As if the last week at the 2025 World Series of Poker wasn’t exciting enough, the action culminated with Michael Mizrachi’s triumph in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship. With this, “The Grinder” became the only player to have won this prestigious event an impressive four times!
Days leading up to this historic moment were marked by the first major controversy of this year’s series, which saw two final players in the $1,500 Millionaire Maker accused of collusion.
The poker legend Huck Seed nearly missed on his fifth WSOP bracelet (the last one coming over twenty years ago) but was denied at the very last moment by Blaz Zerjav, one of the players who have been on fire this summer.
Benny Glaser is still holding the top spot in the Player of the Year rankings, but there are a couple of contenders creeping up, including Zerjav.
Before we dig into some of these stories, here’s a quick overview of all the new bracelet winners since our last week’s recap:
- Event #53 – $1,500 Millionaire Maker – Jesse Yaginuma ($1,255,180)
- Event #57 – $50,000 Pot Limit Omaha High Roller – Dylan Linde ($2,146,414)
- Event #58 – $3,000 Nine Game Mix – Robert Wells ($228,115)
- Event #59 – $1,000 – Battle of the Ages – Sebastiaan de Jonge ($335,390)
- Event #60 – $3,000 Limit Hold’em – Moshe Gavrieli ($200,303)
- Event #61 – $500 – No Limit Hold’em Freezeout – Craig Savage ($229,628)
- Event #62 – $5,000 6-Handed No Limit Hold’em – Andjelko Andrejevic ($855,515)
- Event #63 – $1,500 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw – Aaron Cummings ($157,172)
- Event #64 – $1,000 Super Seniors – Lonny Weitzel ($356,494)
- Event #65 – $1,000 Tag Team – Kelvin Kerber – Peter Patricio ($184,780)
- Event #66 – $50,000 Poker Players Championship – Michael Mizrachi ($1,331,322)
- Event #68 – $3,000 No Limit Hold’em – Yilong Wang ($830,685)
- Event #69 – $1,500 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo 8 or Better – Blaz Zerjav ($153,487)
- Event #71 – $10,000 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw Championship – Alex Wilkinson ($333,054)
- Event #72 – $10,000 Super Turbo Bounty – Rainer Kempe ($892,701)
Even #67 – $300 Gladiators of Poker has seen all four of the initial flights concluding, and the event hit the record-breaking field of 24,629 entries. Of those, only 812 players remain, and they are coming back today (June 29) for the Day 2 action.
Michael Mizrachi Wins the $50k PPC – Again!
The $50,000 Poker Players Championship is regarded by many professional players as the pinnacle of the World Series of Poker.
It attracts relatively small fields, but those fields regularly feature the best of the best competing in a tournament where knowing how to play just one or two games isn’t going to cut it. This year’s PPC, for example, featured a mix of nine games.
Coming into the event, we had two players with three wins to their names: Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi and Brian Rast. These two were in an amazing spot to write a whole new page of poker history if one of them could go all the way.
Living up to his nickname, Michael Mizrachi was able to do just that, being the last man standing in a 107-strong field that saw some of the biggest poker legends come out to play. The likes of Daniel Negreanu (defending champion), Phil Hellmuth, Mike Matusow, Eric Lindgren, Ben Lamb, and Dan “Jungleman” Cates (two-time PPC winner) fell along the way.
Eventually, it got down to a one-on-one skirmish between “The Grinder” and Bryn Kenney, but Mizrachi dominated the final table from start to finish, and his tremendous experienced in mixed games made it almost look easy.
Michael Mizrachi now stands alone as the only player to win this prestigious event four times. With seven total WSOP bracelets and well over $17 million in live tournament winnings, it seems like his spot in the Poker Hall of Fame is guaranteed, and he could be inducted as early as next year.
Big Controversy Shakes Up the $1,000 Millionaire Maker
This year’s Millionaire Maker event saw one of the strangest heads-up battles in the history of poker, with the eventual winner, Jesse Yaginuma, overcoming a huge chip deficit to emerge victorious.
It wasn’t just the fact that Yaginuma made a huge comeback that raised eyebrows of the poker community. He did it putting up a show worth of a poker movie, making perfect reads hand after hand, chipping away at James Carroll’s huge stack.
With a difference of about $300k between the first and the second place, it would be crazy for Carroll to just throw away the tournament. However, Yaginuma was in line to pick up an extra $1,000,000 from the ClubWPT Gold promo if he were to win, and this could have potentially changed the whole dynamics of the final skirmish.
At the moment of writing, the situation still remains unresolved as the WSOP is investigating things. You can check out this article for more details on the whole affair as we wait for the final resolution on one of the biggest scandals to shake the poker community this year.
The biggest questions are whether the WSOP will pay both players and what happens with the bracelet. There are many theories and predictions floating around, but we have yet to receive word of any official ruling.
Near Miss for Huck Seed
It’s been a moment (or two) since Huck Seed’s last WSOP bracelet win. Last week, the old-school poker legend came close to adding to his collection, making it all the way to heads-up in Event #69 – $1,500 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo 8 or Better.
To break the long drought, Seed needed to outlast just one more opponent. Unfortunately, that opponent happened to be Blaz Zerjav, a Slovenian player who’s been having a great summer, having already won one bracelet.
The 1996 WSOP Main Event winner certainly tried, and the two exchanged many pots along the way, but it just wasn’t in the cards for Seed. Zerjav ended up collecting the bracelet and the first place money of over $150k, leaving Huck to wait at least a little while longer for his fifth career bracelet.
The Player of the Year Race Tightening Up
It’s been an exciting summer in Las Vegas, with several players doing some serious work on the felt. This has resulted in a rather tightly-packed Player of the Year race that will likely remain undecided until the very few last tournaments.
Benny Glaser, who’s had an amazing run this series, is still maintaining his lead over the rest of the pack, but he’ll probably need to do more work if he wants to stay there.
Scott Bohlman is now only some 50 points behind Glaser, which means that he could take over the lead at any point.
Following his latest win, Blaz Zerjav has also joined the race in a serious fashion. He is lagging about 500 points behind the top two, but the way his summer has been going, we wouldn’t put it past Blaz to make a few more deep runs over the next couple of weeks and become a serious threat for the title.
With over two dozen events still left, including the Main Event, anything can happen, and we are all excited to see how things will play out.
