It’s been a topsy-turvy first season for Party Gaming, the new owners of the World Poker Tour, with attendance numbers all over the map. There is no better illustration of this than the tour’s last two stops which include the recently concluded WPT Marrakech tournament which saw an abysmal turnout, and the WPT Five Diamonds that is currently in progress and had 33% growth over last year’s event. The WPT will be hoping for more Five Diamond turnouts and less Marrakech turnouts in 2011.

One of the interesting aspects of the Bellagio tournaments is that they allow players to register for the event well into Day 2 of play –unlike other tournaments that choose to employ two separate starting days. The Bellagio method not only allows more players to enter the tournament, it also keeps the field size smaller and works in much the same way as a stand-by list –as players are eliminated other late registrants can take their place.

Heading into Day 3 of the tournament it would appear that the big name pros have come to play, as the leader-board is loaded with some of the most recognizable names in poker like Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey, Vanessa Rousso, Antonio Esfandiari, and up-and-coming pros Faraz ‘The Toilet’ Jaka and Sorel ‘Imper1um’ Mizzi all in the top 10! Here is a look at the Top 10 Chip-Counts heading into Day 3:

1    Antonio Esfandiari  485,600
2    Daniel Fuhs  397,500
3    Faraz Jaka  364,400
4    Douglas Lee  355,000
5    Vanessa Rousso  334,100
6    Sorel Mizzi  332,400
7    Keith Gipson  325,100
8    Phil Ivey  308,100
9    Doyle Brunson  295,400
10    Nicholas Mitchell  290,100

A total of 137 players will be back in action for Day of the tournament, with the top 100 players getting paid (the Bellagio tournament structure calls for 100 payouts once the field size surpasses 400 players, which is one of the most staggered payout structures in the poker world. Top prize for the WPT Five Diamonds Poker Classic is $870,124, with 71st – 100th place earning $12,669 each.

Here is a look at the complete payout schedule:

1st  = $870,124
2nd  = $549,003
3rd  = $358,964
4th  = $232,271
5th  = $168,924
6th  = $126,693
7th  = $97,131
8th  = $67,570
9th  = $59,123
10th  = $50,677
11 – 15th  = $42,231
16 – 20th  = $33,785
21 – 30th  = $25,339
31 – 40th  = $21,116
41 – 50th  = $16,892
51 – 70th  = $13,725
71 – 100th  = $12,669

The remaining players will reconvene on Sunday at Noon local time for Day 3 of the tournament where the field will likely burst the money bubble fairly early on during the day. The WPT Five Diamonds I scheduled for a total of 6 days.

Tags: Antonio Esfandiari, Doyle Brunson, Faraz ‘The Toilet’ Jaka, Phil Ivey, Sorel ‘Imper1um’ Mizzi, Vanessa Rousso, World Poker Tour, WPT Five Diamonds, WPT Marrakech

This entry was posted on Monday, December 6th, 2010 at 6:03 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.