Michail Grigorev won the Sixth Annual Why Not? Foundation Poker Night on September 18 at Fontainebleau Las Vegas, as Russell Westbrook’s charity event raised $912,500 at its new home on the Las Vegas Strip. Phil Ivey, Michael Mizrachi, Bill Perkins, and Alan Keating sat at the tables alongside NBA veterans DeAndre Jordan and Harrison Barnes, with Westbrook himself playing to the final hand. The result was published via Business Wire on September 22 on behalf of the Why Not? Foundation.
Michail Grigorev Wins, Phil Ivey Runs the Table
The sixth edition moved into Fontainebleau Las Vegas’s members-only Poodle Room with tournament seats priced at $10,000. Organized in partnership with the World Poker Tour Foundation, the night was hosted by Drea Renee and Vince Van Patten and brought poker professionals, athletes, and long-time Foundation supporters together for the first time at the Strip venue.
Phil Ivey arrived late and immediately took command, battling Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt and doubling up on former NBA superstar Russell Westbrook in quick succession. In one of the evening’s featured hands, Ivey moved all-in, and Westbrook called, giving the room the Ivey-Westbrook showdown it came for.
Ivey prevailed. Westbrook also went all-in in a separate hand, holding what the WPT described on Instagram as the worst hand in poker. Michail Grigorev ultimately won the title, outlasting a final table that included actress and television personality Princess Love, producer Randall Emmett, and poker player and content creator Britney, who finished fifth.
$912,500 for Schools, Camps, and Wildfire Recovery
The $912,500 raised Friday brings the event’s six-year total to nearly $3 million. All proceeds go to the Why Not? Foundation’s programs in Los Angeles and Oklahoma City, including Westbrook Academy, the public charter school for grades 6 through 12 in South Los Angeles that the Westbrooks and the Foundation launched in 2020. The Class of 2026 graduated at a 100 percent rate.
The school’s permanent campus in South Gate, opened in September 2025, includes science labs, a film studio, and two on-site wellness centers, and has a ratio of one social worker for every 115 students, compared with a Los Angeles County average of roughly one per 3,500. The Foundation also supports wildfire recovery work in Altadena following the Eaton Fire and runs an annual basketball camp each July serving more than 200 young people across South Los Angeles.
Westbrook: “That’s What Means the Most to Me”
“This is the biggest night of the year for everything we do,” Westbrook said in a statement issued by the Foundation. “It pays for the school, for the kids’ camp we run every July, for Thanksgiving meals in South Los Angeles, and for families in Altadena still rebuilding after the fire. We have kids who first came to camp when they were four years old who are teenagers now and still coming back. That’s what means the most to me.”
The event was organized in partnership with the World Poker Tour Foundation. Information in this article is sourced from the Why Not? Foundation’s official Business Wire press release dated September 22, 2026.
- Information and photos courtesy of the Why Not? Foundation via Business Wire.
- Article originally produced at poker.pro.
