2010 WSOP Main Event Final Table: The Finale on ESPN

As has happened pretty much every Tuesday evening for the last few months, I found myself sitting in front of the old crystal receiver once again last night, dialed into the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event coverage on ESPN.

That feeling of anticlimax I referred to yesterday was there again last night, particularly since I’d followed the coverage so closely on Saturday and Monday and so mainly found myself just waiting to see which hands would be highlighted. And hoping to see some of those hole cards in a few key hands which we didn’t get to see the first time around.

As I did last year, I took notes as I watched, marking down which of the 262 hands that were played at the final table made the final cut. A total of 24 hands were shown, with one -- Joseph Cheong’s elimination hand -- only being picked up on the turn. Here’s what we saw last night (see the PokerNews blog for full write-ups of each as they happened):

Hand No. 3 -- Jarvis raises from EP with and Cheong calls from the button with , eventually pushing Jarvis off hand after rivering a flush.

Hand No. 21 -- Racener’s pocket kings beat Dolan’s top pair of queens

Hand No. 22 -- Senti raises from the hijack with , Dolan three-bets from the button with , then Mizrachi four-bets from the big blind with , forcing folds from both, Dolan looking a bit nauseous when he does

Hand No. 28 -- Nguyen eliminated in 9th with versus Senti’s pocket queens

Hand No. 30 -- Candio doubles up with pocket aces versus Duhamel’s A-K

Hand No. 38 -- Jarvis loses another hand with pocket jacks when Cheong rivers another club flush

Hand No. 43 -- the wild one in which Jarvis is eliminated in 8th with pocket nines versus Mizrachi’s when the Grinder rivers a better full house (and we learn Senti folded a queen!)

Hand No. 49 -- Cheong gets randy with and wins a large pot from Duhamel when Cheong makes two pair while Duhamel pairs his ace with A-2

Hand No. 56 -- With no pair and a busted flush draw, Candio bluffs the river with Q-10-suited and gets Mizrachi to fold top pair of kings (and shows the bluff)

Hand No. 65 -- Senti doubles through Cheong when four diamonds save his from falling to Cheong’s

Hand No. 71 -- Mizrachi four-bets preflop with pocket jacks, forcing both Dolan (with pocket sevens) and Duhamel (with A-K) to fold; not incidentally, we see Racener fold a king and both Candio and Senti fold aces preflop in this one, suggesting Duhamel might’ve been in deep merde had he chosen to fight back here

Hand No. 112 -- Duhamel raises with pocket aces and both Racener and Candio call from blinds; the flop comes , and it checks to Duhamel who continuation bets; Racener folds, Candio check-raises all-in with , and Duhamel folds

Hand No. 116 -- Senti flops trips with A-K, but is eliminated in 7th when Cheong rivers a straight with pocket tens.

Hand No. 129 -- Dolan is eliminated in 6th with versus Duhamel’s pocket fours

Hand No. 139 -- Racener doubles through Mizrachi with A-K versus the Grinder’s A-8-suited

Hand No. 149 -- Racener doubles again, this time through Duhamel, getting lucky with A-Q versus Duhamel’s A-K

Hand No. 150 -- Duhamel doubles through Mizrachi with A-9 versus the Grinder’s pocket treys

Hand No. 185 -- Duhamel uses pocket aces to trap Mizrachi after the Grinder flops top pair with , eliminating him in 5th

Hand No. 188 -- Candio eliminated in 4th when his can’t catch up to Cheong’s

Hand No. 197 -- Cheong three-barrel bluffs from out of position with jack-high, losing a big pot to Duhamel who has A-K and rivers a king

Hand No. 213 -- The big one (discussed here), that almost 177 million-chip pot that Cheong loses after six-betting with A-7-offsuit and getting called by Duhamel with Q-Q

Hand No. 219 -- now short-stacked, Cheong () eliminated in 3rd by Duhamel (), a hand that is only shown from the turn onward

Hand No. 229 -- in the 10th hand of heads-up, Racener unsuccessfully tries a check-raise on the river with fourth pair, but loses to Duhamel’s two pair

Hand No. 262 -- Duhamel wins the bracelet when his holds up against Racener’s

Of the last seven hands shown, four were bustouts, which helped reinforce that feeling I had for the entire two-plus hours that we were rushing through the sucker. And just two hands from the 43-hand heads-up battle were shown, although really there were only a couple of other hands worth presenting there.

