Poker News

Mickey Wernick

How many British pro players can you name? I imagine most North American poker enthusiasts can only think of a handful of the most high profile players, such as Dave “Devilfish” Ulliot, Roland de Wolfe, or maybe Ram Vaswani. There is however one player from over here who you should also know about, as his status in the UK is nothing short of legendary.

Sixty-three-year-old Mickey “The Worm” Wernick was one of the first wave of British players to visit Las Vegas back in the late 1970s and upon hisreturn he helped introduce Texas hold’em to the UK. Although he does not yet have the media profile he deserves, his stature is once again growing and it will surely not be long before his name is frequently mentioned in the same breath as these other top British pros.

In the eighties Mickey was a big cash game player and on one of his frequent visits to Las Vegas he played heads up against Stu Ungar, emerging victorious after a marathon session. He has also made several WSOP final tables, most recently in the Razz in 2005, but the closest he came to winning a bracelet was in 1986 when he chopped an Omaha event, taking the most money, but failing to walk away with the jewellery as he eventually finished in second place.

A gambler at heart, Mickey has gone broke more times than he cares to remember and until three years ago he had spent quite a few years in the poker wilderness. But in 2005 Mickey re-emerged as a force to be reckoned with. Having had a reasonable start to the year, he found himself in the top ten of the provisional European rankings and enquired of myself whether he could get a sponsorship deal from Blue Square Poker, the online site I work for.

I set him a challenge-win the European rankings and he would get a deal from my firm. This seemed to energize Mickey and he put together an impressive string of results in the last three months of the year to take the title of European Number One. True to my word, he got his long overdue sponsorship deal. He has now been sponsored by Blue Square for two years and has just secured a further two years of backing. Mickey, a lifelong chain smoker was recently set another challenge in order to maintain his sponsorship status-give up the ciggies and he would get a further two years added to his contract. He stopped smoking the minute the prop bet was struck and provided he maintains this until the end of the year, he will have his sponsorship deal extended until the end of 2009.

Just recently Mickey made another final table, this time on the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (GUKPT) in Plymouth.

Having been down to as low as 3,000 chips half way through day two, he staged a remarkable recovery to push on into the nine handed TV final table. This comeback came as no surprise as Mickey has a reputation for being one of the best short stacked players around. At the point where most players give up and shove with anything, Mickey clings to his last remaining chips, waiting for the best opportunity to get back in the game. On numerous occasions I have witnessed him come back from next to nothing toput himself back in contention. This time he finished in a creditable fourth place, having been one of the lowest stacks going into the final. He makes an annual trip to Vegas every year, but until he next ventures Stateside, he will be busy doing what he does best-winning event after event here in the UK.

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