Sorrel Mizzi, more infamously known as Imper1um apparently did not learn from his mistakes last year. Last year, Mizzi purchased the account of BluffMagCV from Chris Vaughn and proceeded to win the Full Tilt Million Dollar Challenge. This occurred on October 27th of last year.

Sorel Mizzi

Mizzi later went around and apologized, stating that he had made a mistake when he purchased the account of Vaughn. On February 20th of this year, Betfair singed Mizzi to a sponsorship deal. He later stated in his blog that he “I simply did not THINK when I bought the account. It was a reckless action, which can be clearly evidenced by my complete and utter carelessness to even try to cover my tracks which I could have easily done. It was completely stupid and naive. I was approached with an offer, I said yes, and I made a poor decision. I would NEVER do it again.”

On October 14th, the following message was posted by ThePOKERstaR on PocketFives.com, “Always a cheater… poor imper1um will never learn. Also formerly known as zangbezan24 because he has now been banned from stars for the very same thing as full tilt during the WCOOPS. I guess that public apology wasn’t that genuine after all.”

This started a flurry of discussion and accusations from the general public. Finally Imper1um came forth and set the record straight.

“LOL , and this is why I don’t read the forums, nothing but drama and people spreading false rumors…. Initially I wasn’t going to respond to this but it seems like it’s getting a little bit out of hand.

Sorry to disappoint everyone, but I only got suspended on Pokerstars and it was for a minor infraction which I don’t think I should have been suspended for in the first place.

Basically what happened was I was at the airport in Barcelona , ready to fly to London, when I realized that I had already preregistered for one of the WCOOP events ($300R PLO). Since the flight from Barcelona to London is only an hour, I called my friend (who will remain nameless) from the airport and asked him to login and play until I arrived at my hotel and set up the internet. I ended up getting to my hotel about 1hr and a half into the tournament. I told him to log off, he did, and I continued playing the rest of the tournament.

This is the only time I’ve let anyone login to my account since the incident on FTP…. I had no malicious intent and my actions were 100% reasonable and innocent.

I knew I should have been smarter and just blinded out accepting the $300 loss. It’s evident that Pokerstars has me red flagged because they think I’m associated with JJ in more ways than I am and because of the FTP incident…. I feel like they were just waiting for me to slip up and I guess this was enough for them.

Pokerstars wanted to suspend me for 6 months but after continuous back and forth e-mails they reduced the suspension to 3 months.

Although I don’t agree with the suspension and think it’s extremely harsh given the circumstances, I can appreciate the fact that Pokerstars is enforcing their rules and doing their part in protecting the integrity of online poker.”

So, it appears that Mizzi has indeed been suspended again for a rules violation involving his account. Regardless of how he may feel, this does constitute cheating in the minds of many people. You cannot register for an event in a live tournament and have someone else sit down and play for you. You would be disqualified from the event, and likely barred from playing again.

The argument can be made by many that this is a common occurrence. While it may be common, it still does not mean it is ethical. Players such as Mizzi should realize that they are high profile players and that their actions will be under intense scrutiny. He again showed poor judgment and was caught. It will be interesting to see if this affects his sponsorship deal with Betfair at all. Mizzi and other players need to be careful. Actions such as this ruin a person’s reputation. If you mess up, apologize, and fly right, people eventually will give you a second change. When you continue to exhibit similar behavior, eventually you name and your word becomes meaningless, and as many of us knows, in poker, your name and your word is everything.