The program ran from 10:00 p.m. to 12:05 a.m. Eastern time. Until very recently, it had been scheduled to start at 9:00 p.m., but for whatever reason was bumped back. That change most certainly negatively affected ratings for the show, which reportedly have been down from last year.

You might recall how in 2008 -- the first year of the November Nine -- there were a number of complaints about how that Peter Eastgate-Ivan Demidov heads-up battle that lasted more than 100 hands had been condensed to just two hands shown. It had been necessary that year to abridge the heads-up battle so severely in order to fit the program into the two-hour slot.

So last year ESPN gave an extra half-hour to the WSOP ME final table program. That gave us a chance to see more of Darvin Moon and Joe Cada’s genuinely compelling battle for the bracelet.

Would obviously liked to have seen that extra half-hour included in the show again last night. Not crazy about the move back to 10 p.m., either. But still, stepping back and taking all 32 hours and 5 minutes of 2010 WSOP coverage into consideration, it was certainly an entertaining ride on ESPN for the last 16 Tuesdays.

2010 WSOP Main Event Final Table: Limping to the Finish

Last night, Jonathan Duhamel became the first Canadian to win the World Series of Poker Main Event, finishing off the short-stacked John Racener of Florida in just 43 hands to claim the bracelet and the $8,944,310 that went with it.

Was a little anticlimactic last night. Seemed destined to be that way, given that Duhamel started with 86% of the chips, and thus Racener needed a quick double-up or two for the pair to be able to engage in a “fair” fight.

Was searching around some more after my post yesterday about heads-up play at the WSOP ME. Statistics get fuzzy prior to 2000, but it looked as though the last time a player was down this much heads-up and came back to win was 1991. Don Holt apparently had a huge lead on Brad Daugherty -- I have seen it referred to as a “10-to-1” advantage as well as 1.9 million to 250,000 -- before Daugherty came back to win.

On Saturday, Racener had frequently demonstrated passive play throughout the day and night, a strategy which ultimately -- thanks in part to the way the cards fell and the approaches chosen by some of the other players -- served him well enough to allow him to sneak into the final two.

It wasn’t that surprising, then, to see Racener continue in that same, non-aggressive vein last night, given his short-stacked status. That said, it was a little unexpected to see Racener “turtle up” to the extent that he did. At times it almost seemed like he was nursing a short stack on the cash bubble or something, only he couldn’t fold his way into any more cash here.

He had little room to maneuver, of course.

For the first 10 hands last night the blinds were 600,000/1,200,000, though with a 200,000-chip ante on top that we might just think of it as 800K/1.4 million. Racener hovered around his starting stack of 30 million for that entire stretch, so in essence he was a shade above the 20 big blind range for most of those initial hands.

On the 11th hand of heads-up play the blinds moved to 800,000/1,600,000, again with a 200,000 ante. Soon Racener dipped below the 20 BB range, reducing his options even further. His stack continued to dwindle, and by the very end he was down to less than 15 million (to Duhamel’s 200 million-plus).

Looking over the 43 hands, it wasn’t until Hand #30 -- the 15th time Racener had the button -- that the Floridian opened with a raise. The first 14 times he either limped (12 times) or open-folded (twice). Meanwhile, Duhamel was mostly opening with standard raises with his big stack, doing so 13 of those first 15 times he had the button.

Interestingly, that first time Racener did finally open with a raise, Duhamel responded with an all-in reraise, and Racener let it go. Following that one, both players either limped or folded their buttons for the next eight hands.

Then came a short sequence of uncalled, all-in shoves from both players. Finally, Racener called Duhamel’s all-in raise on Hand #43 and his failed to catch up to the Canadian’s .

In the end, then, Racener had the button 21 times last night, and only opened with a raise twice -- once on that Hand #30, then again when he pushed all in and didn’t get a call on the penultimate Hand #42.

Racener was obviously in a tight spot, and it’s hard to be too critical given the way his short stack limited his options. With 15-20 big blinds, he couldn’t really mess around with standard preflop raises that much, as doing so wouldn’t leave him with enough to continuation bet unless it were to push all in.

The issue is mostly academic, anyway. Racener’s chip disadvantage was so large, it was probably the case that any strategy he chose was more likely than not to fail. Still, would’ve been nice to see a bit more fight in last night’s battle.

Will be watching ESPN’s rapidly-packaged highlight show tonight, for sure. Last year a total of 32 out of the 364 final table hands were shown, with the program lasting about two-and-a-half hours. Here’s a rundown of all 32 hands shown, by the way.

