Home / Poker News December 2009 / Mike Kosowski wins PokerStars.net $1 million challenge
Mike Kosowski wins PokerStars.net $1 million challenge
Posted by: James Carter. - Tue, 2009-12-22 05:35
The battle of the televised poker shows between
Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars had been pretty one-sided from the get go. The format featured by PokerStars was obviously superior as were the hosts and poker pros involved. If the
online poker room’s $1 million challenge garnered unprecedented interest with its first episode, its last one is certain to break all records thanks to the story-line it features. The show will only air on December 27th, but we can tell you by now that in a twist of fate reminiscent of a fairy tale, retired NYPD sergeant Mike Kosowski will defeat Daniel Negreanu for the $1 million prize to become a millionaire.
The interesting thing is Kosowski is a Sept 11 hero who actively searched for survivors at the World Trade Center in 2001. He was forced to retire from the NYPD due to asthma and hernia acquired during the search and rescue operations. His bravery was documented in the book “Never forget: the oral history of Sept. 11 2001”.
Having such a person win their televised event was like a dream for
PokerStars, one that unfortunately seemed rather unlikely after Joanna Krupa defeated the alternate participant in one of the preliminaries.
The whole poker adventure started out on the wrong foot for the Sept. 11 hero. He had to cancel his 25th wedding anniversary celebration in order to go to LA to take part in the show. The fact alone that he did end up in front of the cameras was a huge achievement, considering the odds involved. He then dropped his first preliminary game to Joanna Krupa, after which it again looked like the adventure had come to an end.
Eventually though, things turned around and the retired policeman gathered momentum with each opponent he defeated. He ripped through the two opponents the SNG qualifiers had him playing against, and that gave him confidence to go for all the marbles.
After he disposed of PokerStars pro Daniel Negreanu in the final, Kosowski suddenly found himself a millionaire. He said he’d use the money to fix up his house, pay off his mortgage, to constitute a nest-egg and to support two 9/11 related organizations through donations.
