World Series of Poker Europe: Fabien Dunlop Leads Today's First Final Table

Out of the 608 total entrants in the first event at the Empire Casino in London for the World Series of Poker Europe presented by Betfair, only 89 remained to start the long road to a final table. When the destination was finally reached, it was Fabien Dunlop who bagged the most chips with 538,000, over 200k more than his closest competition, which includes day 1a chip leader JP Kelly (317,500).

It took less than two levels to get the 63 final players a little money 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.

While John Juanda, Nicolas Levi, Raymond Rahme and Markus Golser all finished the day by adding another cash to their WSOP resumes, all eyes were on Team Full Tilt Poker pro Chris "Jesus" Ferguson as play got down to two tables. Ferguson's stack slid in the wrong direction 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 walk on water this time, getting eliminated in 15th place.

Pace slowed considerably as the final table bubble approached with 13 players left. It was well past midnight when the unofficial final table of 10 players was reached. Ganesh Bathmanathan, who had earlier amassed 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 were the chip counts going into the day:

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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