Russian Poker Legend: Michael Mizrachi Will Be Broke in 5 Years

Ivan Safarov: My guest today is Ilya Gorodetsky, a legend of Russian poker, poker commentator, and one of the founders and editor-in-chief of the GipsyTeam website.

How would you define poker as different from all other games? What is the difference?

Ilya Gorodetsky: Probably a relatively low entry threshold. That is, the rules, at least of the most popular poker variations, are quite simple.

I would also note the telegenic quality of the game. Due to the simple rules, poker quite easily found its place on TV screens after certain technical aspects were introduced. And probably, again, for popularity, the ideal balance between skill and luck in poker. In games where luck matters a lot less, they actually become a lot less watchable. Watching a chess game between, say, Magnus Carlsen and you is, let's say, a questionable pleasure.

At least with Magnus, it would be a show.

Ilya: Well, yes. That's it. Unfortunately, it's not even that chess is a complex game, but simply that no ordinary person in a game against the best chess player in the world, and it doesn't even have to be the best, even an international master or grandmaster, simply has no chance.

Whereas in poker, it’s often a game with more than two opponents. It will also be much more watchable, and much more interesting.

When people find out that I play poker professionally and make money at it, the first thing they ask is how important the luck factor is in this game.

Ilya: Well, the answer to this question has been established for a long time and in principle doesn't change. The role of luck diminishes as the sample size increases.

Is there a strategy that is definitively better than another, for example, aggressive strategy versus passive strategy?

Ilya: There are things that the poker wise men proclaimed 20 to 30 years ago that, as far as the technical side of the game is concerned, are now completely outdated and cause a knowing smile. But the ideological principles haven't really changed.

To answer your question directly, the most profitable strategy is always one that is fundamentally different from the strategy of most players at the table you find yourself at. That hasn't changed.

For example, I happen to do quite a lot of commentary on so-called media poker tournaments, which are quite fashionable now.

These are events featuring bloggers, streamers, comedians, and stand-up comics, people who simply aren't burdened with poker knowledge because they don't need it. They do completely different things for a living. In these media tournaments, everyone usually plays very carefully and very passively.

They hardly raise at all. They even limp with strong hands, just calling the big blind. Calling it what it is, they're essentially playing solitaire rather than poker, collecting strong combinations and then trying to extract something from them.

Accordingly, in these tournaments, those who play aggressively and put maximum pressure on their opponents gain a big advantage.

The chips in front of you feel like your money, your resource. And risking your resources is, in principle, counterintuitive behavior for most people.

Do you think the top players today, from the old guard like Jason Mercier to newer stars like Avr0ra, have certain innate qualities that allowed them to build great poker careers?

Ilya: In terms of psychological stability, modern poker demands a great deal more than it used to.

People with an unstable psychological makeup, or people with very dangerous and harmful gambling habits, for the most part no longer have a chance to survive in poker. There is an exception, though.

Until recently, the reigning world champion Michael Mizrachi is a prime example.

He is a man who has, throughout his life, lost millions at the poker table and at casino games. Yet that didn't stop him in 2025 from winning the most prestigious championships.

He is clearly a gifted and outstanding player, though his edge is not a technical one.

Technically, I wouldn't call him weak, that wouldn't be quite fair, but he is certainly average. At the same time, he is obviously gifted in psychology and in reading human nature. He has this combination of aggression, though I'm less sure about patience.

What I'm getting at is this: in the old days, 15 to 20 years ago, the advantage professional players had over recreational players was much greater. The strongest professionals could afford bad habits, both at the poker table and away from it.

Doyle Brunson wrote the book "Super System." The first volume was subtitled something like "How I Won a Million Dollars Playing Poker."

When Brunson was preparing to publish the second edition, he wrote that the second edition would logically be called "How I Won a Million Dollars Playing Poker and Lost It All on Sports Bets."

He honestly admitted that he had been losing enormous sums on sports betting his entire life. This was unfortunately a common story for professional poker players of that era.

It's probably hard to imagine now. Today, those who succeed in poker are those who are disciplined, dedicated, and committed to a mathematical approach to the game. Again, there are exceptions, but this is largely a consequence of the fact that the edge professional players have over recreational players has diminished significantly. And accordingly, the so-called win rates have decreased.

Even Michael Mizrachi, and I'll put my hand on my heart here, I give it roughly five years before he is broke again.

Another great example for this conversation is Phil Hellmuth. Statistically, he is the greatest tournament poker player in history. He has by far the most World Series of Poker bracelets, the most final tables, the most cashes, and so on.

