After receiving serious injuries at the collapse of the second tower in the rescue effort following the World Trade Center attacks, NYPD detective, Mike Kosowski, was forced to retire. Faced with boredom, the Staten Island resident took up playing amateur poker.
In an online poker tournament at the PokerStars website, Mike Kosowski won 4th place out of 16,000 players. The win qualified Kosowski to send in a video to PokerStars elucidating why the retired detective would make a good contestant on the PokerStars game show. Mike Kosowski soon found himself and his wife, Francis, on a plane to Los Angeles where he had been accepted as an alternate player.
In a fortuitous turn of events, Mike Kosowski was given the opportunity to play. He won the two 4-player poker games that earned him the seat against PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu, and he was not unprepared for the event. Kosowski had been doing his homework, studying Negreanu’s behavioral patterns in televised poker tournaments. The former police detective discovered a tell – that Negreanu would put his hand behind his head when he didn’t have a good hand.
Mike Kosowski wouldn’t reveal details about the last hand of the PokerStars Million Dollar Challenge in which he defeated Negreanu, but he humbly credited his win to luck. The episode will air December 27, 2009 on FOX.
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