Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Michael Mizrachi wins Players Championship at WSOP

 

In poker as in most things people love winners until they lose, then obviously they become degenerates.  Michael Mizrachi knows this roller coaster better than most after rising in the poker world and dominating the World Poker Tour "The Grinder" basically fell off the poker planet.  Recently his supposed degeneracy landed him on the pages of a local Florida paper related to back taxes just under $500,000.  

Who does not like a good comeback story?

While everyone loves to kick a guy when he is down we also love a great comeback story.  The Grinder's comeback story is the kind they make movies about and is the second time that the 50k event at the WSOP served as a redemption platform for poker players being kicked around a bit.  Scotty Nguyen pulled the same feat a couple of years ago after one of the more famous "blow ups" in WSOP history, only to win the 50k event beating a stellar field the following year(it was the HORSE event when he won it).  

Poker is not like most activities, with a little luck everyone thinks they could be a Star

Poker is like that, even more so than most activities, while someone from Boston might root against Lebron James it is a distant relationship.  In poker if you have the money you can play against the biggest stars and while the distance between you and them might not seem like that much it often is for the majority of players.  But that does not stop the comparisons in people's minds. "Idiot on heater" or "donkaments" are all sarcastic ways of hidings people's true feelings about being unlucky and possibly not good enough to survive in tournament poker.  Just the fact that The Grinder was even in the field was a bit of a shocker to me, he had been so cold for so long it was hard to imagine that he had 50k or even the cache still for someone to put him in the event.  Yet there he was at the end with a picture that likely be burnt in the minds of poker players for years to come.  Sure everyone is happy when they win a lot of money but that was not what I saw as the tournament ended.

 

What I saw was relief.

 

Tags: championship   Michael   Mizrachi   Players  

4 responses to Michael Mizrachi wins Players Championship at WSOP