Racener and Duhamel to play for WSOP Championship

After a very long day of poker at the Rio in Las Vegas we are finally down to the final two players in contention for the 2010 Worlds Series of Poker Main Event Championship. After some huge chip swings, and some wild, jaw-dropping, hands it was Full Tilt Poker’s John Racener and PokerStars’ Jonathan Duhamel left standing when the dust settled early Sunday Morning.

All of the players had their chances during the tournament and it seemed the poker gods were determining the winners and losers. While the players made very few mistakes strategically -a couple that stand out are hands by John Dolan early on, as does Joseph Cheong’s confrontation with Jonathan Duhamel during 3-handed play which I will discuss below– Hand after hand it seemed as though players would go from huge favorites to big dogs on the turn of a card. But, unlike last year the money rarely went in bad; the drama seemed to play out afterwards.

Two such examples were the bust-out hands of Matthew Jarvis and Jason Senti. Both players got it in as what amounted to a coin-flip only to suffer through a rollercoaster ride of emotions as fortunes changed from flop to turn to river.

Jarvis held 99 against Mike Mizrachi’s AQ only to see the board run-out: Q-8-Q – the miracle 9 – and then a heartbreaking Ace!

Senti faced a similar situation holding AK against Joseph Cheong’s pocket Tens: This time the board ran out K-K-Q – J – 9 to give Cheong a runner-runner straight.

Duhamel will take a mammoth chip advantage into the heads-up match on Monday night thanks to a clash during three-handed play with Joseph Cheong. Duhamel held roughly 90 million chips at the time -Cheong had Duhamel covered by some 10 million chips-and after Cheong 6-Bet shoved (YES, I said 6-bet!) Duhamel called with his Pocket Queens. Cheong revealed his hand, an A7, and will likely question the play for the rest of his days -Especially considering John Racener was sitting on a stack of around 25 million at the time.

Although he was able to double-through, Cheong was eliminated a few hands later, which left Racener and Duhamel as the final two players in the 2010 WSOP Championship. The two will get a much needed day-off on Sunday before returning to the Penn & Teller Theater on Monday night to play for the nearly $9 million first-prize, not to mention the poker immortality and sponsorship deals that go along with winning the WSOP Main Event.

When play resumes Jonathan Duhamel will have a massive chip advantage over John Racener: 188,950,000 to 30,750,000. The difference between first place prize-money and second place prize-money is substantial: $8,944,310 compared to $5,545,955.

Here is a look at how the final table participants finished:

• 3. Joseph Cheong — 4,130,049
• 4. Filippo Candio — 3,092,545
• 5. Michael Mizrachi — 2,332,992
• 6. John Dolan — 1,772,959
• 7. Jason Senti — 1,356,720
• 8. Matthew Jarvis — 1,045,743
• 9. Soi Nguyen — 811,823