41st Annual World Series Of Poker, 2010
The 2010 WSOP main event, $10,000 No Limit Hold'em up Championship, attracted close to 7319 entrants, with total pool amount of $68,798,600 and the winning prize money of $8,944,138. The main event, which began on July 5th, went on till July 17th to reach the final table of 9, also known as the November Nine. As the name suggests, the 9 players who made it to the table of 9 winning the highest number of chips, are going to have a showdown 4 months later on 6th November 2010 for the most coveted title in the world of Poker, the WSOP 2010. The nine poker players who made it to the final list of November Nine beating the rest 7310 players, along with their total chips earning and country of representation, includes the following.
Seat 1: Jonathan Duhamel - 65,975,000 - Canada
Seat 2: John Dolan - 46,250,000 - USA
Seat 3: Joseph Cheong - 23,525,000 - USA
Seat 4: John Racener - 19,050,000 - USA
Seat 5: Matthew Jarvis - 16,700,000 - Canada
Seat 6: Filippo Candio - 16,400,000 - Italy
Seat 7: Michael Mizarchi - 14,450,000 - USA
Seat 8: Soi Nguyen - 9,650,000 - USA
Seat 9: Jason Senti - 7,625,000 - USA
The delaying of the WSOP final table by 4 months has been having a Positive Response since its inception in WSOP 2008, by creating a mass hype and attracting a large number of audiences, to turn the finals into a "sold out" event.
The winner of the previous world series poker, the 2009 WSOP champion Joe Cada had a bad year losing in the 3rd round of the main event. Other champions of WSOP also didn't have a favorable period with the 2007 champion Jerry Yang making an exit in the 1st round itself apart from Jamie Gold, Joe Hachem and Greg Raymer winners of the 2006, 2005 and 2004 WSOP respectively also making a beeline by being knocked out in the first round as well.
Michael Mizarachi, after winning the 7th seat in the November Nine, created a sibling milestone along with his brothers Robert, Eric and Daniel by becoming the first set of four siblings to cash in the Main Event of WSOP. While Eric finished at 718th, Daniel finished at 345th, followed by Robert finishing at 116th place and Michael making it to the final table of November Nine.
The deciding match between the winner of the Seat 1 in the November Nine, Jonathan Duhamel of Canada and Matt Affleck, who finished at 15th position, turned out to be a nail biting & spine chilling match that garnered much attention from media and fans alike. Duhamel with the button started the game with a raise to 550,000. Matt Affleck without hesitation raised his bet to 1.55 million. This led Duhamel to re-raise his bid to total 3.925 million chips. Affleck, in no mood for giving up, further called 8 million going into the flop which turned out to be 10  9  7  Duhamel, at this, to play safe checked the pot. Affleck, raring to go, shelved out more 5 million which Duhamel called. The turn card was flipped and turned out to be a Q Leaving no stones un turned Matt Affleck parted with his remaining 11.6 million chips which Duhamel Called. Both the players flipped their cards to show the world of the match that was going to decide the fate of one of them with 42 million chips on pot already. Matt Affleck's card turned out to be A  A while Jonathan Duhamel's hand had J J . Matt Affleck's advantage over Jonathan Duhamel was short lived as the river turned out to be 8 , skyrocketing Duhamel to the top and the final 9 with a straight to Q and bringing an end to dream run of Affleck. Another close deciding encounter was between Jospeh Cheong and Pascal LeFrancois. Cheong with his K K crashed the hopes of LeFrancois holding Q J . This cemented the position of Cheong in the Final Nine and made LeFrancois lose by margin to finish at the 11th rank. But perhaps the most disappointed of the lot would be Brandon Steven who lost the pot to Matthew Jarvis after both of them went all in with Steven's A K and Jarvis's Q Q , helping Jarvis to seal a berth in the final 9 while bringing a huge disappointment to Steven, for losing a spot in the Final Nine, by finishing 10th.
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