It's Good to be The Grinder

So last night here at the Merit Casino in Cyprus I played in one of the craziest pot limit Omaha games I have ever been involved in. It was a 25-50 with a straddle on the button of $100. Michael Mizrachi and Chino Rheem as well as 5 locals were in the game. It seemed as if half the pots had two or more players all in. Before I get to the details all I can say is it’s good to be the Grinder, or like the old Jordan TV ad, “I want to be like Mike.” I was really happy to see him have such a great WSOP run and hopefully he can win in November.

To begin with Michael is one of the first pro’s I played with when I started playing tournament poker. I remember the first big pot we played was in 2006 Festa al Lago at Bellagio in a 10k WPT event and we were in the money. He was playing very aggressively, had a lot of chips and was in total control of the table. I was nursing a 20 big blind stack and just trying to survive. I was in the small blind and he was immediately to my left in the big blind, and finally I picked up two kings and after the cut-off made it 3 big blinds, I moved all in. Grinder called and of course had AA. It was incredible having watched him play for hours with 68 off-suit, now he had AA. Anyway, I learned a lot that day watching him and his outstanding post flop play, which is where he excels.

Back to the present, so last night a couple of hours into the game an early position player potted it for $500 and Michael was in the big blind and called. The flop came 23Q with two spades, and he checks, the original raiser posts for about $1,700 and the one other player folds, it comes around to Michael and he re-pots and they quickly wind up all-in. the turn comes a 3 and the river a seven with no flush coming. The other player shows two aces and that he had the nut flush draw, Michael flips over 345Q with 2 spades as well, and dragged the pot. Nice to flop top two with a straight and flush draw, fill up and double up.

Next at about 3am he asked if there were any massage girls in the place and the floor person said “impossible tonight.” Then Rob Peltekci, who along with his brother Michael Peltekci run the casino operations at Merit, came over and said let me see what I can do. He then comes back and said he found one at home in bed who will be right over. She arrived 20 minutes later looking like she just got out of bed and proceeded to work on mike for the next two hours.
It’s good to be the Grinder, wins the 50k first WSOP event, then 4 more cashes, three of them final tables, and with a little luck the main event.