John Racener was crowned the winner of Event #34: $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em Super Turbo Bounty at the 2025 World Series of Poker 2025. He battled through a 2,244-player field and defeated Liran Betito in heads-up play to win the $247,595 top prize and a stack of 16 bounties worth $500 each.
Racener took the lion's share of the $1,834,567 total prize pool, which beat last year’s $1,761,850 prize pool. It wasn’t Racener's first time battling heads-up on a WSOP event for a bracelet, as he already had two gold bracelets to his name before entering the Turbo Bounty tournament earlier today.
One of Racener’s pivotal moments in his career was finishing second in the 2010 WSOP Main Event. He recalled after winning this event, “I was actually having thoughts of my main event heads up when I was playing heads up tonight, and the banner was hanging right over my opponent’s head.”, referring to Jonathan Duhamel’s winner’s banner hanging in the Event Center room at the Horseshoe.
Racener looked back at the tournament play and said how “things went pretty smoothly all day. I mean, and now we're here. I'm almost up 24 hours straight soon.” He had just gotten to Las Vegas after staying at home with his wife after the birth of their third son.
His initial reaction was “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”.
Final Result Event #34: $1,500 Super Turbo Bounty NLH
Place
Player
Country
Prize
1
John Racener
United States
$247,595.5
2
Liran Betito
Israel
$164,964
3
Xinwen Zhang
China
$120,457
4
Justin 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
Final Table Action
There were eliminations thick and fast all day. The rail was strong from the start, and a crowd grew as the players went to three tables. Players went to an unofficial final table at ten players, with Samuel Rosborough being the first to leave after shoving Ace-Queen into Shant Marashlian who flopped trip sevens and held. Shant Marashlian suffered the same fate as his Ace-Queen also ran into a pocket pair, and he was the next to be eliminated.
This was the start of Racener’s climb as he began to chip away at the remaining players at the table, starting with Jeremie Toledano, who was to his direct left. Soon after, Racener secured a double elimination, knocking out both Angela Shade and Paul Saso with his pocket queens, putting him into the chip lead at that point with six players remaining.
Liran Betito
Racener took a back seat for a while as his eventual heads up opponent Liran Betito, took out all but one player, Xinwen Zhang, to reach heads-up play; this included JC Tran who also was looking to secure his Third WSOP bracelet but ran into Betito’s pocket jacks . After Betito woke up with kings and Eliminated Zhang, the pair went into heads-up play with pretty even stacks.
The final hand started steadily as Racener chipped away at Betito throughout the streets. Racener put the pressure on the river and shoved, putting Betito all in and at risk after he made the call. Racener took the win with a better two pair, and left Betito to take second place.
The action was followed throughout the 15 hours of play until John Racener was crowned the winner of Event #34: $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em Super Turbo Bounty at the 2025 World Series of Poker 2025.
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