the World Series of the poker European tournament.
Some have made money from their celebrity fame. Filippo Candio, an Italian who became the first Italian to reach the final table of the main event in a sixth-place qualifier, has gained so much popularity that an Italian television station is sending a crew to Las Vegas to broadcast live for fans returning home following his progress. ESPN will pre-air the two-hour broadcast of the final table at the Sports Center on Nov. 9. In addition, the station will broadcast all the movements of the final table live through the ESPN3 broadband network.
“This year, more than ever, they understood the platform and went out there to maximize opportunities,” Stewart said. “We’ve seen the event come across as a much broader sports package.” Mizrachi, who has been playing poker for 11 years, said online athletes could be at a disadvantage because of the tough marathon that recently housed the last table. Sometimes it lasts until dawn. 파워볼실시간
“It’s not like playing online games at home, where you can sit around in a boxer and play on your computer,” said Mizrachi, who spent the past few weeks at a gym while attending an overseas poker tournament and losing weight. He hopes to lose 20 pounds by the time his card comes out on Saturday. He said the expected long nights would benefit him and the poker pro racer in Fort Leach, Florida. The two have faced off several times over the past few years and are friends.