European Main Event Underway

362 players bought into the main event of the WSOP Europe, making first prize worth more than £1,000,000. The fee for the main event was £10,000 for the No Limit Holdem tournament in London.

A slew of poker pros and online players are trying to win the first ever poker series in Europe. The play was split into two starting days and many of the top pros were in good shape.

The overall chip leader is Janne Lamsa but many pros are in the running including Humberto Brenes, Gus Hansen, Ram Vaswani, Phil Hellmuth, Jenifer Harman, Thor Hansen, Erick Lingren, Greg Raymer, David 'Devilfish' Ulliott, Annie Duke, Erik Seidel, Patrik Antonius, Kenny Tran, Daniel Negreanu and Barry Greenstein. If it seems like a "who’s who of poker" for the main event title, it really is.

The European main event is not anything like the one in the United States where over 6,000 people competed for the bracelet, making it more a crapshoot than a poker tournament. The European main event has the best players in the world and with just 362 players in the field it should provide a real test of poker skill.

The European series got underway with the first event, the £2,500 HORSE tournament that saw a field of 105 top players competing for the first place prize. The tournament took place at the Empire Casino in London. Jennifer Harman started the final table with the chip lead and almost won the bracelet but ended up finishing 2nd. Thomas 'Buzzer' Bihl took the first place prize of £70,875 and with it the first bracelet in European series history.

Here is the final-table finishing order:

1. Thomas Bihl £70,875  
2. Jennifer Harman £40,688  
3. Kirk Morrison £26,250  
4. Chris "Jesus" Ferguson £21,700  
5. Alex Kravchenko £17,850  
6. Yuval Bronshtein £14,438  
7. Joe Beevers £11,812  
8. Gary Jones £9,188

The 2nd event went to Dario 'Ryu' Alioto who won the £5,000 Pot Limit Omaha event. Alioto started Day Two second in chips but was finally able to overtake chip leader Jon Persson. He went heads up against Istvan Novak and took home the first place prize of £234,390.

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