It took a while but the World Series of Poker Europe presented by Betfair has seen the first final table elimination.  The 12k / 24k level went off without a hitch, chips moving around but everyone pretty much holding serve and no eliminations.  The 15k / 30k with a 4k ante level was much of the same with Jason “treysfull21″ Mercier building his stack back over 3 million and the rest of the field hanging around.  The last hand before break was the action spot though, and resulted in only 8 players going to the break with chips to come back to.

Chris Bjorin started the action making it 85k to go.  Then James Akenhead (right) moved all in for almost 500k.  That got the crowd paying attention but everyone really perked up when Daniel Negreanu announced that he was also all in.  Bjorin had seen enough and tossed his hand in leaving the two all in players to fight it out.  Daniel had Akenhead both covered and in bad shape with his pocket kings against the AQ of Aikenhead.  Once the chips were in the middle the dealer ran out the J649Q board and with that Akenhead shook some hands around the table before making his exit.

The other players exited with him, but they were only going out for a 20 minute break.  When the action resumes the blinds will be up to 20k / 40k and a 5k ante.  The yellow 1k chips have now been removed from play and the price of poker keeps going up.

Chip Counts Going Into Level 25:

Jason “treysfull21″ Mercier - 3.25 million
Barry Shulman - 2 million
Daniel Negreanu - 1.6 million
Chris Bjorin - 820k
Praz Bansi - 650k
Markus Ristola - 600k
Antoine Saout - 600k
Matt Hawrilenko - 500k

• October 1, 2009 -- Action: Hawrilenko Out 8th, Saout 7th, Bjorin 6th
• October 1, 2009 -- Introductions
• September 30, 2009 -- Final Table Chip Counts
• September 30, 2009 -- WSOP Europe 2009 Final Table Gallery