“The Grinder” fails to hold his chip lead and winds up in second place at the WSOP Circuit Event in Las Vegas

Posted by pokerguru on May 2, 2009

At one of the final events of the WSOP Circuit, Mike “The Grinder” Mizrachi walked into the casino as the chip leader. Having been absent from a major leader board in quite some time, you could feel the crowd rooting for the charismatic player. While he failed to take down the tournament, his second place finish proved to everyone that he is back on top of his game.

Mizrachi started the day on a mission and that mission was to take out as many players as he could and continue to eliminate players and keep his stack growing. The first player to meet his demise at Mizrachi’s hand was Matt LaGarde. He stared the hand way ahead with a AQ in the hole, but fell quickly behind with a flop of KJ2. Both the turn and river failed to improve his hand and Mizrachi’s K10 took down the all in.

Play was heating up all over the tables after that and slowly but surely, one player after another got their chips in with the worst of it and quickly met the rail. As each player got knocked out, Mizrachi was one step close to taking down the championship.

The final table had an impressive lineup, especially considering that amount of talent that was across the pond at the EPT Monte Carlo event. Again, Mizrachi proved to be too much on more than one occasion and continued to eliminate players. His most notable victim was Men “The Master” Nguyen, who went out in third place.

While the final table seemed to fly by, the heads up action was anything but faced paced. Apparently seeing all of that money on the table tightened up both players a bit and it took well over 3 hours for the tournament to be decided. It was actually some of the most remarkable play that we have seen in quite some time in heads up action.

The final hand had both players looking down at paint, unfortunately for Mizrachi, his was not quite as formidable as Justin Bonomo’s. Mizrachi moved in with J9 and had the unfortunate luck to be looking across the table at KQ. The flop immediately lessened his hopes as it came out K-10-9. He got a little help on the turn with an A, but was reduced to a 5 outer on the river. Needing a Q or one of the two remaining 9’s, he was disappointed with a 3d. Both players ended up making a flush, but Mizrachi was on the short end of it with his only being J high to Q high.

He may be disappointed that he did not manage to hold on, but the $143,512 probably made that a little easier to take. Not only that, but he has some stake money for the WSOP that is right around the corner. Bonomo took down $237,692 for first place and also gets to wear the coveted ring. We can expect to see big things from both of these guys at the WSOP.