Day 1a of the £1,075 NL Holdem event drew a field of 202 entrants Friday afternoon. After nine levels of play, 28 players return Monday afternoon to join the day 1b and 1c survivors. The day 1a chip leader is Denmark’s Jeppe Bisgaard with 49,000 in chips. Other day 1a notables: Keith “The Camel” Hawkins – 27,800, defending champion JP Kelly – 23,800 and November Niner Matthew Jarvis – 14,700. Chip counts available here as Day 1b gets underway at 12pm London time Saturday.

Day 3 of the £5,250 Pot-Limit Omaha event will resume at 3pm Saturday afternoon with 15 players remaining. November Niner John Racener will hold the chip lead, while Chris Bjorin and Willie Tann, final tablists in the £2,500 NL Holdem 6-max event, have also made the money. Here’s how the remaining players will be seated, with blinds at 1,500/3,000:

Table One:

Seat 1. Steve Jelinek – 56,500
Seat 2. Andrew Miles – 80,500
Seat 4. Sean Dempsey – 36,500
Seat 5. Jeff Kimber – 86,500
Seat 6. Chris Bjorin – 122,000
Seat 7. Samuel Stein – 119,500
Seat 8. Karl Mahrenholz – 211,000
Seat 9. Jeff Madsen – 126,500

Table Two:

Seat 1. Willie Tann – 154,000
Seat 2. John Racener – 276,000
Seat 3. Erik Friberg – 97,000
Seat 4. Joe Serock – 72,000
Seat 5. Filipe Ramos – 141,000
Seat 6. Jeff Lisandro – 131,000
Seat 9. Michael Schwartz – 66,000

Follow the updates at PokerNews and WSOP.com

The final table of the £2,500 + £150 NL Holdem 6-max final table for the first event of the WSOP Europe has now been set. Two WSOP bracelet winners (Bjorin and Tann) will be trying to add a bracelet to their collection. However, the main attraction will be Phil Laak, with his third cash in Europe this month – 15th at the Partouche Poker Tour, 18th at the English Poker Open:

Seat 1: Willie Tann 72,000
Seat 2: Chris Bjorin 368,500
Seat 3: Phil Laak 317,000
Seat 4: Andrew Pantling 627,500
Seat 5: Ilan Rouah 200,000
Seat 6: David Peters 251,500

Final table payouts:

1. £170,802
2. £105,506
3. £70,473
4. £48,202
5. £33,617
6. £23,900

The final table starts at 2pm London time, (6am Vegas time) with updates available at PokerNews and WSOP.com. At 5pm Thursday, the second WSOPE bracelet event gets underway, £5,000 + £250 Pot-Limit Omaha event, won last year by Jani Vilmunen, who bested a field of 154 players to earn over £200,000.

Yesterday was the beginning of the real tournament, with all players converged into a single field, just with different starting stacks determining how hard a fight they might face, and how much bad-beat insurance they were carrying.

Today is the money bubble day, arguably the most intense day of big-field poker you can find. 7,319 started last week, 1,203 remain … 747 make the money. Tomorrow it will be about who gets to play for “real money”.

Here’s everyone who still has a dream, some more desperate than others, sortable by name, chip count, or table assignment:

2010 WSOP Main Event Day 4 Seat Assignments, Chip Counts

Lots of people worth watching … tons of big-name pros, plenty of rising stars, but the only not-so-pokery celeb being Hank Azaria, of The Simpsons and the voices of Chief Wiggum, Moe, and Apu. Follow the action throughout the day here.

Team Pokerati has just one remaining player, The Big Randy, who went out last year three hands into Day 4, before getting a chance to fight through the money bubble.

