Tournament Trail Q and A -- Sorel Mizzi

Rebecca McAdam: How are you getting on so far?

Sorel Mizzi: I’m getting on OK. I was up to 200k earlier on in the first level, and it was pretty much like a continuous growth and then all of a sudden I lost my first major pot when I lost a flip with sevens versus A-Q, and that put a pretty big dent in my stack, and then I got as low as like 80k after chipping up a lot, and now I’m back at 140 so I can’t really complain. It’s been very rocky and very rollercoastery but that’s usually how it is when I play these tournaments.

RM: What do you think about the field here?

SM: Honestly? It’s pretty bad. I mean every single table I’ve been on ... like my starting table for the entire day 1, there weren’t really any great players, and not really any threats. there was one guy on my left who was decent but other than that it’s been a very easy tournament to accumulate chips, and maybe I just got really lucky with my table draws. I feel like I’m in the zone and I’m playing different than I ever have before and I’m just starting to get adjusted to this new structure.

RM: What about Johnny Lodden coming to your table, how was that?

SM: He played a few pots against me, but he knows I’m a good player and I know he’s a good player and for the most part we try to stay out of each other’s way. I also have him to my left which makes it very difficult to open raise and he just lost a really big pot with a straight versus a full house so now he kind of has a stack to go all in after I raise. It’s not a great situation for me because I have to lower my raising range but I just have to adjust to that and obviously it’s never going to be good to have a really good aggressive player to my left but I think I’m dealing with it really well and I think I’m adjusting accordingly.

RM: Is he the most impressive player you’ve come up against so far in this tournament?

SM: I would say so. I’ve got a lot of respect for him, he’s made it deep in so many of these events and he always gets unlucky late and I have a lot of sympathy for that.

RM: You play a huge amount of European tournaments, is there a reason behind this?

SM: I have a contract with Betfair and Betfair's primarily European, so they want me to be playing mostly European events, since they don't really get much value out of advertising in the U.S.. But I love Europe. I’m actually thinking about moving to Barcelona just because it’s so annoying to go from Europe back to Canada, and then back and forth. It’s not necessary because I only have a few weeks off every time I do that anyway, so I might as well move somewhere else and Barcelona is my favourite city in Europe so far.

RM: Are there any major differences between playing in European and playing in American tournaments?

SM: The style is definitely a lot different, the attitude of the players, everything is a lot different. Like in Europe, most of the good European players are great cash game players but they don’t really know what to do in tournament situations, and my theory behind that is all the tournaments online start really really late in Europe, so they don’t get the opportunity to play as many big tournaments with good players, so most good European players are cash game players. They’re really good in deep stack situations, the good ones that is, (which there aren’t that many of) but when it comes to down to tournament stacks, like 5 to 30 big blinds, a lot of them struggle a lot. Also, here in Europe people slow roll more, people don’t take bad beats as well, and I think it’s a lot softer in Europe but that might just be because of all the satellites that are on PokerStars. Obviously it depends on the tournament, the World Series of Poker field is definitely going to be a lot softer than this field, so it’s just depending on that.

RM: People may forget how young you are because you have accomplished so much, do you feel like there’s much more ahead for you in the poker world, or do you feel tired of it at all?

SM: I feel like this is just the beginning of my live poker career. I had only been focusing the majority of my time on online play up until like January, and I’ve already had a lot of success live. I definitely think that this is only the beginning and people are going to see a lot of great things from me.

RM: How do you cope with the pressure at such a young age?

SM: I’m kind of used to it, I’m very relaxed. I guess it’s like a curse and a blessing, I just don’t really care about money, and I’m very ... careless, it’s just part of my personality and that translates to the poker table as well. If I think I have the best hand or if I think I can make someone fold I go with it, so the pressure never really gets to me, I’m always really relaxed and very rarely do I have butterflies in my stomach or anything. I used to though and it’s taken a while to get over that but I’m just starting to have the same epiphany that I had online three years ago, live, and it just feels like I’m so much more confident. This tournament is when I had that epiphany, and things have become a lot clearer to me now.

RM: Do you play through outside pressures and problems or do they put you off your game?

SM: I don’t let things affect me, I used to care but I don’t really care anymore. You have to have thick skin in this game.

RM: Where are you heading to next?

SM: I think I’ll go to Amsterdam, and then Warsaw, and then I’ll have some time off.

RM: What’s your next goal?

SM: I guess winning a tournament but I mean that’s not really within my control so my goal is always just to play as best as I can, and not care about the result. The less I am affected by the result, and the more I care about how well I play, the better my game will become.