The Five Diamond at Bellagio Next Up for WPT
Dec. 12th-Dec.18th, 2007

As we enter into the holiday season, it means one thing for the World Poker Tour. It is time for the Bellagio Five Diamond Poker Classic also commonly referred to as the Doyle Brunson World Poker Classic. This event will definitely send 2007 out with a bang featuring a massive field and larger buy in than the norm on the WPT.

The $15,000 buy in event will take place December 12th through the 18th at the five-star Bellagio Resort and Casino. Due to the size of the field, there will be both a Day 1A and a Day 1B to accommodate everyone. As we’ve become accustomed to for all Bellagio events and Tournament Director Jack McClelland, the players will all start with double stacks of 30,000. The play will start at the 50-100 blind level and consist of 90-minute levels.
Last year’s Doyle Brunson World Poker Classic drew a field of 584 players creating a massive prize pool of $8,482,650. The final 100 players were all guaranteed to take home at least $25,370 with the eventual winner taking home a check of $2,182,070. After five days and nearly 50 hours of play, we reached the final table. The final nine featured a who’s who of tournament poker including: “Kid Poker” Daniel Negreanu, former WSOP champ Joe Hachem, ZeeJustin Bonomo, Ed Jordan, Haralabos Voulgaris and Steve Sung. The night came to an end when Justin Bonomo was the TV table “bubble boy”. The final six were headlined by Kid Poker, Joe Hachem and Mads Andersen, the protégé of Gus Hansen. The TV table and their payouts were:

The story of the event was definitely Joe Hachem versus Daniel Negreanu as they battled at the same table for the majority of the week. A heads-up battle between the two wasn’t in the “cards” as Negreanu busted out in third place. Hachem ended up defeating Jim Hanna in about ten hands to claim the championship. With the win, he became part of a very exclusive group of players (Doyle Brunson, Carlos Mortensen and Scotty Nguyen) to win both a WPT title and the WSOP main event.

This is the last major event for 2007 and everyone will definitely be in attendance trying to secure as many “Player of the Year” points as possible. Last year for his win, Hachem was awarded 1,920 points so that would make it a four man race. David “The Dragon” Pham has steadily gained points all year and currently leads Jonathan Little and Scott Clements by just over 1,300 points. Pham is playing well and added 1,152 to his total this week when he outlasted Marco Johnson and Court Harrington to win Event #8 of the Five Diamond Poker Classic for nearly $280k. For either Little or Clements to catch Pham they would likely need a top three finish while Bill Edler is still mathematically alive but he’d need to win the event to have a chance.
All of the action will commence on Wednesday, the 12th at 12:00pm PST. We will be there for all the excitement with new videos and episodes of “PokerRoad Radio”.

Preview by LA Mike