Casino Player September 2022

PLAYING POKER

Robert Mizrachi Adds WPT Title High-stakes poker action continues across the country ➤ by Sean Chaffin

T heWorld Series of Poker may be over, but plenty of poker action continues across the country, including some high-stakes action from theWorld Poker Tour and PokerGO. Plenty of major online poker action awaits players, and one casino poker room saw their bad beat jackpot balloon to seven figures in August. Here’s a look at some of the events going on in the world of poker. TheWSOP may have been the main act this summer,but theWorld PokerTour also ran a major LasVegas event as well. The $5,000 WPT Venetian saw longtime poker pro Robert Mizrachi adding his name to the Mike Sexton WPT Champions Cup and scoring $894,100 in the process. Along with four WSOP bracelets, Mizrachi now has a WPT title as well and has $8.8 million in lifetime live tournament winnings. Mizrachi took a nice 3-to-1 chip advantage into heads-up play and was able to close out the win over Mike Vanier in only about 10 minutes. He eliminated four of the final seven players in the tournament. Mizrachi made two WPT final tables on the tour previously and his brother Michael Mizrachi has also won twoWPT titles. Along with someWPT success,Mizrachi also helped author the new poker strategy book Short Stack Ninja .The recent success might add some extra buzz for the book. WPT Ramps Up Tournament Schedule Beyond the Venetian event, the WPT has also been busy making some major additions to the 2022 schedule.One of the biggest of those is the newWPTWorld Championship, set for December atWynn in Las Vegas. The tour is offering a record-setting $15 million guarantee for the championship event.Players will find 23 total events in the entire series with more than $22 million in guaranteed prize pools. The tour is offering online qualifiers at ClubWPT.com as well as at partner casinos around the world. Players will find two other major events that will also be filmed for television. The $1,100 Prime Championship includes a $2 million guarantee and the $1,100 Ladies Championship also comes with a $200,000 guarantee. “Our goal is to develop theWPTWorld Championship into one of the most talked-about poker events of the year,”WPT CEOAdam Pliska said.“Partnering withWynn Las Vegas has allowed us to put the player experience first and the festival schedule reflects that.”

Longtime poker pro Robert Mizrachi won the WPT Venetian Las Vegas for his first WPT title and scored $894,100 in the process.

With the World Championship moving to the December slot, the tour also recently announced that the $10,400 Bellagio Five Diamond World Poker Classic will play out in October this year.The championship event is set for Oct. 19–23 with a $5 million guarantee and the entire festival runs Oct. 7–23 with plenty of side action. This marks the 20th running of what had been theWPT’s signature event.The Five Diamond was the first tournament ever aired by the tour on television and some of the biggest names in poker have won the event including Gus Hansen (2002), Daniel Negreanu (2004), Joe Hachem (2006),Eugene Katchalov (2007),Chino Rheem (2008),Antonio Esfandiari (2010),Dan Smith (2013),RyanTosoc (2017) and Dylan Linde (2018). Two moreWPT events played out in late this summer.The $5,250 Legends of Poker returned to the Parkwest Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens,CA,with a $2.5 million guarantee.Parkwest Casinos purchased “The Bike”inApril and that came with a slight name change as part of the deal.The tournament was canceled in 2020–2021 because of the COVID pandemic,but the event,won by Doyle Brunson in 2004, is now back on. That event was followed by the $3,500 Seminole Hard RockTampa with CoreyWade outlasting a tough table taking the top spot for $471,686.

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF WPT AND POKERGO