This weekend marked the start of the World Poker Tour’s Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic at the Bellagio, and already the first few days of play have confirmed that this will be one for the ages. 

Nearly every poker pro imaginable was at the Bellagio this weekend including such stars as Erick Lindgren, John Hennigan, Doyle Brunson, Howard Lederer, Allen Cunningham, Erik Seidel, Sorel Mizzi, Hoyt Corkins, Joe Hachem, Dennis Phillips, Chad Brown, Mike Matusow, Greg Raymer, and Phil Hellmuth - all of whom survived their difficult Day 1 tests. 

To say Hellmuth just survived Day 1 would actually be a gross understatement.  Hellmuth, somewhat famous for always showing up late to tournaments, missed three of the first five levels scheduled to be played that day.  Yet despite missing almost five hours of play, he finished Day 1 first in chips and well on his way to another legendary tournament performance. 

Of course it wasn’t all big names and amazing runs at the Bellagio over the weekend, an equally impressive list could be compiled of pros already out their $15,000 tournament buy-ins.  Such a list would sadly include David Williams, Jeff Madsen, John Juanda, Bill Edler, JC Tran, Erica Schoenberg, JJ Liu, Michael Mizrachi, Sammy Farha, Scotty Nguyen, and PokerRoad Radio’s Gavin Smith and Joe Sebok. 

Given this will be published at PokerRoad.com, those last two names probably seem like a particular bummer, but luckily PokerRoad fans still have quite a few horses to cheer on for the days ahead including Justin Bonomo (All Strategy), Steve Sung (blogger), Haralabos Voulgaris (Big Poker Sundays), Daniel Negreanu (All Strategy, blogger), Phil Ivey (Life of Ivey), Amit Makhija (blogger), Shane Schleger (Big Poker Sundays) and Papa PokerRoad himself Barry Greenstein. 

To follow all the WPT tournament action check out www.worldpokertour.com for live updates, chip counts, photos and videos from our own Ms. Amanda Leatherman. 
 

Story by Mark Anderson