It was a long day.  Play started at around noon and continued until about 5:45 a.m. – almost 18 hours of poker.  “The Grinder” really grinded it out today, mostly at or near the bottom of the pack.  He started the day in 17th place out of 27 players with 6.3 million chips, and never really gained much ground.  He would chip up a little and then lose those chips.  It went back and forth like that for much of the day. 

At one point, at around 9 p.m. last night he was the short stack with just 2.145 million in chips. There were still 15 players left in the game, and his chances were not looking good.   

At around midnight Pascal LeFrancois busted in 11th place.  Michael continued to grind it out and was able to build up his chip stack. But there was to be almost another six hours of play before the November Nine was set.  That finally happened when Brandon Steven was eliminated shortly before 6:00 a.m. 

Michael and the other players will return four months from now for the final table.  Michael is in seventh place with 14.450 million chips.  Here are the final official chip counts:

1 Jonathan Duhamel   65,975,000
2 John Dolan             46,250,000
3 Joseph Cheong       23,525,000
4 John Racener         19,050,000
5 Matthew Jarvis       16,700,000
6 Filippo Candio         16,400,000
7 Michael Mizrachi      14,450,000
8 Soi Nguyen              9,650,000
9 Jason Senti              7,625,000