The 10th anniversary of the World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Five Diamond Poker Classic may not have set any records (like the recent WPT Prague and concurrently running EPT Prague) but the field that turned out for the $10,000 buy-in Main Event is chock-full with some of the poker world’s top talent.

With late registration running well into Day 2 of the tournament, the WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond Poker Classic managed to eclipse the not-so-magical mark of 400 entrants, with the total registration reaching 411 players. The reason I refer to the 400 player mark as “not-so-magical” has to do with Bellagio tournament policy, which states any tournament with 400 or more entrants must pay the top 100 finishers –so nearly 25% of the field will cash in the event!

Day 2 saw a number of poker’s biggest names take their seats in the tournament, including the man whose name the tournament bears, Doyle Brunson. Other late registrants included Ben Lamb, Phil Hellmuth, and Jason Mercier. Brunson, Hellmuth, and Mercier would all make it through to Day 3 of the tournament. As for Lamb his day ended when his KK ran into AA –perhaps he used up all of his Run-Good at the WSOP?

By the end of Day 2 the field of 411 had been reduced to just 149 players, led by Grant Long and his 382k chips. A number of well-known players joined Long in making it through to Day 3, including former WPT Champions Scott Clements, Antonio Esfandiari, Joe Tehan, Dwyte Pilgrim, Will Failla, Jonathan Little, David Williams, Matt Giannetti, John Hennigan, Eli Elezra, Carlos Mortensen, Kevin Saul, Steve Brecher, Doyle Brunson, Erik Seidel, Alan Goehring, Randall Flowers, and Freddy Deeb.

The remaining field is stacked with other talented players as well, including Vanessa Selbst, Annette Obrestad, Shaun Deeb, Andrew Lichtenberger, Andrew Robl, William Reynolds, Justin Smith, Will Molson, and David Baker, to name but a few of the big names still in the hunt for the WPT Five Diamonds crown.

Here is a look at the top 10 chip counts heading into Day 3 of the tournament:

1. Grant Lang – 382,000

2. Jeff Frerichs – 342,900

3. Scott Clements – 330,100

4. Soi Nguyen – 329,800

5. Jean Gaspard – 296,200

6. Keith Ferrera – 295,800

7. James Dempsey – 288,300

8. Matt Glantz – 287,000

9. Rudy Maarek – 271,600

10. Brent Roberts – 255,000

Play will resume on Thursday at Noon local time, and with 100 player getting paid, the money bubble should be burst very early on Day 3.

Tags: Alan Goehring, Annette Obrestad, Antonio Esfandiari, Carlos Mortensen, Eli Elezra, Erik Seidel, Freddy Deeb, Grant Long, Joe Tehan, John Hennigan, Jonathan Little, Kevin Saul, phil hellmuth, Poker World, Scott Clements, Shaun Deeb, Steve Brecher, Vanessa Selbst, William Reynolds, World Poker Tour

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 8th, 2011 at 8:40 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.