At the End of the Road

Well, my run in the 2025 World Series of Poker may be done as it comes to an end. I may play in one more tournament this week if I have time, because for better or worse, I’m starting to get requests from clients for my real consulting work (you may have thought that poker is my job, but that’s not actually correct). I played in two multi-day tournaments on Friday and Saturday. On Friday, I played in the Hall of Fame Bounty tournament. When I busted out of that on Saturday afternoon, I entered the Lucky Seven tournament (yet again) in the afternoon. I’m happy to report that I cashed in both of them. Here’s my record of WSOP tournaments in which I cashed this year. This has been my best WSOP ever in terms of number of cashes, and a close second to last year in the amount of total winnings.

1. Colossus Tournament: 1,379 out of 16,301 entries

2. Millionaire Maker: 1,109 out of 11,996 entries

3. Lucky Seven Tournament, Day 1A: 118 out of 1,499 entries

4. Hall of Fame Bounty Tournament: 82 out of 1,115 entries

5. Lucky Seven Tournament, Day 1C: 600 out of 4,345 entries

The Hall of Fame Bounty Tournament was my favorite, not only because I had the deepest run and the largest cash, but because I got to meet and play against many of the world’s greatest players. The tournament invited inductees from the Poker Hall of Fame to play, and anyone who busted them out got a cash bounty payment equal to the year they were inducted. I was seated next to John Juanda, who was inducted in 2015, so the bounty for him was $2,015. I found this picture online of the two of us at the table. Well a picture of John and half a picture of me.

John Juanda and half of me

John lives in Japan now and he was like Buddha. He was quiet and friendly and had a serene expression on his face the whole time, with a slight smile when something struck him as funny or interesting. He never got angry or excited. We talked about poker. Unlike today’s game theory optimization (GTO) young guns who say things like “The charts say to fold against any min raise but to three-bet an over pair if your fold equity is greater than half pot or the pot odds are greater than 0.75,” he would quietly say things like, “I think he should have raised because the other player looked unsure.”

While everyone teased John about having a target on his back, I told him, “I’m rooting for you, John. I want you to finish second.”

I joined the tournament on Day 2 having survived Day 1 with a small stack, but John’s was about the same size as mine. At one point, I got AK and John shoved. I said, “Sorry John, I think it’s the end of the road for you.” The player to my left was also short stacked. He was from China and his English wasn’t good. He said, “If I kill you, I get money?” John replied, “You don’t have to kill me, just bust me out.” So the player also shoved and showed pocket 2s. John had JK and said, “Not good for me.” Only a J could save him, and he got it on the flop. Neither the other player nor I improved on the next two cards, so John tripled up. I guess that makes him a champion—getting just the right card at just the right time. The player to my left took the side pot against me. Fortunately, I had a few more chips than either of them, and I was able to rebuild my stack over the next hour. (This play was written up here in Poker News. The write-up isn’t correct, though; we all shoved before the flop not after.)

I didn’t get a bounty, but I outlasted most of the Hall of Famers including Daniel Negreanu, Phil Helmuth, John Juanda, and Eric Seidel. Especially fun was that I got to hang out (again) with Barry Greenstein. My very first tournament technically was the one put on by my friend Rick Tavan at my synagogue in California, Temple Beth David. I came in second, and he encouraged me to play at his monthly home game. I would go with my cheat sheet that I hid beneath the table even though everyone knew I had it. I just couldn’t remember which hands beat which. After maybe a year of playing, I went to the annual Republican Jewish Coalition Gala in Las Vegas and played in their poker tournament, my second official tournament. Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson showed up and introduced Daniel Negreanu and Barry to play in the tournament. Barry sat at my table as we both went all the way to the final table and my ultimate first place victory! It was one of the best moments of my life. I stopped playing for several years after that because I thought nothing would ever match it, in poker at least. I found out later that Barry had commented frequently to the other players that he couldn’t understand how I was winning. I definitely had an unorthodox way of playing and knew much less about the game than I do now. But what surprised me most is how well I could read the other players, including Barry. I had learned my fellow players’ habits, techniques, and tells at Rick’s monthly game, but I figured that’s because it was a friendly game and I knew them so well. Who knew I could read a pro?

