We are back!
After a 110-day hiatus, the 2010 November Nine will reconvene at noon PT on Saturday, November 6th to determine who will be crowned this year’s World Series of Poker Main Event Champion.
Celebrity announcer Bruce Buffer will handle the ceremonial start in front of a near 1500-person capacity crowd inside the Penn and Teller Theater at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino before the final table action gets underway at noon.
Play will continue until two players remain. Heads-up play will resume on Monday, November 8th at 8 pm PT when the final two will play down to a winner. Coverage of the final table will air in a two-hour telecast on Tuesday at 10 pm ET on ESPN.
The winner of this year’s Main Event, the second largest in the 40-year history of the WSOP with 7,319 entrants, will take home $8,944,310 in prize money and the most coveted token of achievement in all of poker, the World Series of Poker Main Event Championship Bracelet.
The nine players are playing for a staggering $29,032,637 with each on average taking home more than $3.2 million.
Blinds will be 250,000-500,000 with a 50,000 ante when we restart in Level 36 and with eight of the nine players remaining under age 30, the action is expected to be fast, aggressive and unpredictable.
Among the story lines that have developed since this year’s November Nine were introduced to the world back in July is whether celebrated pro Michael Mizrachi will be able to tie Frank Kassela for 2010 WSOP Player of the Year.
On Day 4 of the Main Event, it was noted that Mizrachi was the only player remaining with a chance to tie for POY honors with a win in the Main Event, however as one of the shorter stacks and with 571 players still remaining, his odds to do so seemed astronomical.
However, true to his name, “The Grinder” resurged on Day 5 to loft himself above the chip average and eventually near the top of the leader board. Now, with only 8 competitors left to beat, Mizrachi, who earlier in the series won the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, has a clear shot at cementing his name in poker infamy.
Fellow pro, John Racener, joins Mizrachi as one of the players to beat at the final table although the player to look out for when play resumes Saturday clearly will be the chip leader, 23-year-old Jonathan Duhamel from Boucherville, Quebec, Canada.
Duhamel will have a dominating lead over most of his final table opponents and has demonstrated that he knows how to wield a large cache of chips. Duhamel along with Matt Jarvis, an amateur from Surrey, British Columbia, make up the Canadian contingent of this year’s November Nine.
The other non-American player among the Nine is Filippo Candio. The 26-year-old is the first Italian to ever make it to the WSOP Main Event Final Table. With the recent growth of poker in Italy, thousands of Candio’s country men will be sure to follow his progress throughout the day.
24-year-old Joseph Cheong of La Mirada, CA, who was able to duplicate his success on the 2009/2010 WSOP Circuit at this year’s WSOP, comes to the final table third in chips while fellow Californian, Soi Nguyen, and Jason Senti of St. Louis Park, MN round out the final nine. Both have steep roads ahead of them coming into the final table as the bottom two in chips.
Who will win? Keep it here for all the latest news, chip counts and photos from the finale to find out and be sure to tune in to ESPN’s telecast on Tuesday at 10 PM ET to see how it all unfolded.