The long victory lap for 2025 WSOP champ Michael Mizrachi

Since the moment the final card of the 2025 World Series of Poker main event was dealt last July, Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi has lived a life that is part wandering nomad and part face of the game. He has lived out of his suitcase, spending more time on an airplane than at any other point in his 21-year-long Hall of Fame career. And he’s exhausted.

Now he’s back in Las Vegas trying to do it all over again. So he can do it all over again.

Last summer, Mizrachi pulled off the most improbable parlay in the history of poker. For the first leg, he won the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, a tournament that most elite-level pros will tell you is 1B on their list of the most prestigious and important poker tournaments in the world, for a record fourth time. Three weeks later, he hit the second leg when he won the event that sits at 1 or 1A on the list of every poker player, professional or amateur — the $10,000 WSOP main event — and earned $10 million in the process.

While some of the most recent main event champions have been relatively unknown to the general public, Mizrachi was already a bona fide poker star with a trophy case to prove it. He won a World Poker Tour title in 2005 and another in 2006. He has eight WSOP bracelets to his name, including the $50,000 Poker Players Championship in 2010, 2012, 2018, plus the one he won last year, and he made the WSOP main event final table in 2010, ultimately finishing fifth.

As the confetti was still falling on Mizrachi for his main event win last July, poker legends including Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, Jennifer Harman and Eli Elezra arrived on stage to inform him he was the newest member of the Poker Hall of Fame. They skipped the public nomination process entirely, bypassed the “one inductee per year” rule (Nick Schulman had been inducted in that spot just a week earlier) and made him the 63rd member of the PHOF.

Miami is, and always has been, home for Mizrachi, 45, but in the 10 months between the end of last year’s WSOP and the start of this year’s WSOP, he travelled to Cyprus, the Bahamas, Panama, Czechia, England, Israel, Australia and Colombia. He’s also an ambassador for The Venetian, and contractual obligations required him to be in Las Vegas one week each month to play on their livestream.

“Wherever I was, I had to commute to Vegas. It was crazy. Anywhere in the world, I had to find my way to Vegas. So I got my three weeks in, and wherever I was, I had to go to Vegas,” Mizrachi said. “I love Vegas. It’s work, but it’s fun. I have a good time there.”

Some people go all gas, no brakes to accomplish something. Mizrachi was all gas, no breaks after accomplishing something.

“I’m telling you, it was a different level. I mean, me winning the main event was much bigger than most people that won it in the past,” Mizrachi said, alluding to the fact that only three of the 23 main event champions since Chris Moneymaker won in 2003 had won a bracelet prior to their victory, let alone seven. “I’ve never experienced what I experienced, and I don’t think anybody has. I literally lived on a plane. I flew more than I drove.”

Traveling from place to place, city to city, forced Mizrachi to figure out ways to make it a little more comfortable. Turns out the trick was bringing some of the things that made home so comfortable with him.

“I got used to it. I started bringing up a pillow and a blanket,” Mizrachi said. “It’s the most I’ve ever traveled in my life. I’ve been everywhere in the world these last 10 months. It’s too much for me actually, but it was an amazing experience. I’ll never take anything back, but I feel like I’m a good ambassador for poker.”

Turns out the blanket and pillow weren’t the only traveling companions Mizrachi took with him. Mizrachi’s 21-year-old son Paul became a central part of the traveling party that also included, at times, Mizrachi’s brothers Robert, Eric and Donny. The blanket and pillow were disposable necessities of the nomad life, but the most enriching part of that life was the additional time with Paul.

“Being with him more than I’ve ever been. It was a great experience,” Mizrachi said. “We’re very different in certain ways, but we had an amazing experience, and that was the best in my life. I wouldn’t trade that for the world.”

The two didn’t spend much time together during Paul’s childhood and teenage years. Mizrachi and his wife divorced when Paul was young and spent his teenage years his mom in Cape Coral, Florida while his dad was three hours away in Miami. The professional poker player life made it challenging for them to find time to connect, other than at holidays or birthdays.

“Until I was like 19 or 20, we really weren’t super close and that’s not his fault. That’s just the career path he has,” Paul said. “I don’t blame him for it, it is what it is. My mom did a great job trying to co-parent us, but once I turned 21, I could really be more involved in his career, in his life, and then we really got a lot closer.”

When his dad made the final table, Paul took a week off from his job in Florida to travel to Las Vegas and cheer on his dad. After the win, Paul went back to his day job but left a month later. He was with his dad 24 hours a day for the next eight months, seeing the world and helping run his dad’s social media. Most people would bask or brag even if their dad was the world champ, but Paul knows that’s a one-year reign in most cases and when he looks at his dad, he’s prouder of something else.

“It makes me proud to say that my dad is the world champion of poker right now,” Paul said. “When people ask me ‘what’s your dad do for a living?’, I don’t tell them he’s the world champ. I tell people that he’s a Hall of Famer. That’s what I’m more proud of.”

