After leaving Las Vegas with little to show for his efforts, Sorel Mizzi is looking forward to a European move and some big tournaments this side of the pond
I love Las Vegas, but only in small doses. If I’m there for more than two months my love for the place is replaced by contempt and a strong desire to leave. There’s simply too much temptation everywhere you look – a bloke like me could easily get absorbed in all the BS, which is why I could never live in Vegas. I’ve actually lived in Toronto my whole life, but this year, because of all the travelling I’ve been doing,
I’ve only spent about one month there. When I got back from Europe, I was only able to stay in Toronto for two weeks before I had to leave to go to Vegas for the World Series of Poker. Since I figured there was no use having to keep paying rent for a place I’m barely ever at, my plan was to move out of my house, put all my possessions in storage and win a bracelet so that I could buy a few houses in cash. Unfortunately, sometimes things don’t go as planned…
I’d be lying if I said I had a great WSOP. Several times I put myself in a really good position to go deep but, unfortunately, I took the crap end of the variance stick for most of the Series. At one point it almost felt like every time I registered for a tournament I was just donating to the prize pool!
Before the Main Event I was down quite a bit in tournaments, but luckily two of the three horses I had in the Main Event came top 100 and ended up getting me back to even. I also had a night where I won $60k at $25/$50/$100 pot-limit Omaha, which made the trip a profitable one.
On the move When I got back to Toronto, most of my stuff was in storage and I didn’t have my own place, so I stayed with my parents for a week. Unfortunately, my mum puts me on tilt, so I stayed with my friend Stephanie for a few days and then moved into a hotel downtown, which I plan on staying at for a month until I go back to Europe.
I’m 90 per cent sure that I’ll be moving to Barcelona in the next couple of months. I love Canada but moving to Barcelona seems like the right move since most of the tournaments I’ll be playing are in Europe and I hate travelling internationally. What’s more, I’m not a huge fan of Canadian winters; I have visions of beaches, girls in bikinis and hot sunny days, not snow-filled driveways and waking up early to shovel!
It’s going to be a very busy time over the next few months and I’m really looking forward to EPT events in Barcelona and London, and the World Series of Poker Europe.
I can’t really mention the WSOPE without talking about Annette Obrestad’s amazing performance last September. I said earlier this year that Annette is the most talented player on the circuit. I believed from the beginning – before her WSOPE Main Event win and her other achievements – that she was going to dominate the live scene. I’ve seen how she plays and she’s like a version of me that just doesn’t make mistakes.
She’s also one of the few people I can talk to about my game. If I’m talking to a tight-aggressive player who doesn’t play as many pots as me and I start the conversation with, ‘I raised 2-3 suited UTG’, they don’t really understand. But when I’m talking to Annette she can relate to that. She knows how to play those sorts of hands after raising with them pre-flop. She’s one of the people I feel I can learn a lot from, and possibly the main reason why I signed my sponsorship deal with Betfair.
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