I imagine they’ll be allotted a similar amount of time for the show tonight, so we’re probably going to see around 30 of the hands played. Will be most interested, of course, in those hands without showdowns, in which we didn’t learn of players’ holdings when following the action. (Then again, now that I think about it, those are precisely the hands that are less likely to be featured tonight!)

I still can’t bring myself to get fully behind the whole final table delay ideer, I’m afraid. Has been a lot of fun, once again, to relive the July portion of the WSOP ME story over the last few months, and Saturday’s action did provide a lot of entertainment. But even though the “narrative” has been well-constructed once again, I think it is now set up in such a way that the ending is always likely to prove at least somewhat anticlimactic.

In other words, you might say Racener wasn’t the only one limping last night. Everybody was.

2010 WSOP Main Event Final Table: Can Racener Defy Odds, History?

Tonight Jonathan Duhamel will try to turn his better than 6-to-1 chip lead over John Racener into a World Series of Poker Main Event bracelet.

The Poker Hall of Fame induction ceremony for Dan Harrington and Erik Seidel is set to take place there in the Penn and Teller Theater at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino at 7:30 p.m. Vegas time. Then at 8 p.m. Duhamel and Racener will be introduced, with cards scheduled to go in the air shortly thereafter.

Duhamel’s huge lead got me wondering whether Racener’s deficit might be the largest ever at the start of heads-up play. The hoodie-wearing Canadian will have 188,950,000 chips when the first hand is dealt tonight, while the gum-chewing Floridian will have but 30,750,000.

That 158 million-plus chip advantage is most certainly the largest ever to start heads-up play at the WSOP Main Event, quantity-wise. But how about in relative terms? With almost exactly 86% of the chips to start heads-up play, is Duhamel beginning tonight with the biggest-ever head start over his opponent in terms of the the percentage of total chips?

The answer is no.

Just looking back at the previous decade, there are a couple of examples in which a player had an even greater advantage to start heads-up play. Take a look:

2009 -- Joe Cada 135,950,000 (69.8%), Darvin Moon 58,850,000 (30.2%)
2008 -- Peter Eastgate 80,300,000 (58.7%), Ivan Demidov 56,600,000 (41.3%)
2007 -- Jerry Yang 104,450,000 (81.9%), Tuan Lam 23,025,000 (18.1%)
2006 -- Jamie Gold 78,975,000 (87.6%), Paul Wasicka 11,225,000 (12.4%)
2005 -- Joe Hachem 38,740,000 (68.9%), Steve Dannenmann 17,450,000 (31.1%)
2004 -- Greg Raymer 17,125,000 (67.5%), David Williams 8,240,000 (32.5%)
2003 -- Chris Moneymaker 5,490,000 (65.4%), Sam Farha 2,900,000 (34.6%)
2002 -- Robert Varkonyi 5,105,000 (80.9%), Julian Gardner 1,205,000 (19.1%)
2001 -- Carlos Mortensen ~4 million (66.7%), Dewey Tomko ~2 million (33.33%)
2000 -- Chris Ferguson ~4.6 million (90.2%), T.J. Cloutier ~500,000 (9.8%)

Looks like Jamie Gold had a slightly bigger advantage over Paul Wasicka in 2006 than Duhamel has over Racener. And while the numbers are approximate, it appears Ferguson had about a 10-to-1 chip lead over Cloutier in 2000.

By the way, looking over that list, do you notice a trend? That’s right. In each of the last 10 years at the WSOP Main Event, the player with the most chips to start heads-up play eventually won the bracelet.

Some of the matches were brief. Hachem and Dannenmann played just six hands in 2005. Gold and Wasicka didn't play much longer, lasting just 20 minutes. Other matches went on much longer and saw changes in the chip lead. Remember how Darvin Moon held the lead briefly last year during his 88-hand battle with Joe Cada?

But all 10 years, the player with the most chips going into heads-up play would be the only one left with chips when it concluded.

Statistics are harder to track down prior to 2000, but most accounts of the 1999 WSOP Main Event report that eventual winner Noel Furlong and runner-up Alan Goehring began their heads-up battle with virtually even stacks. Can say more definitively, though, that in 1998 -- the year Scotty Nguyen defeated Kevin McBride to win the bracelet -- the winner did not start that heads-up battle with the lead. McBride had something like 2.2 million to start there, while the Prince of Poker had about 1.3 million.

