No Need To Grind: Mizrachi Rolls To Rapid WSOP Main Event Victory
‘The Grinder’ wins $10 million, then gets shockingly inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame
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“What’s it going to take to close this thing out tomorrow?” reporter Jeff Platt asked Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi at the end of Tuesday night’s World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event final table play.
“An hour?” Mizrachi responded, almost without a beat.
Somehow, The Grinder slightly overestimated the challenge ahead of him.
Capping as dominant a Main Event final table display as has been seen in the modern era, Mizrachi (second from the right in the photo above) eliminated his final three opponents in just 20 hands on Wednesday at Horseshoe Las Vegas. He needed less than an hour to claim the Main Event bracelet, a $10 million payday, and, in a surprise twist, a break-all-norms, semi-spontaneous induction into the Poker Hall of Fame.
“I feel like [winning the Main Event] was cement. I cemented everything,” veteran poker pro Mizrachi, 44, said after a collection of fellow Hall of Famers informed him they’d deviated from protocol and decided to induct him on the spot. “That’s all I wanted was the Main Event. I did what I had to do in the poker world. Achieved the Hall of Fame. I’m never going to retire, so don’t worry about that. I’ll be back next year for a lot more.”
Biggest superstar to win since …
On the final hand, Mizrachi, holding a lopsided chip lead, turned a flush with 10-3 of clubs, and his opponent, amateur John Wasnock, got all his chips in with two pair, aces and nines. There was temporary confusion on the rail. At first, Mizrachi though he needed to fade a flush, then he thought Wasnock was drawing dead. Eventually, the reality was communicated to him — that Wasnock needed either an ace or a nine on the river to make a full house and topple him.
The river was a five, and Mizrachi added $10 million to his ledger, while Wasnock earned $6 million for second place.
The heads-up match lasted 18 hands. The first two eliminations of the day required only two hands. First, Mizrachi spiked a jack on the turn with K-J to eliminate Kenny Hallaert and his A-Q in fourth place. Then on the next hand, Braxton Dunaway made an extremely loose all-in call with 10-6 suited and couldn’t get lucky against Mizrachi’s A-10 suited.
The previous day, with seven players remaining, Mizrachi was all-in for his tournament life with A-K against Wasnock’s pocket kings and hit a miracle ace on the river to not just stay alive, but become the chip leader. He ran as red hot as a poker player could run from that point forward, winning every all-in, every coin flip — seemingly every big pot he played.
Tuesday’s play lasted only 59 hands and was completed in about three hours. Given the final table stack sizes, we anticipated the conclusion would come more quickly than usual, but nobody could have imagined it would take only 79 total hands and about four hours to go from nine players to one.
Earlier in the summer, Mizrachi won the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, giving him the two most prestigious bracelets available at the WSOP. Nevertheless, the WSOP’s points system left Shaun Deeb as the Player of the Year.
But with eight career bracelets, plus two World Poker Tour titles and more than $29 million in career live tournament winnings, Mizrachi earned an even more meaningful accolade as a new Hall of Famer.
Additionally, he became the rare established poker superstar to win the Main Event. With fields of this size (9,735 players this year), usually an amateur or a lesser-known pro goes all the way. In terms of status heading into the tournament, Mizrachi stands as the most widely recognized star to win the Main Event since Stu Ungar captured the Main Event title in 1997, becoming the only player to win the tournament three times.