Me with my winnings from the RJC tournament.

Barry and me at the RJC tournament in 2011.

Me and Barry at the 2025 WSOP.

After busting out of the Hall of Fame tournament with a nice cash, I reentered the Lucky Seven tournament. After entering late with a small stack, I immediately started getting big aces and high pairs (pocket tens three times and pocket aces twice) to build my stack up to average and above. At one point, Dusti Smith sat down to my right. I told her I had watched her on TV as she took down the WPT Lady’s High Roller tournament. One advantage I have is that I’ve watched these pros on TV and they’ve never seen me play. Also, I know a lot of great women poker players. Some of them feel they need to be as aggressive in their play as the men, so they overcompensate. I felt that way about Dusti, especially since she came to the table with a very small stack. I had a decent hand when she shoved, something like A 10, which would normally be a little too weak to shove, but knowing her I also shoved to keep everyone else out of the hand. She showed something like K8, and I busted her out.

I also ran into Huck Seed, winner of the 1996 WSOP Main Event. Huck will bet on just about anything. Last year, he was at my table along with poker player and multimillionaire John Morgan. Huck started talking about running a five-minute mile when John, a runner in his youth, said he couldn’t do it. Huck said he needed 6 months to train. John said OK for a $1 million bet.

I had seen John a couple of times at the casinos but forgot to ask him about it. So I asked Huck, who said, “Yeah, he paid.”

“So you ran it?” I asked.

“Yeah. We settled on 5 minutes 40 seconds, but I trained to 5 minutes and 20 seconds in case something went wrong. John was great. He even offered me training advice along the way. When I finished, he pulled out a check for $1 million. My buddy said he’d never seen someone be so happy to lose so much money.”

In a previous post, I said that Martin Kabrhel was the most annoying player in poker, but that title was soon taken away by Will Kassouf. Kassouf has a problem. I'm sure he's up there on the autism scale. I was at the cashier getting my payout while he was getting his. When the cashier asked him how his day was, he started rambling, "A f...ing nightmare. I hate this f...ing place. Can you believe how they treated me? All I was trying to do was play poker. And then when the other player shoved and I had ace king, I needed time to think. All I was doing was thinking. Wouldn't you? Some a...hole shoves and is probably bluffing but I thought I should call but maybe I shouldn't, depending on the pot odds. I’m playing for a million dollars! I'm never coming back to this f...ing place..." (not an exact quote but you get the idea.) I'm sure that cashier didn't expect that and had no idea what he was talking about.

I saw him in clips on X and also in person during breaks in my tournament. He definitely was entertaining, but I didn't have to sit with him for hours in a game worth millions. I think I've encountered worse people at poker, like the gangster who subtly threatened people during the game (“you have no idea what I could do to you”) or the guy who explained how I should have played every hand (though I used that information to take chips away from him, it was hard to sit through the constant lecturing for hours). Maybe the worst were the players who didn't take the game seriously and bet on their lucky hands, tried to get the players to go all in on every hand, and raised every bet. Eventually they’d bust out, but in the meantime, I had no way of reading them, so playing any hand was almost random.

And Michael Mizrachi continues to make poker history. After winning his record fourth WSOP Poker Players Championship, he is also still in the mix for the WSOP Main Event, currently in third place out of only 18 survivors of a field of 9,735. Whether he wins or not, it’s an incredible achievement. I plan to ask him to speak at a Friends of the Israel Defense Forces event later this year.

Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi at one of the remaining tables of the 2025 WSOP Main Event.

As for me, it looks like my quest for a bracelet continues. I may play in one more tournament this week unless I have too much real work. Otherwise the quest continues for another year.

About the author

Bob Zeidman is a high-stakes recreational poker player. He created Good Beat Poker, a free online poker site using patented technology for audio and video—see and hear the other players at the table if you choose.