Michael Mizrachi, poker’s man of the moment after his phenomenal 2025 World Series of Poker (WSOP) run where he won both the highly prestigious Poker Players Championship (PPC) and the Main Event, has big plans for 2026.
Enjoying some rare down time in Medellin, Colombia, where he often escapes to the four-bedroom apartment he owns, the 45-year-old is aiming high – telling Inside Asian Gaming that his goal for the upcoming summer is to win four WSOP bracelets, eclipsing the current record of three.
But first Mizrachi has his sights set on the Aussie Millions – long considered one of the world’s elite poker events and returning to Crown Melbourne this year for the first time since early 2020 with a busy 18-event schedule.
“I’m planning to play every event – I don’t think I’m going to miss one,” Mizrachi, an Aussie Millions Ambassador, says.
“I’ll be there for quite a while, from 24 April to 10 May, which means the whole schedule and there won’t be much time for sightseeing. The only sightseeing I’m going to do is Aces, Kings, Queens, Jacks!
“I’m looking forward to it. The Aussie Millions, I haven’t been there in years, but I have a lot of great friends over there. And the venue is unbelievable. I’ve was last at Crown maybe six or seven years ago for the Aussie Millions and I miss going there.
“I’m ready to go back. I’m obviously the face of Aussie Millions [as ambassador], so I’m just happy to be involved and happy to be a part of it. I think it’s going to be a great experience, and I look forward to crushing it there.”
Mizrachi describes the nine months since his historic WSOP feat as the most hectic of his life – no great surprise given the magnitude of his accomplishment. Although he was already a household name within the global poker community, having already won six WSOP bracelets, two WPT titles and multiple other trophies over the years, the idea that anyone could win the PPC and Main Event in the same year has long been viewed as fanciful at best – absurd at worst – due to the nature of the beasts.
Boasting a US$50,000 buy-in, the PPC is widely considered the truest test of a player’s skill due to its mixed-game format and the elite quality of the field, which in 2025 saw 107 of the world’s best take to the felt.
By contrast, the US$10,000 Main Event is the largest and most sought after tournament on the planet, attracting last year a mammoth field of 9,735 players and a US$10 million first prize.
By taking down both, including his fourth PPC title – itself a new all-time record – Mizrachi achieved the poker equivalent of winning the Monaco Formula 1 Grand Prix, then switching formats and winning NASCAR’s Daytona 500.
“The funny thing is that I wasn’t playing that much tournament poker heading into the series,” Mizrachi recalls of his 2025 summer.
“I was playing cash games five, six days a week in Florida, so I wasn’t traveling much, but I just came back to the tournament scene and crushed it.
“People were saying, ‘How does he always do that?’ No one can explain, no one knows how I do it.
“I think it’s just experience and those situations, the spotlight. I like to get deeper in the tournament and apply pressure to other players. Even though you’re playing against the best in the world [in the PPC], I’ve been around for a long time and have seen a lot of situations – a lot more than [most other players have]. And I just think the experience gets me further than everybody else.
“The thing is, I play everything like it’s a $100 buy-in tournament, so I’m fearless.
“Sometimes I have a few drinks of alcohol, which loosens me up. That was my key to success, believe it or not, when I won the WSOP Main Event. I was partying a lot, and I’m someone who can be superstitious, so when something is working for me, I will stick with it.”
It is this determination to stay true to himself that sets Mizrachi apart from the crowd. He won his first WSOP bracelet some 25 years ago – two years before Chris Moneymaker sparked the the global poker boom with his famous Main Event triumph in 2003 – and his first PPC 16 years ago in 2010. Yet has never strayed far from the spotlight.
And in an era dominated by poker solvers and the mathematical perfection of GTO (Game Theory Optimal), Mizrachi remains unashamedly a traditionalist.
“I don’t study GTO, so I have to do stuff that people have never seen before,” he explains. “I’m more old school, like real old school. I tend to think, ‘These guys are not trained for [my style of play] – let’s apply some pressure and see how they act’.
“The GTO kids, they’re studying [what to do in certain situations] and I can use that against them, exploit them.
“I mean, I’ve watched a little bit [of GTO training videos] but I really don’t watch much poker on TV. I don’t look at hand histories. I’ve never even read a poker book., I used to teach classes 15 years ago, but I don’t do that anymore.
“I just go with my feelings because I have really good instincts at the poker table. If I feel something, I’m going to go for it.”
Mizrachi’s longevity was never more evident than last year, and his record fourth PPC victory ensured he was one of the 2026 WSOP’s headline stories even before he backed it up with that stunning Main Event win just 19 days later.
But he isn’t resting on his laurels.
“After winning the PPC for a fourth time and the WSOP Main Event, that’s a lot of motivation for me right now,” he says. “I feel like my confidence is still there.
“I know I’m going to break some records this year. My goal this summer is four bracelets in the summer. The record is three, so I’m going to try to go for four and hopefully win the Main Event again.
“I think something special is going to happen soon. I know I have a lot of years ahead for that to happen but what I did last year was crazy enough, so who knows?”
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