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Well, there are plenty of faces on the rail, but only some of them are familiar: Felipe Ramos, Ben Vinson, and Gus Hansen, as well as Irish Open Champion James Mitchell who seems to be keeping a keen eye on James Bord.
Also present is Mike Matusow, the "Mouth" here to support/tilt fellow Full Tilt Poker Pro Roland De Wolfe.
It's still an ungodly hour for most pros, so we may see more big name players hitting the rail as the day progresses.
Level: 23
Blinds: 12,000/24,000
Ante: 3,000
Yes, that's right, we said break. The players only had a tiny bit left in this level and it was enough for three hands of play. They all voted to take the full 20-minutes before play began.
Hand #3: Ronald Lee raised to 45,000 in early to middle position and Brian Powell made the call in the big blind.
Both players checked the 
flop, but Lee was less hospitable on the 
, betting out for 51,000. Powell made the call.
The river came the 
. Powell checked, triggering a bet of 86,000 from Lee. He didn't seem confident, but Powell indeed made the call finding that Lee had value bet 
.
There were fears in the media room of a late finish, but if the opening hands are anything to go by, it seems as though the final nine are here to play rather than fold their way up the ladder.
As the dealer began shuffling for the first hand, one of the short stacks Nicolas Levi asked, "What are the odds I get a walk the first hand?"
Hand #1: James Bord raised to 65,000 from middle position and every folded to give him the first pot of the day.
Hand #2: James Bord raised again preflop to 65,000. Ronald Lee made the call from the next seat and the flop came down 
and Bord was up first. He fired a continuation bet worth 80,000 and Lee made the call.
The turn brought the 
and Bord fired 125,000. Lee made the call and the 
fell on the river. Bord fired 200,000. Lee went into the tank and then moved all in creating a huge pot on just the second hand of play. Both these players began the hand with well over a million in chips. After a few minutes in the tank, Bord gave it up and Lee scooped the pot. He's not in the chip lead with over two million in his stack.
Forget a knife, you could cut the tension with a toothpick in here. Shuffle up and deal. Cards are in the air!
Level: 22
Blinds: 10,000/20,000
Ante: 3,000
Possibly the only thing for which a bracelet-event final table might now be paused for is the awarding of another bracelet. This one, for the ￡10,000 Heads-Up event here in London, goes to none other than Gus Hansen, after a final vs. Jim Collopy that had to span two days and three matches.
103 players took each other on, one at a time, until only these two remained. Hansen's matches were crowd-pullers, with a two-outer against Phil Ivey at one point drawing him back from the brink; he ended up winning that match and his confident performance sent him all the way through to the final. Collopy was a tough opponent, but Hansen prevailed to bring home ￡288,409 and his first ever WSOP gold, surely a satisfying achievement for the triple WPT winner. Hansen is one of the most recognisable players in the world, having graced televised poker nearly from its outset, his unpredictable and aggressive style being the hallmark of his poker play. He has been sitting patiently, however, as the final is introduced, and now comes to collect his jewellery. Congratulations, Mr. Hansen.
Out of all the people at Victory Poker, Dan Fleyshman may be the most unrecognizable face. With pros like Antonio Esfandiari, Brian Rast and Andrew Robl on his team, Fleyshman’s poker skills may go a bit unnoticed.
Fleyshman doesn’t have a ton of big results on record, but he tends to make it count when he makes the money of an event. He has ten cashes and out of those ten, five are wins. That’s not bad at all when you’re batting .500 for an average.
The two largest scores Fleyshman has on record are a win in a $500 event at the Bellagio in 2005 for $26,740 and a win at the 2009 $2,500 WPS/CPT Championship for $38,200. In total, the man from San Diego, California has over $105,000 in career earnings, but right now it looks as though he’ll be winning plenty more than that in this one event.
He began playing poker in 2005 as more of a hobby than a profession. Soon after he began playing, a year later Fleyshman won the first ever CEO Poker Championship that was held at the Palms in Las Vegas, but that’s not his claim to fame.
Fleyshman began a clothing line called Who’s Your Daddy that eventually launched into Kohl’s and Mervyn’s stores before landing a three-year distribution deal in Europe. From there, the line began raking in the cash and grossed more than $15 million over the next couple of years. After that, Fleyshman decided to launch an energy drink and saw his product rise up the charts, much like he sees his chip stack doing in this WSOP Europe Main Event. When he decided it was time to take the company to the stock market at the young age of 23, Fleyshman was made the youngest owner of a publicly traded company in history. Ever had Who’s Your Daddy Energy Drink? Well, that’s Fleyshman’s stuff.
Fast-forward a few years to when Fleyshman was 28. He becamse the CEO of Victory Poker and hopes to see the company rise through the ranks much like his other successes have. If it’s anything like he’s been doing in this event, hard work and solid decisions will lead him there.
Fleyshman will begin the final table as the chip leader with 1,946,000. That's about 18.75% of the chips in play.
