World Champ Michael Mizrachi's Son Takes on WSOP Paradise
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Poker flows through Michael Mizrachi's family as easily as champagne, which "The Grinder" almost certainly drank after winning this year's World Series of Poker Main Event, and it won't end with the generation of brothers who have won 13 WSOP bracelets.
Paul Mizrachi, the 21-year-old son of the reigning world champion and recent Poker Hall of Fame inductee, is the latest Mizrachi to set his eyes on a WSOP bracelet.
PokerNews caught up with Paul at WSOP Paradise in the Bahamas as he prepared to take on the $25,000 Super Main Event alongside his dad and three uncles: Robert, Daniel and Eric.
"Everything We Do is a Bet"
The Mizrachi brothers learned the game at home by watching their mom, Susan "MommaGrinder" Laufer, play with friends. Needless to say, poker was all around while Paul was growing up.
"It's kind of hard to avoid," he said. "It's like going into a minefield that's loaded with a million mines and trying to get through to the other side. It's impossible. You're going to get into poker regardless in our family."
"Everything we do is a bet. 'Oh you want to bet on it? You want to bet on this? Oh, let's go heads-up then.' Every single day is a bet."
Yet Paul didn't learn the game directly from Michael — or so says dad.
"He's mostly self-taught," Michael told PokerNews. "I really didn't teach him much."
And while Paul has "been watching him play since I was in diapers," he didn't truly appreciate his dad's poker talents until he started playing himself when he was 13.
"I knew he was like, the best of the best. Every time I would go out with him in a mall when I was a kid, people would stop and take pictures with him. So I understood that he was special in his own way. But it didn't really click, like all of his accomplishments, until I started playing poker. And then I really understood."
Ups & Downs
"That's probably the most excited I've ever been in my life. The loudest I've ever screamed, the highest I've ever jumped. All in one second. It was awesome."
Growing up with a professional poker player as a dad was "very chaotic," Paul remembers, noting "poker is all ups and downs, lefts and rights, sideways and backwards." But he said it can also be "very relieving" to watch his dad "come back from the struggles" of downswings.
Paul has his favorite moments from his dad's storied career. He's watched back Michael's 2010 Main Event final table religiously and was there in person this summer when his dad won a pivotal hand at the Main Event final table, cracking kings with ace-king before going on to win the whole thing for $10 million.
"That's probably the most excited I've ever been in my life," Paul said. "The loudest I've ever screamed, the highest I've ever jumped. All in one second. It was awesome."
Incredibly, Paul's dad may not be the Main Event champion he's played the most poker with. That distinction goes to Poker Boom icon Chris Moneymaker, with whom a teenage Paul spent "tens of hours together playing" for play money on Vegas Infinite (formerly PokerStars VR).
"I was one of the highest rollers in the game at the time," Paul said. "So I've known Chris personally for maybe seven years, but this trip (to WSOP Paradise) was the first time I've met him in person."
Carrying the Torch
On Paul's 18th birthday, his dad bought him into a tournament in Florida (where 18 is the legal age to play) that he ended up final tabling. And now that he's 21, Paul is trying his luck in Las Vegas cash games and tournaments, including a $10,000 buy-in event that he played to prepare for WSOP Paradise.
Though he didn't make it through Day 1 of the $25,000 Super Main Event, Paul did earn his first WSOP cash with a 21st-place finish in the $800 NLH Daily Deepstack Freezeout. He said he "would've gone deep" if he hadn't lost with ace-king against ace-jack, but this is someone who has known about poker variance his whole life.
"He'll get there. I'm not worried."
"All you can ask is getting it in good," he said.
Unlike his dad and uncles, Paul doesn't have aspirations of playing poker professionally. He compared his situation to "being Lebron James' son," noting that "you'll never be better than him, so it's kind of hard."
Though none of the Mizrachis cashed in the Super Main Event, there was a serendipitous moment on Day 2b when Michael and Robert were seated at the same table. And as for his son's poker abilities, The Grinder has nothing but confidence.
"He'll get there," said Michael. "I'm not worried."
