As an 18-year-old Ali Imsirovic was playing $0.02-$0.04 online cash games, just beginning his journey into the poker world. Just eight years later, the 26-year-old has put together a record-setting year on the live tournament circuit that saw him run away with the 2021 Card Player Player of the Year award, sponsored by Global Poker.
“Honestly, I never thought this would ever be a possibility. My goal was to make it to $2-$4, or $5-$10, and make a reasonable living; to have the freedom and be happy just to play the game,” Imsirovic told Card Player after his incredible run this year. “As I got better and worked harder, it became more and more plausible that I could reach something higher than that. So, I started just dedicating basically all my time to [poker]. It was really all I cared about.”
“There was obviously a lot of luck to get to this stage, but I feel very accomplished,” he continued. “I’m super happy after dedicating all of that time, just to be able to achieve something like this that I can be proud of forever.”
In addition to winning the Card Player POY race, Imsirovic also secured the inaugural PokerGO Tour Player of the Year award. Check out a recap of that victory here.
Over the last 12 months, Imsirovic made a total of 30 POY-qualified final tables, falling just one shy of tying Jake Schindler’s record of 31. While Imsirovic narrowly missed out on that record, he managed to raise the bar to a whole new level in another key category: titles won.
Imsirovic racked up an astounding 14 POY-qualified titles this year, blowing away the previous record of 10 set by Justin Bonomo in 2018. That means that he converted a final table appearance into another trophy on the mantel 47 percent of the time in 2021. Imsirovic attributed his incredible success at closing out events this year to his time spent in the proverbial lab studying ICM (the Independent Chip Model).
“It’s the main thing I spent my time on, just working on how to get better at final tables, […]
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