And so we sat, the luckiest of us live in the Amazon Room at the Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino, the rest in our offices or homes, sweating the World Series of Poker Main Event action on our computers via Twitter, PokerNews and WSOP.com.  No matter where we were though, we all seemed to be contemplating the same thing, which of these final 27 players wont be cashing out today?

As Day 8 progressed, the final day of the Main Event until we reconvene in November, emotions ran high for many in the media.  As stacks shifted up and down, inevitably attachments would form, story ideas would flourish, and then both would be dashed upon the rocks when the players in mind were eliminated.  This was the trend seemingly over and over again on Saturday as we watched helplessly as many of the big name favorites in the field one by one dropped away like Hasan Habib (14th- $500,165), Scott Clements (18th- $396,967), David Baker (17th- $396,967), Adam “Roothlus” Levy (12th- $635,011) and Matt Affleck (15th- $500,165), whose bad beat on the river and the emotional after effects, could easily make for one of the most emotional moments of all the ESPN coverage this year- depending on how it was captured.

There weren’t a lot of big names in the field as Day 8 started, and by the time we got down to the final 11 there were hardly any, with the one huge, notable exception being short stacked Michael Mizrachi, who was perhaps already the biggest story of the Series anyway. 

Clearly the player with the biggest rail and the player with the most professional hopes pinned upon his shoulders, “The Grinder,” handled his unfamiliar short stack status admirably for much of the day, biding his time while the rest of us sweated, until finally finding a few good opportunities to chip up.  Mizrachi eventually moved up to the middle of the pack but his position was precarious, particularly with Joseph Cheong and the three big stacked Johns- Duhamel, Dolan and Racener- having significantly more chips to push him around. 

Once Mizrachi was no longer one of the ones mathematically most likely to go out next, many of us “what’s best for poker” people were able to relax a bit, but it was still an awfully long night both mentally and literally as the final player sweat moved past 3 a.m., then 4 a.m. and finally approached 5:00, before suddenly, quite unexpectedly, we lost someone and it was over, we had our November Nine.

The last hand, as reported by all the above listed excellent sites, was a poker classic Ace-King versus Queens, seemingly the only kind of hand that could have put someone at risk as all ten players seemed to completely understand the huge unusual difference in this event between 9th and 10th place.  The board ran out 4,3,10,4,5 with no flush draws and the Queens, which belonged to Matthew Jarvis took it down making our 10th place November Nine bubble boy... Brandon Steven.

So here it is, the list of the final nine players to compete in November for the title of 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event Champion:

Jonathan Duhamel (65,975,000)

John Dolan (46,250,000)

Joseph Cheong (23,525,000)

John Racener (19,050,000)

Matthew Jarvis (16,700,000)

Filippo Candio (16,400,000)

Michael Mizrachi (14,450,000)

Soi Nguyen (9,650,000)

Jason Senti (7,625,000)