The third day of the $50,000 2009 WSOP HORSE tournament has just ended. The plan for the third day was to play down to the final table and in the end they managed to do it. The last player to get knocked out before the final was the famous Gus Hansen.

However, even though Gus would obviously have been great addition to the final table the final is still looking extremely exciting.

It is a great mixture of well known poker pros, players who have done well in this year’s WSOP and relative unknowns. For the European poker fans it is also good news that the final table features several very tough European poker pros.

Maybe the most interesting name in the final table is Erik Sagström who is a Swedish poker pro and one of the firs true online poker stars. Erik Sagström has been playing online poker for almost 2 years, and for almost the whole time he has been playing the biggest cash games and winning in them. These days he plays mostly the $1000/$2000 HORSE games, thus it wouldn’t be a big shocker to see him take down this tournament. Erik Sagström is currently the chipleader in this tournament with 3.675million chipstack.

The second interesting player in the final table is Finnish Ville Wahlbeck. Just like Erik Ville Wahlbeck has made a long career as an online poker pro. However, in the beginning of the 2009 he announced that this would his last year as a poker pro – and even though he has had an amazing WSOP (this is already his 4th final table!) he still plans to retire from playing poker professionally. Coming in to the final table Ville is a the short stack with 645,000 chips.

The third interesting European player in the final table is Russian Vitaly Lunkin. Vitaly Lunkin has as well had an amazing run in the 2009 World Series of Poker. First he won the $40,000 no limit holdem event for almost $2million and shortly after that he finished 2nd in a $10,000 Pot Limit Omaha tournament for over $400,000. Vitaly Lunkin is currently second in the chips in this even with around 2.5million in chips.

Besides the Europeans other big names to make the final table include Erik Seidel (8 time WSOP bracelet winner), Chau Giang (one of the most successful high stakes cash games players and holder of 3 WSOP bracelets), and Huck Seed (winner of the 1996 WSOP ME and holder of 4 WSOP bracelets)