Born on April 16, 1986 in Toronto, Canada, Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi learned to play poker in his teens by frequenting home games with his friends. After Chris Moneymaker’s victory at the World Series of Poker in 2003, Mizzi started playing online, where he became fast friends with online star Josh ‘JJProdigy’ Fields.
Before long, Sorel was crushing the highest stakes online tournaments with alarming regularity. His biggest victories include an outright win of PokerStars’ Sunday Warm-Up for $80K, and two Full Tilt Online Poker Series wins; Event #7 of FTOPS III for $90K and Event #8 of FTOPS IV for $41K. He remains one of only a few players who own two FTOPS titles and, all told, his online tournament winnings exceed $1 million.
Mizzi has been equally impressive on the live tournament circuit, where he’s cashed in multiple World Series of Poker, World Poker Tour, and European Poker Tour events. His first big score, however, came at the 2007 Paddy Power Irish Open where he finished third for $280K. A few weeks later, he bagged $155K for 15th at the WPT Fifth Annual Five Star World Poker Classic. In 2008, he made waves at the WSOP Europe by claiming third in the $5K Pot Limit Omaha for $240K. At the 2009 WSOP, Mizzi narrowly missed out on his first bracelet when he took second in the $5K Pot Limit Omaha event for $253K.
Sorel started 2010 off with a bang by finishing third at the Aussie Millions Poker Championship for $659K. He then followed it up with victories in at EPT Snowfest for $95K and the Borgata Spring Poker Open for $170K. All told, he has over $2.5 million in live tournament earnings.
As smoothly as Mizzi’s career has gone on the tables, he has come under fire for his involvement in an account selling incident. In December of 2007, he bought and took over Chris Vaughn’s Full Tilt Poker account from another location. Sorel went on to win the event, but was later disqualified and the compromised account was stripped of the prize money. He has since apologized for his actions, but he remains banned from playing on Full Tilt Poker and the poker community seems split on the issue of his cheating.
Despite the controversy, Sorel Mizzi’s career has not suffered. He is currently sponsored by Titan Poker and he still dominates tournaments both live and online.
