Mizrachi Well Placed Heading into Day 7 at WSOP

One of the online poker world’s best exports in Live Tournaments, Michael Mizrachi is currently in second place at the World Series of Poker Main Event. After years playing online and earning the nickname the Grinder, Mizrachi has had tremendous success in live tournaments with over $8m in earnings and the 2010 $50k Players Championship bracelet already adorning his wrist.

Mizrachi has improved year on year at the WSOP with two cashes in 2006, three in 2007 and five top 15 places in 2008. This year he won his first bracelet and has also cashed in the $2,500 Mixed Event as well as final table finishes in the $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championships and the $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championships. He did secure seven cashes in the 2005 WSOP but didn’t finish higher than 15^th in any of these events.

Mizrachi accumulated a huge stack of chips (7.5 million) throughout the day to leave him second behind chip leader Theo Jorgensen (9.3 million). Mizrachi held court on the feature for most of the day and commented:

“Earlier in the tournament I was a short stack, but I play better as a short stack. Now I have a big stack but I’m pretending I still have a short stack so that I keep playing well, playing solid. I have been making the right decisions so far and hopefully I don’t make any bad decisions. It could be very costly because everyone has such big chip [stacks]. I’m very excited and I like my chances,”

It was a tough day at the Rio with some of the biggest names in poker falling to the rail including long term top 10 chip stack Johnny Chan who managed to run into Aces twice in a few hands to leave the tournament he had looked destined to go very, very deep in. There were some other notable departures yesterday with Robert Mizrachi, Phil Galfond, the UK’s JP Kelly, Juha Helppi, Theo Tran and Jimmy Tran all hitting the rail.

Notable names from the top 10 also include John Racener with 7,200,000 William Thorson who has 6,525,000 and Alexander Kostritsyn (5,715,00) who has already had two major cashes in the World Series of Poker. Kostritsyn reached the semi-final stage of the Heads-up Championship and also came 10^th in the $50k Players Championship for a combined pay out of over $360,000.

With a monster prize pool still all to play for and prize jumps getting bigger and bigger the rate of knock outs will be slowing down during Day 7 and we can expect some very passive play at times as the big stacks look to mop up the chips from those looking at the prize money. With so many top pros at the top of the leaderboard we can assume there will be some fantastic poker played between now and July 17^th when the November Nine is decided.

If you want to emulate Michael Mizrachi and turn from online poker player to live tournament specialist you need to build a big bankroll. Whilst you are playing online we highly recommend signing up for a rakeback deal and you will get paid as you play and help you build your bankroll much faster.