Amazing Gracz

Author: Jim Mercurio

HE’S POLITE. He finished his undergraduate degree before turning pro. He values time with his family. Though his winnings of the last year are close to $3-million, he bought only a modest townhouse for himself and his girlfriend and still chugs around Raleigh, North Carolina, in his 2003 Mitsubishi Lancer.

Well, that’s Mike Gracz: a poker anti-cliche. He might be the hottest tournament player in the world right now, but his side game maxes out at $200-$400 limit. No taking his shot at the “big game.”

“I want my poker life to have a certain balance to it. I’m not interested in losing a couple of hundred thousand in a night,” the 24-year-old said.

A twentysomething overnight millionaire who preaches balance and restraint? If you were reading a book and there was a character like Mike, you would put it down and say that’s unrealistic; no one is that perfect.

Okay, maybe he’s not perfect. He lightly peppered our chat with some whimsical expletives and, although a gentleman at the table, he gave us a few choice descriptions about his competitors. But the comment about the opponent playing like he was tripping on LSD was completely off the record. We won’t mention it.

A $1,500,000 first place prize in March’s Party Poker Million IV and a $292,000 take for winning last December’s Trump Classic jumpstarted his career as a traveling tournament player. He scored his first WSOP bracelet this year too. And although he’s off to Atlantic City, Aruba, Vegas, Connecticut, and back to Vegas in the next few months, his humility is evidenced by the near hour he spent chatting with us for a 500-word piece.

He knows No-Limit tournaments award his aggression, but prefers Limit side games. He’s still working on the leaks in the multi-day tournaments: “Sometimes I blow off my chips—lose half my stack and then have to fight back. I’m working on that.”

Watch the ESPN coverage of the 2005 $1,000 No-Limit Hold ’Em (With Re-buys) tournament Gracz won and you’ll see him make some audacious reads on players. He is the first to admit that luck is part of the game, such as when he sucked out on C.T. Law on the last hand. But no matter what happens, Mike keeps his cool at the table.

In one of the tournament’s most memorable hands, Shane Schleger went all in on the turn. Gracz deliberated for a minute or so and called him with ace-high. “He would have moved in on the flop with A-K or a piece of it,” Gracz explained. “Overpair, and he can’t give me a free card and a chance to hit an overcard (last to act, Schleger checked the flop). And it was getting to be the time where he needed to make a move. So either he’s got a monster like trip sevens or he’s got d—. I figured it was 20/80.”

After Mike won the WSOP event, in his interview with ESPN, he encouraged young players to get an education no matter how well they are doing in poker. Gracz is a class act, a role model, and a great spokesperson for the game. He doesn’t act as flashy or talk as good a game as many of the top players of the new generation. But talking a good game and playing one are two different things, and none of the young guns have been playing better in 2005 than Gracz.