The $15,400 buy-in, World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic, began yesterday at the famous Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas, with about 292 high stakes players signing up to play. 

Registration for the event remained open throughout the entire day (and is actually still open as of this writing), which meant often for each player knocked out, a new one would join in- taking advantage of the flexibility afforded with deep 60,000 chip starting stacks and blinds beginning at only 50/100.

Thanks perhaps to getting so many starting chips, by the day's conclusion only about 55 players had been eliminated, however many of them were big name tournament pros including Joe Hachem, David "Chino" Rheem, Chad Brown, Jonathan Little, Jeff Madsen, Barry Shulman and Daniel Negreanu.

Some of the players who fared significantly better and ended the day with above average chips included Antonio Esfandiari, David Benyamine, Carlos Mortensen, Jimmy Fricke, Gavin Smith and Bryan "Devo" Devonshire.

The Day 1 chip leader of the event was Darryll Fish, who ended his day with 236,625 in tournament chips, about 40,000 more than Mortensen and Esfandiari, but clearly not enough to breath easy with so many talented players still in the field.

For more information on chip counts from Day 1 at the Bellagio visit WorldPokerTour.com, where you'll also find live updates from the event from The Poker Beat's BJ Nemeth, as well as photos and videos from our own Amanda Leatherman.


Story by Mark Anderson