Yet at the same time, I don't know a single person who would say that he plays better than Michael Mizrachi. He does things at the table that don't hold up to any criticism, and he does it constantly.

Ilya: I had the chance to play with Hellmuth in a variety of games.

I remember we played HORSE for $10,000, which was the world championship for that format, five games. We also played a ten-game mix.

In a Holdem tournament during my very first trip to the World Series of Poker in 2009, at a very late stage of a prestigious $5,000 six-max event, fate brought me to the same table as Phil Hellmuth. We played together for quite a long time.

I don't quite agree with you on that point. Those who have played with Hellmuth in person tend to treat him and his game with much more respect than those who only see his antics and outbursts on television broadcasts.

Well, it's not really about the antics and the outbursts. He has a slew of genuinely terrible hands on the record.

Ilya: But that's a kind of half-truth, because in video compilations, the terrible plays tend to end up highlighted.

This is a game he plays not on intuition exactly, but on what he himself calls white magic. He came up with this idea that he wields some kind of white magic at the table. And when white magic fails, it looks absolutely ridiculous, because from a technical standpoint, those hands didn't require white magic at all.

But I've personally witnessed a huge number of hands where he demonstrates an amazing ability to assign opponents the right ranges and adjust his game to their tendencies. He folds very strong hands that seem impossible to fold, because he reads that this particular person never bluffs. Or conversely, he makes completely inexplicable calls, including in limit games, because he understands that this specific opponent will bluff constantly and play any two cards.

So he is certainly a very experienced, very talented, and very diligent player.

Our video editor really wanted me to ask this question: how do you win millions of dollars at poker?

Ilya: Well, the easiest way is simply to put a million dollars on the table. If you already have a million in front of you and you're playing at stakes where a million dollars is at risk every hand, there's a reasonable probability that at some point you'll win a million.

But if we're talking about net profit, winning a million dollars is of course very, very difficult.

I no longer have an active professional playing career, but when I did play, including live, my biggest prize was around 40,000 pounds, which at the time was about $60,000. I never managed to win even a six-figure prize, that is, $100,000 or more.

There are plenty of live grinders who play relatively modest stakes and simply earn their daily bread that way. But to win a million dollars, going back to my earlier recommendation, you can play high roller tournaments. But if you're starting from scratch, you'll have to get there gradually, by climbing the limits.

There is another way, actually. For any major tournament, whether online or live, there are satellites. Satellites are qualifying tournaments for people who don't have a large bankroll, and you can use them to climb the ladder all the way into even a relatively expensive tournament. And then, theoretically, your coveted million is within reach.

What type of player consistently wins at poker today?

Ilya: Those who are winning consistently today are the disciplined ones, those who not only excel at the table but also pay close attention to promotions, leaderboards, and so on. You can still make money playing poker today. I would estimate that tens of thousands of people around the world still make a living from it.

Most of them are not ultra-high-rollers, but people earning what you might call a comfortable modest income. Either they are naturally gifted players like Ivan Safarov, for example, who even as a casual player can register somewhere, and immediately win a jackpot. But those people are more the exception.

The people who earn consistently in this game are the so-called grinders, people who pay very close attention to rake. They monitor their rakeback carefully, meaning what percentage of what they pay to play online comes back to them. They follow all promotions closely and try to maximize their expected value through leaderboards, special offers, and so on. Without that approach, it's getting harder and harder to win.

How is online poker different from live poker? Where can you earn more?

Ilya: Well, online is much easier, and it's funny how things have changed. Live poker used to have a certain prestige, and when online players showed up at live events for the first time, they were laughed at. There were people treating them as strange outsiders, and so on.

Now it's completely the other way around. Online, first of all, allows you to play across a huge sample. And online offers much more variety in terms of game formats, limits, and poker variants. Accordingly, it's much easier to find your niche there, meaning the specific discipline, the type of poker, and the stakes where you're comfortable and can make money. Or where you lose acceptable amounts, which is also relevant for amateurs.

In live poker, with about 99% probability, you'll have to adapt to whatever situation you find yourself in. If you play at your local casino, for example, you're unlikely to convince everyone there to play six-card Omaha if nobody likes it, and even less likely to get them into some exotic mixed game. Most likely you'll have to play Texas Holdem, at the stakes traditionally played there, and so on.

So online has much more variety, but at comparable limits the level of play online is much higher.

The full interview between Ilya Gorodetsky and Ivan Safarov is on YouTube, auto-dubbed with English audio.