Among more than six hundred total participants of the first event at the Empire Casino in London for the World Series of Poker Europe presented by Betfair, only eighty-nine of them were able to remain in order to start the long road to a final table. When the destination was eventually reached, it was Fabien Dunlop who amassed the main prize of 538,000, over 200k more than his closest competition, which includes day 1a chip leader JP Kelly (317,500).
There were less than two levels to get the 63 final players a little reward for their weekend's work, with Robert Lim bursting the bubble when his pocket aces ran into Raymond Rahme's set of nines on a nine-high board.
John Juanda, Nicolas Levi, Raymond Rahme and Markus Golser all finished the day by collecting another cash to their WSOP portfolios, however all the eyes were focused on Team Full Tilt Poker pro Chris "Jesus" Ferguson as play got down to two tables. Ferguson's stack was in danger most of the day, and with only about four big blinds, he sent the rest of them into the middle with Q-J suited getting a call from Ian Frazer. Frazer's [Ax][Qx] was well ahead of Ferguson and "Jesus" was not able to play out safe this time, and got eliminated in 15th place.
The play slowed considerably as the final table bubble approached with 13 players left. It was well past midnight when the unofficial final table of ten players was reached. Ganesh Bathmanathan, who had earlier collected quite a stack after hitting a runner-runner straight against an opponent's pocket kings had the honor of finishing 10th. The extremely talkative and excitable Bathmanathan was short-stacked after being outdrawn himself by Neil Suarez and got the rest of his chips in with [Ax][7x] against Richard Allen's big slick.
There was very little rest for the final table combatants as they are back at it already today at the Empire Casino where they will play down to the first WSOP Europe bracelet of the year.
Here is the list of final chip counts:
Seat 1: Fabien Dunlop - 538,000
Seat 2: James Tomlin - 49,000
Seat 3: William Martin - 122,500
Seat 4: Richard Allen - 332,000
Seat 5: Anthony Roux - 88,000
Seat 6: Adnan Alshamah - 121,000
Seat 7: JP Kelly - 317,500
Seat 8: Thor Drexel - 77,000
Seat 9: Neil Suarez - 217,500
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