Sorel Mizzi Unbanned from Full Tilt Poker

Sorel Mizzi

Sorel Mizzi, Canadian poker pro, BLUFF Magazine's Player of the Year is now again allowed to play at Full Tilt Poker, from which he was banned back in 2007, when he was caught multi-accounting on Full Tilt Poker. As you might or might not know, the guy bought his friend's, Chris Vaughan's account 'BluffMagCV', when Vaughan was running deep (near 26th place) in a $1million guaranteed FTP tournament. Mizzi finished first at the tournament, winning the $200,000 first prize. Full Tilt discovered the arrangement quite fast and confiscated the prize, also banning Mizzi and Vaughn from the site for good. Or this is what they thought then. The second place finisher Soren 'Kongsgaard' Kongsgaard was quite happy with this decision, he was awarded the first prize not much later.

As a consequence of the scandal, Mizzi has also been banned from PokerStars for 3 months, and resorted to playing at lesser known sites. The poker community condemned him, called him a cheater and his popularity quickly dropped, however, after Mizzi apologized many times online and offline alike, even posting a long explanation on TwoPlusTwo, slowly but painfully he could get his reputation back. His BLUFF Player of the Year nomination and win was no luck in his case, his extraordinary live tournament successes following the 2007 incident, for example his 2010 3rd place finish at the Aussie Millions Main Event cashing more than $650,000 were convincing enough. This might have influenced Full Tilt Poker urging them to forgive, this is why they must have let him back to the site. As it turns out from Mizzi's Twitter feed:

"19/25 in FTOPS #33 $300Rebuy- already won a ton in prop bets seeing if I can close big on first day back on FTP"

No official word has been given by Full Tilt about the reasons behind the unbanning so far.