Odds are against Racener to break the streak, obviously. And looking at how both Duhamel and Racener played on Saturday, it certainly appears Duhamel has more than just a chip advantage going for him, having demonstrated a lot more versatility in his play than did Racener as they played down from nine to two.

But Racener was relatively short for much of the day, and thus his options often were relatively limited. And, of course, heads-up play always introduces a different dynamic which sometimes affects players’ approaches, causing them to play differently -- and/or better or worse -- than they did before.

What’s your prediction?

2010 WSOP Main Event Final Table: Cheong Strong? Or Just Wrong?

It was a blow-up. A meltdown. Spewing at the highest magnitude. An implosion. Millions of chips -- and dollars -- pissed away.

It was baller. Fifth-level thinking. An heroic move. Ballsy. Epic. Sick.

You decide.

After 212 hands at the final table, just three players remained from the 7,319 who had entered the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event. More than $8.9 million awaited the winner. The runner-up was due more than $5.5 million, with $4.13 million going to the next one out.

The blinds were 600,000/1,200,000 (with 200,000 antes). John Racener was sitting in a distant third with about 36 million (30 big blinds) when he began the hand by folding from the button. Joseph Cheong, then leading with something in the neighborhood of 90 million (75 BBs), opened with a raise to 2.9 million from the small blind. Jonathan Duhamel, sitting in the big blind with about 83 million or so to start the hand (70 BBs), responded by reraising to 6.75 million.

The action back on Cheong, he made it 14.25 million to go, then Duhamel reraised once again to 22.75 million. That’s when Cheong made the big push all in, and Duhamel made the call.

No, Cheong didn’t have aces. Or kings. Or A-K. Cheong had but , and was looking for an ace to overcome Duhamel’s . The board ran out , and just like that Duhamel had 177 million or so while Cheong was suddenly down to around 5 million.

Cheong would double up once, then win two more small pots when his all-in raises before the flop went uncalled. But then, just half a dozen hands after losing the biggest pot in WSOP history (chip-wise), Cheong -- seemingly a lock to make it to heads-up just a few minutes before -- was eliminated in third.

There were a number of other high-drama hands yesterday.

Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi’s knockout of Matt Jarvis in eighth place in which the latter was all in before the flop with pocket nines against Mizrachi’s was one. The community cards came , meaning both players had the lead two times -- Jarvis preflop and on the turn, and Mizrachi on the flop and on the river. The hand also uncannily recalled a similar one from the 2003 WSOP Main Event in which Chris Moneymaker knocked out Phil Ivey in 10th place, although in that history-altering hand the betting concluded on the turn.

Jason Senti’s elimination in seventh at the hands of Cheong had a similar, punch-to-the-gut feel. All in with versus Cheong’s pocket tens, Senti flopped trip kings, but running turn and river cards gave Cheong a king-high straight and the hand.

A little later, the two players who would ultimately make it to heads up -- Racener and Duhamel -- each survived all-in situations on back-to-back hands.

First Racener doubled through Duhamel with versus Duhamel’s when a queen flopped, and Racener’s hand held. On the very next hand, Duhamel would be all in with versus Mizrachi’s pocket treys. He’d hit a nine on that flop and survive.

Duhamel would subsequently knock out Mizrachi in fifth place in a hand in which the Canadian sneakily played pocket aces to trap the Grinder. Cheong would next eliminate a short-stacked Filippo Candio in fourth. Then the two big stacks would battle back and forth for the next two dozen hands before the big one. The big, big, big one.

I had thought of Cheong -- known as “subiime” online -- as the player to watch among these final nine. Even suggested on Friday that I considered him a decent pick to win the sucker. And he certainly helped make a highly entertaining final table even more interesting, his aggression in the decisive hand versus Duhamel just one of many, many examples of such throughout the night. And for most of the night Cheong pretty clearly showed he was indeed one of the strongest players at the table.

Then came Hand Number 213. Where it all went wrong.

Barring any strangeness Monday night -- when Duhamel will carry a more than 5-to-1 chip lead into heads-up play versus Racener -- I think it is probably safe to assume that Cheong’s six-bet shove with A-7-offsuit will undoubtedly be the most discussed decision of the 2010 WSOP Main Event final table. How will it be remembered?

You decide.

(EDIT [added 12/3/10]: For more on this amazing hand, check out Andrew "Foucault" Brokos’ analysis for the Two Plus Two Magazine, “Joseph Cheong’s WSOP Final Table ‘Blow Up.’”)