Pokerati just received the following “official statement” via email from John Racener regarding his accusation that Sorel Mizzi slipped himself a joker in a private headsup Chinese Poker match at the PCA.

“Though I stand by my original claims of cheating on Sorel’s part, I feel that it was extremely irresponsible to make statements regarding Sorel’s mental state at the time and immediately following the incident. After much thought, I realize now that taking such matters to a public forum is dangerous and can be detrimental to the person that is being talked about. I also should not have allowed the matter to be addressed by a third party in a public forum. I look forward to putting this incident far behind me. This matter is being dealt with between Sorel and I, and I consider the topic to be closed.”

It appears that we should not be expecting a debut 2p2 post from Racener in the dramabomb Deeb thread after all.

Shaun Deeb created a thread this past Saturday that is destined to test the limits of the 2p2 forum server performance; Deeb titled it -> “Sorel allegedly bottom dealing vs john racener.” Deeb posted this bombshell on behalf of John Racener, asserting that Sorel Mizzi bottom-dealt a joker during a headsup Chinese Poker match in Racener’s room at the PCA. This is directly from his post:

“So sorel and John during pca were doing lots of gambling towards the end of the trip sorel says lets play chinese and says we should also play with a joker. They also did some weird scoring when whoever won most pts/hands every 10 hands the winner gets 5k, sorel had tried to bump up the stakes a few times as well to might higher. So they are rotating the deal and the dealer gets the 14th card in 1 of their hands.

Racener has played a ton of live poker so he tends to know procedure and what to look for. He notices sorels shuffling is leaving the 2 bottom cards in place they haven’t moved from the deck. As he starts to deal he notices the first card he deals himself is the bottom card of the deck. He keeps watching sorel and once he’s done dealing john says hes going take the hand with 14 cards in it sorel goes into a tantrum saying it’s his hand his deal.

John says I know what you were doing picks up the 14 card pile and shows the bottom card which is the joker. He tells sorel he’s not paying him whatever amount hes down 5-20k and that he’s a scumbag etc.”

Sorel (“Imper1um”), who just recently got his FTP account “unbanned” after a multi-accounting inquiry, posted a response to the accusation on page 20 of Deeb’s thread, and gives this version of the story:

“We were doing random 50:50 flips and playing Chinese poker freezeouts (whoever was up after 10 hands wins 5k-10k, i think?) with 2 jokers where we would both deal a deck and we take turns having a hand with 14 cards (and get to discard one). I was up 3-1 (effectively 10k) in the Chinese game. Since we didn’t know each other that well we agreed it would be best to settle after every game so we both had chips and cash.

The current game we were playing was for 10k, he had finished setting both of his hands and looked back at the first hand he had set to change it. It’s def against the rules in criss-cross Chinese so I told him it wasn’t allowed. His reaction was super defensive and sensitive, I didn’t think what he did was that big a deal but I just thought I’d point it out to him because most people I play Chinese with know it’s a nono simply because you can set your first hand better with knowledge of what you had in your second hand.

A few hands later he stopped me after the deal and told me that he wanted my 14 card hand. I told him he couldn’t because it was my turn to have the 14 card hand. He grabbed the hand and freaked out when he saw that the joker was around the bottom of the deck (3-6 cards in not first bottom card like Shaun reports). He started going off on how he saw me deal the joker from the bottom of the deck. I yelled back and him and told him he was wrong blah blah blah. Went on for about 5 minutes and then John decided to quit in the middle of our 10k game with me up around 15-20 points after 4-5 hands and demanded I paid him back all the money I won from the trip from all the other stuff we bet on.”

Marco Valerio of QuadJacks.com released an audio interview early this morning where Racener goes fully on-on-on record, verifying all of what Deeb said. This – worth a listen, folks.

In the audio, Racener claims that Sorel attempted to get him drunk at a nightclub before making a move to cheat him. He states Sorel offered him percentage of tourney action to keep quiet, tried to blame a prescription drug problem as an excuse for the alleged incident, “cryingly” (?) begged via multiple phone calls and now-deleted texts to not mention it, and said finally he might kill himself if this incident surfaced. Racener relays that although he would have normally “cold-cocked him (Sorel) right upside the head”, he thought it safer to get away from him in the moment given the scenario.

Racener says he plans on posting a statement himself on the 2p2 within the next 24 hours, after creating an account in order to relate his story personally.

Greetings, Pokerati faithful. I’m coming to you live from Foxwoods somewhere deep in the Connecticut wilderness. Today’s reunion of all nine members of the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event final table is the first of its kind in modern times. For the first time since the inception of the November Nine, the entire group has gotten together to play in the same event, along with 18 very lucky Foxwoods winners.

