Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi gambles as much in a single night as most people earn in a year.
Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi gambles as much in a single night as most people earn in a year. On a recent night, he says, he lost $50,000 playing $200-$400 no-limit Texas Hold `em on the Internet. He also lost "a bunch" of money betting on sports, including one ill-advised wager on his hometown team, the now one-and-six Miami Dolphins.
No big deal. He might win it back, and more, the next night. And if he doesn't, there's always the night after that.
"That's the way you have to play, like you don't care," Mizrachi says. "You're not afraid of losing. Never be afraid of losing. That's what makes a champion."
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He doesn't dwell on the dollar value of his wagers. He just follows his instincts, he says, and uses the best information he has to make the best decision he can.
Sometimes he wins; sometimes he loses.
For Mizrachi, victory happens more often than defeat. At 25, the Hollywood, Fla., native's lifetime poker earnings are pegged at $5.4 million by Card Player and Bluff magazines.
Mizrachi, who lives in Las Vegas about 10 months of the year, has gone a long way since winning his first big tournament in February 2005. But before he became a fixture on the ubiquitous TV poker shows where players regularly gamble for hundreds of thousands of dollars, Mizrachi was living in Hollywood, playing poker online and working his way up the treacherous ladder of professional poker.
As Mizrachi pulls up to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino on a recent autumn afternoon in a 2006 Cadillac Escalade SUV that he won, along with $1.1 million, at the Borgata Hotel Casino in Atlantic City in January, strangers instantly recognize him.
Some do double takes as he walks past. "Isn't that ... ?" Some ask for his autograph. Others ask him what it's like to be a professional poker player. Still others insist on telling him about their own experiences playing poker.
Mizrachi seems to enjoy it. He takes time greeting fans, signing autographs, listening to their stories.
About 6-foot-2 with short, dark hair and large diamond earrings in each ear, Mizrachi looks like a cross between a professional athlete and an entertainment celebrity. He's dressed in baggy jeans and a polo with the shirttails out. A diamond-encrusted necklace hangs around his neck.
It's a look that fits his poker persona, which is best summed up by his motto: "I'm a machine." Brash, young and fearless at the poker table, Mizrachi is well regarded by professional poker players.
Card Player Magazine currently ranks him No. 1 in its "Player of the Year" standings for 2006. His playing style is calculating, inscrutable, methodical, unpredictable.
He chose the nickname "The Grinder" as his online poker moniker because, he says, because `it's a little more intimidating, to put fear in people's heads. They'll think, `This guy only plays monster hands.'"
The truth is, Mizrachi is just as likely to bluff at a pot with a weak hand as he is to "smooth call" or play a strong hand deceptively, by calling rather than raising.
Mizrachi's poker education began in his early teens - his older brother, Robert, turned him on to the game - but his professional career catapulted from respectable to remarkable about two years ago, when he began playing no-limit Texas Hold `em tournaments almost exclusively.
THE BIG PAYDAY
His first big poker payday was a $1.8 million grand prize for winning the L.A. Poker Classic in 2005. After a few more six-figure paydays, Mizrachi hit another million-dollar jackpot in January at the Borgata Poker Classic in Atlantic City, N.J., where he took a first place prize of $1.1 million.
Though he says he has been in a slump of late, Mizrachi's most recent poker prize is $41,000, which he won Oct. 20 for finishing 13th among 100 players, each of whom paid $10,000 to enter the Festa Al Lago Classic in Las Vegas.
In just a few years, Mizrachi has achieved the sort of success, and celebrity, that elicits unexpected calls from distant relatives and long-lost friends.
But there was a time when Mizrachi was a little embarrassed to tell strangers what he did for a living. "Now they view it differently, `Wow, you're a poker celebrity,'" he says. "Before, you didn't want to say you played poker. You tried to hide it."
One former girlfriend made Mizrachi get a job dealing cards at the Seminole Casino (the pre-Hard Rock one that's still there today), just to keep up a respectable appearance.
Problem was, he treated that job like a plaything. He made more money playing poker online. So he showed up when he wanted, left when he wanted, and eventually got fired.
But the job wasn't entirely a waste. Mizrachi met his fiancee, Aidiliy Elviro at the Seminole casino, where she, too, worked as a card dealer.
Mizrachi eventually persuaded Elviro to leave the Seminole and drive with him up to the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard, Conn., where he planned to parlay his $10,000 in online poker winnings into something more substantial.
After a month of playing marathon sessions of Seven Card Stud at Foxwoods, Mizrachi says he left with about $70,000, and a new dedication to making his living as a card player.
Elviro achieved a bit of poker fame herself, when she competed one-on-one with actress Jennifer Tilly for a $25,000 jackpot and finished second in a tournament for the TV show "World Poker Tour" in September 2005.
Since then, Elviro, who has won about $25,000 in her poker career, has turned her attention to raising the couple's two children, Paul William, 2, and Julie Malka, 8 months.
"I don't go many places," she says in the living room of their Miramar, Fla., home, which they bought in February 2005. "It's not like before, I used to be at the tables all the time."
Elviro has few misgivings about her husband-to-be's profession. They used to be inseparable, she says. But now between his travel schedule and the kids, they have less time together.
RICHES TO RAGS?
And even though most professional poker players go broke at least once in their careers, Elviro says the possibility of going from riches to rags doesn't concern her.
She says she knows a player who recently won second place at an Atlantic City poker tournament. "He was crying the other day because he lost $30,000," she says. "And today he's rich because he has $700,000. That's what makes poker amazing. One day you're poor. The next day you're golden."
"I didn't have anything when I met him," she says. "I didn't go with him for what he had. I didn't even know what he had."
Still, Mizrachi's success at poker has changed their lives in many ways.
"The turning point of our relationship was the L.A. Poker Classic," she says. "After he won, the phone kept ringing and ringing."
It was a turning point, she says, "because it changes things. It doesn't change him, but it changes other people's view of him." Old acquaintances called to congratulate Mizrachi on his big win. Tournament directors wanted him in their games. Endorsement deals, investment opportunities and other unsolicited offers came pouring in.
Despite his predilection for poker, Mizrachi doesn't consider himself a problem gambler. "I have good control of myself," he says. "I know when to stop. I know when I'm losing ... . If it's going well, I'm going to take my money out of my pocket. But if I'm losing I just stop."
So far, though, Mizrachi's roll through the poker world shows no signs of slowing.
Source: KRT Wire
