Home crowd favorite James Bord came back from behind to take down the WSOP Europe Main Event and £830,401 prize money in front of the noisy rail at the Casino at the Empire in London.


Bord's heads up opponent, the Italian Fabrizio Baldassari started in a lead but lost it and finally saw he was miles behind when the chips went in preflop in the final hand:

Bord TT
Baldassari 55

The board came 998 J A, and Baldassari walked over to his Italian supporters to receive their congratulations for a good tournament while Bord got buried under the rapturous home crowd.

29-year old James Bord got seriously into poker five years ago and eventually decided to leave his job at the Citibank to go full-time pro, focusing on cash games where he can be found at the 300/600 or 400/800 games when visiting Las Vegas. He had five previous cashes at the WSOP, including one final table this summer.

1. James Bord £830,401
2. Fabrizio Baldassari £513,049
3. Ronald Lee £376,829
4. Roland De Wolfe £278,945
5. Nicolas Levi £208,119
6. Daniel Steinberg £156,530
7. Dan Fleyshman £118,643
8. Brian Powell £90,617
9. Marc Inizan £69,754

The 2010 edition of WSOP Europe surpassed previous years' fields and prize pools. Five new bracelets were handed out, including first ones - finally - for Phil Laak and Gus Hansen:

EVENT #1:  Phil Laak -- (£2,500 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em) – won £170,802
EVENT #2:  Jeffrey Lisandro -- (£5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha) – won £159,000
EVENT #3:  Scott Shelley -- (£1,000 No-Limit Hold’em) – won £133,857
EVENT #4:  Gus Hansen -- (£10,000 High-Roller Heads-Up Championship) – won £288,409
EVENT #5:  James Bord -- (£10,000 Main Event Championship – won £830,401

Source: WSOP.