After one of the most interesting World Series of Poker final tables in history we are now down to just two players, John Racener –rocking the Full Tilt Poker logo on his trademark backwards baseball hat—and Jonathan Duhamel –the Final Table chip-leader who will be sporting the PokerStars logo on his trademark hoodie.
Going into the heads-up battle it doesn’t seem like a very fair fight considering Racener is out-chipped by over 6-to-1! Duhamel takes a mammoth stack of 189 million into the heads-up match, while Racener enters the fray with just over 30 million. But if the 2010 WSOP final table has taught us anything it is to take nothing for granted.
Here’s a quick look at how Racener and Duhamel got to this point:
The first player sent packing was Soi Nguyen when he lost a race with AK to Jason Senti’s QQ. Senti spiked a Queen on the flop and Nguyen couldn’t catch-up.
The next player eliminated was Matthew Jarvis who went through a rollercoaster ride of emotions on his bust-out hand. Jarvis, holding 99, was flipping with Mike Mizrachi’s AQ pre-flop, only to see Mizrachi flop not one but two Queens! Jarvis hit his two-outer on the Turn, but was left reeling when an Ace hit on the River giving Mizrachi Queen’s Full to Jarvis’s Nine’s Full.
Next out was Senti, and his final hand was just as wild as Jarvis’s. Senti’s AK was basically a coin-flip pre-flop with Joseph Cheong’s TT, but a KKQ flop saw Senti take a huge lead in the hand. Only to see a Jack on the Turn and then a 9 on the river give Cheong a runner-runner straight!
John Dolan followed Senti out the door when he lost a race with Q5s after open-shoving from the Small Blind to Duhamel’s 44.
The next elimination was obviously the most talked about as Mike “The Grinder” Mizrachi was eliminated in 5th place. Mizrachi had built himself up to the chip-lead, but couldn’t get anything going and seemed to be between 55 and 60 million for a long time. Then Mizrachi lost a few mid-sized pots to Cheong, followed by calling a short-stacked John Racener, which doubled Racener up, before finding himself all-in on a Queen-high flop with top pair, but trailing the Pocket Aces of Jonathan Duhamel.
Filippo Candio was the next player to hit the rail in 4th place. Candio’s KQs lost to Cheong’s A3s, but unlike the earlier gut-wrenching eliminations this hand was fairly academic after the flop came with an Ace.
The last player eliminated early Sunday morning was Joseph Cheong, when he made a very questionable decision to 6-bet all-in against Jonathan Duhamel. At the time Cheong was the chip-leader, Duhamel right on his heels and Racener way back with a short-stack of about 25 million. Cheong’s decision to get mixed up in a raising war with A7 will be questioned for many years, but it might all come back to his admission before the WSOP final table that he really didn’t want to win the thing!
Racener and Duhamel will return to the Rio on Monday night, which you can watch live on ESPN3.com –without the hole-card cam, or you can wait for Tuesday Night when ESPN will telecast the final table with hole-cards and all.
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