All Hall Breaks Loose: Mizrachi’s Induction Is A Total Misplay

Any moderately experienced poker player can tell you that process and results do not always align.

Just look at John Wasnock. With seven players remaining at the World Series of Poker Main Event final table last week, he was dealt pocket kings on the button, and his process was unimpeachable: He three-bet, Michael Mizrachi four-bet from the small blind with A-K, Wasnock put Mizrachi all-in, and Mizrachi called. Wasnock was a 70%-30% favorite with his opponent’s tournament life on the line.

Wasnock’s result, however, was disastrous. “The Grinder” spiked an ace on the river and became the chip leader, while Wasnock lost almost 40% of his stack.

Right process, wrong result.

And Mizrachi, who was one card from elimination, went on the following day to win the bracelet and $10 million, while Wasnock finished in second place.

That’s poker. In the short term, process and result are not necessarily in lockstep. But over the long term, it’s process that matters most. Anyone can get lucky in a big spot. The consistent winners are the poker players who consistently make good decisions.

Minutes after he claimed the Main Event victory last Wednesday, Mizrachi received an unexpected piece of good news: Not only was he the world champion, not only had his career earnings total increased by $10 million, and not only was he now an eight-time WSOP bracelet … he was also a Poker Hall of Famer.

Just like that. On the spot. By semi-spontaneous vote of a portion of the voting body.

Right result.

Horrendous process.

Two decades of greatness

Make no mistake, Mizrachi’s career accomplishments are plenty worthy of induction into the Hall of Fame.

He’s won those eight bracelets, putting him in a tie for seventh on the all-time list — and everyone above him on that list is a Hall of Famer. A remarkable four of those eight victories are in the prestigious Poker Players Championship, and one, of course, is in the Main Event.

He also has two World Poker Tour titles, his career live tournament winnings have now crossed $29 million, and he was named Poker Player of the Year by CardPlayer in 2006 and by All In in 2010.

The Grinder has been performing at this elite level for 20 years. He has stood the test of time in poker.

It would be awfully contrarian to attempt to make the case that Mizrachi is undeserving of a place in the Poker Hall of Fame.

But the body that nominates for and votes for the Hall still should have had a proper opportunity to make that contrarian case.

Trust the process?

Here’s how it’s supposed to work: Every year, there is a public nomination period (this year it ran from June 6-15), followed by a period of review from the Poker Hall of Fame Governing Council. That council decides on a list of 10 finalists. And then the living Hall of Famers — a list 32 names long at the moment — votes from among those 10 finalists. Whoever gets the most votes is that year’s inductee.

This year, Mizrachi was not among the 10 finalists. Was that an oversight? A mistake? Perhaps. But it was the reality of the situation. The living Hall of Famers couldn’t vote for Mizrachi. Instead, the highest vote-getter was Nick Schulman, and so Schulman was inducted formally on July 11.

Mizrachi has been a finalist at times in the past. The Poker Hall has an age minimum of 40, and in 2021, at age 40, Mizrachi was nominated — but not elected. Same the next year. In 2023 and 2024, for whatever reason, he didn’t make the final list of 10 nominees.

On the heels of his exceptional summer in Las Vegas, The Grinder was all but certain to make that list of finalists again in 2026. And I don’t think it’s a hot take to say he would have been the odds-on favorite to get inducted one year from now.

But the WSOP, which oversees all things Poker Hall of Fame, didn’t wait for that process to play out. Moments after Mizrachi finished off Wasnock heads-up, WSOP CEO Ty Stewart announced that there had been a “unanimous vote” of the living Hall of Famers sometime in the previous 24 hours, and Mizrachi was an instantaneous inductee.

A post-rules society

The Poker Hall of Fame was established in 1979. It’s older than Michael Mizrachi. You can hate its induction rules if you want. But the Hall does have rules, and until now, it has followed them.

There are certain rules I’ve advocated to see changed. The fact that it’s only living Hall of Famers who vote is mildly troubling because it can turn into the proverbial “old boys’ club.” There can be group-think, and voters influencing other voters, and voters pushing to induct their friends. Ideally, I think the voting should be done by some combination of living Hall of Famers and active poker media members, to get a little more diversity of thought in there.

But the bigger problem has been the fact that, from 2020-24, the Hall of Fame inducted exactly one person each year.

The entire previous decade, it was two per year, and even that arguably wasn’t enough. But one per year definitely isn’t enough, and it was creating a backlog of worthy Hall of Famers — especially as more great players kept turning 40 and becoming eligible each year.

With Mizrachi’s induction, that means there were two new Hall of Famers inducted in 2025 (so far — I guess anything is on the table for the remaining five-plus months of the year), and in a sense, that’s a good thing. Perhaps this will open the door for the WSOP to reconsider the rules and switch from one inductee each summer back to two.

If so, great. That’s a positive result for poker.

But the game will have gotten there through entirely the wrong process.

The term “slippery slope” very much applies here. How will the “Mizrachi rule” be implemented going forward?

Let’s say six-time bracelet winner Jeffrey Lisandro wins three next year, leapfrogging Mizrachi on the all-time list. Will the living Hall of Famers be assembled for a spur-of-the-moment vote?

What about if six-time bracelet winner Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, one of poker’s most controversial figures, wins the Poker Players Championship and the Main Event next year? He will have equaled Mizrachi’s WSOP accomplishments. Does he get to skip the traditional process? Or is Ferguson different because he had an ownership stake in Full Tilt Poker and a lot of poker people don’t like him?

Or what if Leo Margets wins the Main Event next year? Fresh off becoming the first woman to make the final table in three decades, a Main Event triumph would make her instantly iconic. And she’s over 40, so … just fast-track her to the Hall, maybe?

Why did we override the process for Mizrachi, but not for PokerStars co-founder Isai Scheinberg, who has been on the ballot for years and whom some consider the Hall of Fame’s most egregious oversight to this point?

One card can change fortunes in poker. We all know this. For Mizrachi, one ace on the river was the difference between a seventh-place finish and, apparently, an achievement so remarkable that the Poker Hall of Fame’s rules had to be torn up to accommodate him.

It’s the correct result. And it’s a result that was coming in due time.

But the folks behind the Poker Hall of Fame got impatient. They shoved all-in on a draw.

Maybe they’ll get lucky. Maybe the poker community will shrug and move on and the credibility of the institution won’t be damaged.

But more often than not in this game, bad process eventually leads to bad results.