There was some downside to the whole experience, though. Being on the road for most of the year meant he wasn’t able to be home with his two other children, neither of whom is old enough to enjoy the casino living life as much as himself or Paul.

“Not being around them … it hurts because they’re not old enough to play, so it’s different,” Mizrachi said. “I like being home. I’m more of a home guy. I had been home for a year straight. I never left, and then I just go through this and I’m like, f—.'”

Before the 2025 WSOP, Mizrachi had amassed a little more than $17 million in lifetime earnings over the course of 21 years, so he was used to being flush with cash and being able to afford some of the finer things in life. While a windfall like the one he enjoyed last summer might change some people and their priorities, Mizrachi credits his mom with instilling values in him that make that outcome unlikely.

“I’ve known myself for 45 years. Nothing’s changed. Win or lose, I’m the same person. So, I know that I’m never going to change who I am. The way I was raised, it doesn’t matter,” Mizrachi said. “People are like, ‘Do you feel different?’ No, I don’t. I’m always going to be the same person. It’s never going to change.”

“And that’s the way I’m going to go to this year’s WSOP. The same way I thought last year, the same way I thought the year before. Nothing’s going to change. This is who I am and who I will always be.”

Daniel Negreanu, another one of the world’s most high-profile poker players, said he believes Mizrachi has completely changed the way others have viewed him throughout his career.

“Prior to this year or whatever, people have looked at Grinder with like, ‘Well, this guy’s just nuts,” Negreanu said. “He was definitely under-appreciated and under-respected overall I think for his prowess. People thought he was lucky to win. I thought to myself, it’s not luck. I mean, there’s some, of course, but he’s doing stuff that y’all are not willing to do. He’s not afraid …. And he has a really good feel for when to change gears push the envelope and he’s very comfortable. I think there’s something to be said about that too”

The 2026 WSOP is approaching the halfway point and Mizrachi has had a couple of close calls, including one final table. Despite the lack of a gold bracelet, he remains full of confidence.

“I’ll have four bracelets by December. Four bracelets. That’s my prediction,” Mizrachi said. “What I did was never done before. I’m going to do it again.”

Only seven players have ever managed to win three WSOP bracelets in a single year. Nobody has won four. It would be easy to interpret his prediction as bravado born from the high brought on from last year’s performance. Mizrachi has been around long enough to know that four bracelets is the longest of long shots, but had he predicted he’d win the main event and Poker Players Championship last year, he would have drawn laughter from his peers. He believes the combination of his self-confidence and his playing style, which many refer to as “street poker,” makes him a challenge to play against.

“I’ll have four bracelets by December. Four bracelets. That’s my prediction. What I did was never done before. I’m going to do it again.”

Michael Mizrachi

“I play my best against lesser players, so that’s why I perform [at the WSOP]. I’m trying to make everybody uncomfortable when I play. It’s different levels, the way I think,” Mizrachi said. “I mean, my range is way higher the way I think — and I know what you’re thinking before you think it. It’s just different.”

In a time when younger poker players are studying by using GTO solvers, AI tools and watching endless hours of educational material, Mizrachi relies on two things he can trust: his gut and his opponent’s unease. And he doesn’t want to do anything to alter something that has been working for him his whole life. Studying isn’t part of his game.

“If I watch poker, maybe one hour of video or so a year. One hour, two hours video. I don’t watch nothing,” Mizrachi said. “Because I think it might affect the way I play or what I use against them later on. I don’t know. I just feel like I’ll figure them out and just do my own thing. I’ll just make them feel uncomfortable and then I’ll put people in uncomfortable situations that they’ve never seen before.”

“And I’m not afraid to lose. If I lose, I walk away with a happy face. If I win, I’m the same person. Win or lose, I’m the same person. Nothing’s going to change me. Money’s not going to change me.”

Some might misinterpret Mizrachi as being cocky, but the truth is that he’s an older and wiser version of the kid who burst onto the poker scene more than 20 years ago. He’s not humble; rather, he’s comfortable with where he is in life, with his experience acting as that pillow and blanket he took with him on his travels.

“When I play, I don’t care [about the money]. They [his opponents] care about it. That’s why they’re afraid. That’s what makes a difference between most people. They know how much they put in. I don’t think about anything like that,” he said. “I think everything’s a home game I’m playing with my friends. So, it keeps me fearless. I don’t care about the money. I don’t care about that stuff. If it’s a $100,000 buy-in or a $100 buy-in, same thing. I’m going to play the same.”

With the memories of last summer’s victory still fresh in his mind, it’s easy for him to imagine being back in that some position this year. But no matter who wins the main event in a few weeks, Mizrachi thinks the game plan for how that person should handle what comes with being world champ is actually pretty simple.

“Do good to people. Be right, make good decisions and just be respectful and then just love one another,” Mizrachi said. “Just do the right thing. If you do good things, good things will come back to you.”