Nearly ten feet away from about a dozen fans watching his every move, Dario Minieri’s aggressiveness had the floor staff searching for chip racks.

With chips stacked six racks high and a colony of chips left on the felt in front of him, Minieri (pictured right) has seen his chip stack go from 300k to 1.8 million in the last two rounds of the 2.5k 6-max NL WSOP Event #31.

Minieri has been raising nearly every pot and his fearlessness has got him busting opponents with hands as weak as middle pair that were good.

Minieri’s aggressiveness has even made Scotty Nguyen merely an onlooker sitting to Minieri’s right. Despite not playing many hands, Nguyen’s mouth was as active as always, reporting to the players at the other table about Dario’s demolition derby.

“The young gun is taking em’ all down baby,” said Nguyen in his standard high pitch tone.

Play is down to one seven-handed table, breaking when one more opponent busts. Minieri has roughly a third of the chips in play.

Frank “Round42″ Rusnak busted out right before the consolidation when his 3-bet all-in preflop with AK was called by 88 and Rusnak failed to improve taking home 38k.

Rusnak’s stack had been on a nosedive prior to his elimination, going from 650 to 200k after he lost two preflop all-in hands with his pocket tens to pocket kings and his pocket jacks losing to Seth “grtwhitehoop” Fischer’s utg shove with pocket queens.

Justin “Fluffdog” Filtz (500k), Seth “grtwhitehoop” Fischer (320k), and Scotty Nguyen (400k) will also be battling Minieri’s stack to make the final table.

The $10K Limit Hold-em has come to an end and Rob Hollink of the Netherlands is the world champion. He defeated Jerrod Ankenman, co-author of the Mathematics of Poker, after a lengthy heads up match and will be taking home $496,931 in addition to the bracelet.

Shortly after Hollink was awarded his bracelet, John Phan was given a bracelet of his own for taking down the $3K No Limit Hold Em event.  This was definitely the hot ticket tonight at the Rio as a crowd of people, including Joe Sebok and Jason “jp osu” Potter, gathered around Phan and his heads up opponent, Johnny Neckar.

The crowd reached its peak when it was announced by the tournament director that the two players had both agreed to move all-in dark on the next hand.  The dealer then dealt out the flop, turn, and river and the two players took turns revealing their hole cards.  This continued for a couple of hands, including one in which Phan doubled up when his 7 high was good against Neckar’s 2-4, before the two returned to a more conventional game of poker.  Only a few minutes later the duo got it all in pre-flop with Phan holding A9 and Neckar holding QJ.  An ace on the river sealed the deal for Phan and he was awarded the bracelet and first prize of $434,789.

• June 18, 2008 -- Minieri and Rusnak Closing in on Final Table
• June 19, 2008 -- Super Dario Powers Up!
• June 18, 2008 -- Let the Belittling Begin
• June 18, 2008 -- Sitron’s Good With the Ladies