Day 3 of the World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic started with 139 players each dangerously close to cashing.  Despite the surprisingly flat pay out structure for this $15,000 buy-in event, 39 of those players were still destined to leave Day 3 empty handed, with much of the day focused on who exactly those 39 would be. 

As has been the case for this entire star-studded event, the eventual pre-bubble casualties were often very well known tournament players, hailing from all around the poker world including Dennis Phillips, Eli Elezra, Joe Hachem, Tony Cousineau, Nenad Medic, Mike Sexton, Liz Lieu, Layne Flack, Kevin Saul, Sorel Mizzi and Howard Lederer.  The last player to survive these top pros (but still get nothing to show for it) was Jason Dewitt, who busted out in 101st place after a huge hand with Chino Rheem, that also served to propel Chino into first place overall. 

With the bubble officially popped, the next 45 bust outs before the end of Day 3 play, came much faster and included poker stars like Antonio Esfandiari, David Sklansky, Dutch Boyd, Victor Ramdin, Haralabos Voulgaris, Johnny Chan, Phil Hellmuth, Annie Duke, Marco Traniello and Doyle Brunson.  Brunson, the Godfather of poker and the namesake for this prestigious tournament, finally busted in 66th place after another impressive showing at the Bellagio poker tables. 

Day 4 of Doyle’s Classic is slated to begin today, at noon in Las Vegas, and even with the elimination of so many great players, there are still a remarkable amount of well known pros even now in the hunt including Hoyt Corkins, Robert Mizrachi, Nam Le, Mike Matusow, Nick Schulman, David Benyamine, Clonie Gowen, Allen Cunningham and PokerRoad’s Barry Greenstein (still hanging in there with a slightly below average chip stack). 

To follow the action at this remarkable WPT tournament, visit www.worldpokertour.com for live updates, chip counts, photos, and videos from the ever endearing Ms. Amanda Leatherman. 
 

Story by Mark Anderson