He ploughed his way through a field of 2,244 entries and beat Liren Betito heads-up to claim the sixth largest prize of his career.
Okay, the $5,545,955 Racener got for finishing runner-up in the 2010 Main Event will take some beating, but the second biggest cash of his live tournament career is $390,875 so this is a fantastic result for the American.
And especially so because the final stage of the tournament was played while sleep deprived following the birth of his third son.
“Excitement, just showing my wife that it was worth it for me to be out here. To be away from the family and kids. The only thing that makes it worth it is if I win. I’m coming home with a third bracelet for our third boy. If I don’t, the trip was a failure.”
Action Recap
As the official final table was formed, John Racener set about building his stack with a purpose. Shant Marashlian was first to go and then Angela Shade and Paul Saso both left the table after Racener took their chips in a double elimination.
Then it was Liran Betito’s turn to go on the rampage. In fact, he was so vicious that he dealt out three of the next four knockouts.
JC Tran was pushing hard to win a third WSOP bracelet of his own and when facing an open from Betito in the cutoff, he jammed his ten big blind stack in the small blind with A♦ 8♥.
The Israeli flipped over J♣ J♦ and the dealer handed out a board of 4♣ Q♦ 3♣ 6♥ 7♦ to send Tran home.
Zhang’s run came to an end at the hands of Betito when she four-bet A♥ 7♥ into K♦ K♣ and got no love from the board.
That left Betito and Racener to fight it out for the plaudits with close to equal stacks.
Racener did jump in front after winning a nice pot with trips, but Betito just kept on pulling in the small pots to get back to even.
It all ended when Racener raised to 1,600,000 with K♣ 4♣ in the small blind and Betito called with J♣ 7♣.
The flop came down J♠ K♥ 6♦ and Betito check-called a bet of 1,500,000.
The turn was the 4♦ and Betito check-called 2,500,000.
When the river came down the 7♥ to give both players two pair there was no going back. Racener jammed all his chips in and Betito made the obvious call, only to get the bad news seconds later.
After an intense 15 hours of play, John Raceneer was the champion and a three-time bracelet winner.
Event #34: $1,500 Super Turbo Bounty NL Hold’em Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize (USD) |
| 1 | John Racener | United States | $247,595.50 |
| 2 | Liran Betito | Israel | $164,964 |
| 3 | Xinwen Zhang | China | $120,457 |
| 4 | JC Tran | United States | $88,865 |
| 5 | Jeremie Toledano | Israel | $66,242 |
| 6 | Gaetano Logrande | United States | $49,899 |
| 7 | Paul Saso | United States | $37,988 |
| 8 | Angela Shade | United States | $29,231 |
| 9 | Shant Marashlian | United States | $22,738 |
