The sound of the traditional English summer - the evening mowing of grass, the smack of leather on willow, has been added by a new sound - the clatter of thousands of poker chips, as the WSOPE £10,000 No Limit Hold ‘em main event kicked off in style on Monday.

Following a superb weekend of action, seeing German Thomas Bihl hold off the best that America could offer over the H.O.R.S.E table, and Italian Dario Alioto take down the £5000 Omaha event, could the Europeans make it 3 out of three to bag every title in the inaugural WSOPE?
 
346 runners made the final tally (surely a few prop bets on numbers of runners were won and lost between the pros that morning) and a quick scan of the entry list made awesome reading -  WSOP bracelet winners past and present littered the 3 hosting casinos (The Empire at Leicester Square, The Sportsman, and FIFTY) for Day 1A.  A starting stack of 20,000 chips with a lengthy clock ensured some early cagey play, but it was in Level 1 over at The Sportsman where things were getting messy with Annie Duke crippling German Andreas Krause’s stack.  The job was finished when Andreas pushed with KK, only to be called by Q9 which duly hit 2 pairs on the board.  A dejected Krause left the room barely unable to speak.

In the refined surrounds of one of London’s more relaxed cardrooms, a strangely subdued Dave ‘Devilfish’ Ulliott and Humberto Brenes got on with the job in hand.  On the cash board at the end of the card room, someone had scrawled on the waiting list ‘BAN ALL H.O.R.S.E’ – presumably it wasn’t Hassan ‘Freddie’ Deeb, H.O.R.S.E. champion at this year’s WSOP in Las Vegas, plying his trade over on table 31.  It wasn’t to be Deeb’s day as he exited before the break, his AK cracked by AQ which paired up.

“Let me tell you something.  If I’m going to go broke, I’d rather go broke in the first 3 hours than play for 3 days then go bust!”  said a pragmatic Deeb.
 
WSOP big-hitter Paul Wasicka, making his first ever trip to Europe, was soon following as his trip 3s were blasted by trip 10s.  An early flight back to New Jersey and the family was the order of the day.  Also hitting the rail on Day 1 were Liz Lieu, Todd Brunson and Mizrachis, Mike and Robert.

The remaining half of the field commence play Tuesday at 2pm London time, where the players left will be looking to catch big stacks Phil Hellmuth (currently riding high on 94,000) and French singer and actor Patrick Bruel, following up his excellent show in Barcelona recently with solid progress in London.