• The average chip count should be about 182,500
• Brown has 140,100
• That puts him at 632nd out of the 1,203 remaining players, and 4th out of 4 remaining Browns
• Blinds start tomorrow at 1200/2400 + 300
• That leaves our player with 58 big blinds and an M=22

TBR’s starting table tomorrow has a fellow Texan from Arlington and the shortest-stacked of all remaining Mizrachis. Next to the Grinder is Chris Bjorn … overall looks to be not a bad seat draw, with the biggest stack (5th overall in the tournament) two to TBR’s right:

Table 277, by seat

1. Brian Fite (Arlington, TX) — 151,600
2. John Brown (Dallas, TX) — 140,100
3. James Czarnecki (Edgewater, MD) — 88,400
4. Jan Boye (Harrow, GB) — 213,600
5. Chris Bjorin (London, GB) — 132,200
6. Michael Mizrachi (Miami, FL) — 91,700
7. Samuel Edwards (Las Vegas, NV) — 131,000
8. Jose Tavares (Commerce, CA) — 48,300
9. Max Casal (Burbank, CA) — 687,200

Here’s some of what’s been happening on Saturday:

Donkament Disappointing?

Day 1a of the Event #3 – $1,000 No-limit Holdem tournament drew a field of 2,601 entries today, a disappointment for those expecting a field of over 7,000 battling for this bracelet over the weekend. The 788 players who made it to the dinner break are returning shortly for another four levels of play. The unofficial chip leader is PokerRoad’s Joe Sebok with 27,000 chips. Other notable chip counts: Amarillo Slim (21,000), Chris Bjorin (20,000) and Bryan Devonshire, (17,500). Track the action for this event over at PokerNews.

First bracelet winner to be determined tonight

Just 18 players remain in the first WSOP bracelet event the $500 Casino Employees Event have returned from their dinner break, with Kent Washington maintaining the chip lead at 332,000 in chips. You can follow the action for this event over at PokerNews.com.

Players’ Championship Day 2

The $50,000 Players’ Championship field is currently on their one-hour dinner break at the conclusion of level eight with 90 players remaining. The current chip leader appears to be Steve Zolotow, with 420,000 in chips. Some of the fallen who may be looking to watch UFC 114 include: Phil Galfond, Tony G, and Todd Brunson. When play resumes, the field will play another three levels before the bag up their chips, sign their name, and hopefully don’t be recorded as busted when they decided not to report their chip counts. To catch the action of this event over at PokerNews, head here.

Slow action or not … that’s what TV editing is for, and makes me think some damn good poker is being played. (Ahh, how I’ve been corrupted from back in the day when I thought every final table should be shown live in its totality.)

Seriously, can’t wait to see it on TV. You’ve got bracelets out the yin-yang. Two November Niners. The father of the November Nine’s bad-guy. An epicurean old-timer Brit. Daniel Negreanu. International flavor. Accomplished young guns. Scandis. All in the pretty cool setting that is The Casino at the Empire.

It was a sexy, if not tough field to get through, too. The in-the-money fight from four tables down to one saw Doyle Brunson, Liz Lieu, EPL soccer legend Teddy Sheringham, Devilfish, Men the Master, Hendon Mobber Ram Vaswani, Steven Z for good measure, and plenty of valid others.

(Wouldn’t it be dandy if ESPN could show maybe an hour of lead-up, with two hours of final table? Just an NFL football game, ya know?)

@JeffreyPollack‘s been giving his eloquently bare-bones play-by-play.

And you can also follow via our pals at Betfair.

Click below to see a more detailed breakdown of the players of what may well be one of the most storied final tables of the year:

More…

The main event of WSOP Europe is underway now, with a super exciting final table of poker stars. These were the starting chip counts when they took their seats:

Seat 1: Barry Shulman (1,090,000)
Seat 2: Jason Mercier (3,198,000)
Seat 3: Praz Bansi (1,160,000)
Seat 4: Markus Ristola (784,000)
Seat 5: Chris Bjorin (518,000)
Seat 6: James Akenhead (1,398,000)
Seat 7: Daniel Negreanu (438,000)
Seat 8: Antoine Saout (701,000)
Seat 9: Matt Hawrilenko (674,000)

The group consists of six previous WSOP bracelet winners (Shulman, Mercier, Bansi, Bjorin, Negreanu, & Hawrilenko), two members of the November Nine (Akenhead & Saout), and a father of a November Niner (Shulman).

More than four hours into the final table “action,” Negreanu worked his way into second place. And that’s about it. Play continues with the likelihood that someone will eventually be eliminated. Live coverage can be found on the World Series of Poker website.