James Mackey, who was born in February 1986, hails from Kansas City, Missouri. He attended the University of Missouri before dropping out of a pre-med program to pursue professional poker as a career. James Mackey started playing poker online in 2005 and till the age of 21, James Mackey was mainly an online player, known primarily as mig.com, with aliases of mig.net or mig.org, depending on the poker site.
At the WPT World Championship / WPT Event Season 5 No-Limit Hold'em held on April 9, 2007, James Mackey finished 3rd with a total winning amount of $61, 235. On June 13, the same year, he won the 38th Annual World Series of Poker Event #22 - WSOP No-Limit Hold'em to take home a huge booty of $730, 740. James Mackey overthrew 639 other participants and won heads-up against Stuart Fox with ten-deuce to grab his first WSOP bracelet. The game lasted all of two hours and 35 minutes, making it the fastest final table at the 2007 WSOP and the fastest since May 2003. On September 24th, 2007, James Mackey won the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) $1050 buy-in event to take home the bracelet and prize money of $580,212.50 which was the third biggest prize in the site's history. The next best performance of James Mackey for the year came on 5th December, at the Bellagio Five Diamond World Poker Classic / WPT Season 6 No-Limit Hold'em where he finished 14th with $7,480 in prize money.
On 15 April, 2008, at the Five Star World Classic Poker Classic/WPT World Championship-Season 6 Event #13 – No-Limit Hold'em, he finished 4th and $50, 565 was all his to claim. At the 39th World Series of Poker 2008 Event #8 - WSOP World Championship Mixed Event held on June 4, 2008, he bettered his ranking to 2nd and went home richer by $297,792. On July 11, at the 39th World Series of Poker 2008 Event #22 - WSOP H.O.R.S.E, he finished 25th and won a prize money of $6, 284.
James Mackey claims that he has some regard for Patrick Antonius and Phil Ivey as poker players, though he does not have any idols as such. Some feel that his style is similar to that of Doyle Brunson, the legendary poker pro. James Mackey prefers playing outside the box because it is too cramped to sit inside one and allows only a few spectators. He is a very good example for appearances being deceptive. With that cherubic face and strawberry red hair, James Mackey hardly looks like a player with a killer-instinct, but he is one, for sure. As of 2007, he is the third youngest player to win a WSOP bracelet (21 years 4 months old). James Mackey, who shares rooms with a couple of friends in Columbia, claims that he does nothing special when he is away from the poker table.