They’re playing a $15,000 freeroll, and its been rumored that there might be quite a bit more on the line for the November Niners. In order to keep things interesting and competitive, there are last longer bets and a few other interesting props that I’ll try to keep track of.

The tournament just got underway, and with 30 minute levels and a 10k starting stack, this freeroll looks like it will take quite some time.

Stay tuned for a couple of updates throughout the day here, as well as a comprehensive post of the Tuesday’s events coming up. To keep up to date with the action, as well as watch a live stream featuring Joseph Cheong, Michael Mizrachi, Matt Jarvis and Lon McEachern, head on over to Foxwoods Live.

Our extra-good friends at CardRunners had quite the score this November Nine … patching up a full third of the field in play — chip-positions 4, 5, and 6, fwiw. The top online poker training site stepped in to fill the patch void left by Full Tilt’s November Nine over-dominance banking some big branding time on last night’s ESPN final-table broadcast.

Matt Jarvis, Fillipo Candio, and John Racener were CR’s table reps — though Racener did switch to Full Tilt-branded gear for heads-up play. No surprise that his original primary patch sponsor would want back in as rules permitted, but it is somewhat unusual (perhaps even unprecedented?) to see ESPN production crews relent to online poker patch-interests over matters of television continuity in a single episode.

The original CardRunners Three

photo: Rob Gracie / Greasie Wheels

But sure enough, with Racener surviving to be the last CardRunner standing, something looked different to TV viewers once they got down to heads-up. Maybe just big money on the table?

Also interesting to note: Full Tilt has produced and/or patched up only one WSOP main event champion — Jerry Yang.

Just a matter of variance?

There’s a reason we media folk love us some Nolan Dalla … not only does he understand what’s really at stake every step of the poker way, but also he knows how to bring out the best in the game … and here at the Penn & Teller Theater, introducing tonight’s heads-up match, he seems to recognize, hey, I’m on a stage, we’ve got flashing lights, and there’s a poker-loving hairy manbeast behind me — might as well have some fun!

One difference, however … Racener has the Sam Chauhan rubber band, while Duhamel … is from Canada, eh?

Day 1a of the £1,075 NL Holdem event drew a field of 202 entrants Friday afternoon. After nine levels of play, 28 players return Monday afternoon to join the day 1b and 1c survivors. The day 1a chip leader is Denmark’s Jeppe Bisgaard with 49,000 in chips. Other day 1a notables: Keith “The Camel” Hawkins – 27,800, defending champion JP Kelly – 23,800 and November Niner Matthew Jarvis – 14,700. Chip counts available here as Day 1b gets underway at 12pm London time Saturday.

Day 3 of the £5,250 Pot-Limit Omaha event will resume at 3pm Saturday afternoon with 15 players remaining. November Niner John Racener will hold the chip lead, while Chris Bjorin and Willie Tann, final tablists in the £2,500 NL Holdem 6-max event, have also made the money. Here’s how the remaining players will be seated, with blinds at 1,500/3,000:

Table One:

Seat 1. Steve Jelinek – 56,500
Seat 2. Andrew Miles – 80,500
Seat 4. Sean Dempsey – 36,500
Seat 5. Jeff Kimber – 86,500
Seat 6. Chris Bjorin – 122,000
Seat 7. Samuel Stein – 119,500
Seat 8. Karl Mahrenholz – 211,000
Seat 9. Jeff Madsen – 126,500

Table Two:

Seat 1. Willie Tann – 154,000
Seat 2. John Racener – 276,000
Seat 3. Erik Friberg – 97,000
Seat 4. Joe Serock – 72,000
Seat 5. Filipe Ramos – 141,000
Seat 6. Jeff Lisandro – 131,000
Seat 9. Michael Schwartz – 66,000

Follow the updates at PokerNews and WSOP.com

Your 2010 WSOP final table players and chip counts:

Jonathan Duhamel — 65,975,000 — Boucherville QC

John Dolan – 46,250,000 – Bonita Springs FL

Joseph Cheong – 23,525,000 — La Mirada CA

John Racener – 19,050,000 – Port Richey FL

Matthew Jarvis – 16,700,000 – Surrey BC

Filippo Candio – 16,400,000 – Cagliari  IT

Michael Mizrachi — 14,450,000 – Miami FL

Soi Nguyen –9,650,000 – Santa Ana  CA

Jason Senti – 7,625,000 – St. Louis Park MN

I’d say see ya’ll in November, but I think we all know we’ll be talking about lotsa things before then. Click below for the Nolan’s early write-up from WSOP.com:

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