In just a few hours, poker’s biggest final table stage both literally and figuratively, will once again be occupied as the last two competitors of a starting field of 7,319 play down to one, in the finale of the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event.

These last two players, Canada’s Jonathan Duhamel and America’s John Racener, backed by the game’s biggest companies and watched by hundreds of thousands both live and online, will not only be competing for a top prize worth $8,944,310 but also the most important bracelet in all of poker, the Main Event bracelet.

Both these Jo[h]ns, have previous tournament successes on their resumes, however Racener of the two clearly has had the most, with previous winnings above $1.2 million.  In fact of all the original final nine after Michael Mizrachi, Racener has had the most tournament cashes, but even so tonight he’ll be the clear underdog.

John Racener enters tonight’s proceedings, set to kick off at 8 p.m. PST, with just under 31 million in tournament chips, an impressive sounding amount until compared to Jon Duhamel’s behemoth stack worth 188,950,000.

Duhamel, earned much of that stack by severely hurting and then officially eliminating third place’s Joseph Cheong, the chip leader for most of the time that the tournament was three-handed.  Racener, on the other hand, was short-stacked for pretty much all that same period, and was assumed by many to be the next to go. 

When tonight’s final table reconvenes, in the Rio's Penn & Teller theater, that same assumption will surely be present in the minds of most of those that are following the proceedings, however one need only look at Racener’s impressive results- spanning all the way back to 2006- to realize he perhaps shouldn't be so easily counted out.

The conclusion of the 2010 WSOP Main Event final table can be viewed tonight streaming- slightly delayed- on ESPN3, and updates can be followed on all the major poker news sites, particularly at PokerNews.com.