Posts Tagged ‘Sorel Mizzi’

Sorel Mizzi swims 3 Miles across Ocean to win Prop Bet

Sunday, May 25th, 2014

With over $9.6 million in live poker tournament winnings, Sorel Mizzi has shown that he has nerves of steel at the poker table. Interestingly enough, Mizzi also showed that his strong mental fortitude extends to the ocean as well.

The PartyPoker Premier League VII champion recently had an extended stay in Brazil, where he decided to do something crazy – swim three miles across the ocean! To be exact, Mizzi made a prop bet that he would make it from Rio de Janeiro’s Ipanema Beach to an island three miles off the coast.

When Mizzi made his announcement via twitter, many people urged him not to go through with the bet. After all, the ocean is filled with sharks, jellyfish and all sorts of other creatures that humans would rather not swim near. What’s more is that the ocean currents can get pretty bad once you get too far away from the shore – something that inexperienced swimmers like Mizzi should avoid.

Nevertheless, Mizzi went through with the bet and wagered $10,000 of his own money against $30,000 from those taking his 3:1 odds. And he ended up winning the $30k after completing the death-defying swim across the 3-mile stretch of the Atlantic.

It certainly wasn’t easy, though, as it took the poker pro around four hours to complete the ocean journey. He had a boat following him the whole way, but it’s not like he could’ve just grabbed on to the boat to help him make the swim.

At one point, Mizzi got so tired that he simply tried to stay in the same spot for 20 minutes to catch his breath. The waves began pushing him away from the island, so he started swimming again to cover the final 600 meters. Once Mizzi touched the island rock, he shouted for the boat to hurry and get him so that he could finally get out of the water.

If you’d like to see all of the updates involved Mizzi’s swim, just check out the aforementioned twitter link.

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Niklas Heinecker passes $4m in 2013 Online Poker Winnings

Saturday, November 16th, 2013

Throughout 2013, most of the attention in the high stakes poker world has been on Viktor “Isidur1” Blom. After all, the Swede has made over $4.5 million playing online this year.

But one player who’s had an exceptional year, yet has flown under the radar a bit, is Niklas “ragen70” Heinecker. The German recently won over $400,000 this past week, which puts him at a $4.2 million profit in 2013.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Heinecker’s massive winnings is that they’ve come within the last three months. He was actually down money in the middle of August, but has since burst out of the hole and into some huge profits.

One event that’s really fueled Heinecker’s big win streak was when he took down a $403,000 pot back in August. The German flopped a straight against “MalACEsia” and five-bet shoved; MalACEsia called while chasing an ace-high flush and the race was on. MalACEsia wasn’t able to complete the flush, though, which sealed the huge pot for Heinecker.

Online poker isn’t the only arena where Niklas is excelling. He won the GuangDong HK$1 million Asia Millions in June and earned a massive HK$34,600,000 ($4,456,885) prize. He beat out a very tough final table which included Sorel Mizzi, Isaac Haxton and Igor Kurganov.

Considering the fact that Heinecker is only in his mid-20’s, he certainly looks to be a strong high stakes player for years to come. But for now, he’ll certainly be focused on the current situation where he’s trying to continue earning millions of dollars online.

2013 is close to being over with, so it’ll be interesting to see who finishes with the most money – Blom or Heinecker. Furthermore, it will be fun to watch how both of these players perform next year.

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Niklas Heinecker wins 2013 GDAM and $4.46m

Friday, June 7th, 2013

The innagural GuangDong Ltd Asia Millions (GDAM) Main Event was a huge success after 71 players paid the HK$1,000,000 (US$130,000) buy-in. 54 of these grinders opted to rebuy after busting, and the buy-ins/rebuys combined to create a massive HK$119,375,000 ($15,376,897) prize pool.

Germany’s Niklas Heinecker took full advantage of this giant pool as he won the 2013 GDAM Main Event along with HK$34,600,000 ($US4,464,516). After winning, he said, “Of course, this is just sick. This is by far the biggest day of my poker career…I don’t think this is business as usual for anyone, and not for me definitely.” He added, “It’s far from what I’m used to. It’s a really big thing.”

Heinecker had to overcome a very fast-paced blind structure on the final day to capture this victory. The average final table chip stack was just 15 big blinds, which led to some very quick eliminations. When the dust settled, Heinecker and Australia’s Jeff Rossiter were left playing heads-up for the title.

The German definitely had an edge here with a 3:1 chip advantage. But this was anybody’s tournament with how high the blinds were. The rising blinds didn’t seem to affect Heinecker too badly though as he played well enough to beat Rossiter and capture his first major live tournament title.

Up until now, Niklas Heinecker has always been known as an online poker pro. But this is likely to change since he took down one of the biggest poker tourneys of the year. On the strength of the GDAM Main Event victory, Heinecker now has US$4,773,583 in live tournament earnings.

2013 GDAM Main Event Final Table Results
1. Niklas Heinecker – HK$34,600,000 (US$4,464,516)
2. Jeff Rossiter – HK$24,500,000 (US$3,161,290)
3. Sorel Mizzi – HK$16,100,000 (US$2,077,419)
4. Zheng Tang – HK$12,525,000 (US$1,616,129)
5. Isaac Haxton – HK$10,200,000 (US$1,316,129)
6. Igor Kurganov – HK$8,300,000 (US$1,070,967)
7. Anson Tsang – HK$7,150,000 (US$922,580)
8. Pratyush Budigga – HK$6,000,000 (US$774,193)

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Sorel Mizzi opens up about Cheating Incidents

Monday, December 31st, 2012

Sorel Mizzi doesn’t exactly have the best reputation in the poker world. He was caught buying somebody else’s account deep in a tournament at Full Tilt Poker, and let a friend use his account during a PokerStars tourney because he had to catch a flight. And while these acts don’t exactly measure up to the UB Poker superuser scandal, they did earn Mizzi a tarnished reputation.

He’s had trouble living this rep down over the past few years too. But Mizzi seems to be more at peace with himself these days and blogged about it on his website. While it’s a pretty long post, one interesting excerpt reads as follows:

Several incidents of being robbed, cheated and wronged had made me cynical, cold, distant and emotionally disconnected. The thought of people accusing me of exactly what I had been a victim to was unbearable. Poor me, no one understands, no one cares, I can’t trust anyone.

In fact, whenever I chose to trust someone, subconsciously I wanted them to disappoint me so I could reinforce my beliefs that no one could be trusted! I wasn’t happy about the person I became. I thought I had self-respect but upon further self-evaluation, I realized I didn’t.

As you can tell from the post, Sorel Mizzi also claims to have been cheated himself plenty of times. And while poker cheating is inexcusable in any case, at least it’s a little more understandable why Mizzi would turn to such acts.

Even when not bending the rules in his favor, the Canadian has always been a very successful poker player. He’s earned an impressive $4,661,968 in live tournaments, which includes a 2012 WPT Vienna High Roller win and a 2011 WPT Paris High Roller title. Plus he’s made millions more in online poker tournaments over the years.

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