Max Silver has gone wire-to-wire in Event #53: $3,000 Limit Hold’em Six-Handed to land the UK’s fourth bracelet of the summer, and Chris Bolek wins Event #50: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Bounty.

It was 2011, and I was preparing for hand-for-hand analysis of the €10,400 World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) Main Event in Cannes. There was more prime beef on the final table than an abattoir. Each of them a highly trained mercenary programmed to take shit down.

The roll call looked like this: Elio Fox, Chris Moorman, Moritz Kranich, Brian Roberts, Dermot Blain, Shawn Buchanan, Jake Cody, Patrik Antonius, and Max Silver. As they headed to the table prepared to beheaded each other I caught hold of Silver to ask him how he was feeling.

“I just hope she gets here on time,” he told me as he took his seat.