The 15th Season of the World Poker Tour (WPT) $10,400 Buy-in Main Event of the Five Diamonds World Poker Classic kicked off in Las Vegas and has already managed to set a record.
The event gathered a record number of entrants, as a total of 791 participants were registered, generating a guaranteed prize pool of $7.673 million. Never has such a large players field been gathered before for the WPT Five Diamond Main Event. Until now, the largest number of players who have joined the event amounted to 664 in 2007, for the 6th Season of the event.
Only the first 72 players are to get a portion of the guaranteed prize pool, with the lion’s share reserved for the winner. The first-place prize amounts to $1.938 million, and the runner-up is to receive a cash portion amounting to $1.124 million.
The first day of the event finished with Robin Hegele holding the chip lead with 185,000 in chips, followed by Lucas Blanco Oliver with 139,325 and by Andjelko Andrejevic with 136,400.
However, the competition was fierce and situation changed over the second day. The Day 2 of the event finished with Ryan Hughes leading the ranking as a chip leader with 364,400. The runner-up position on the leaderboard was occupied by Jennifer Tilly with 279,100 in chips, followed by Samuel Bernabeu with 279,000 in chips.
Other entrants who have managed to accumulate pretty large chips stacks over the Day 2 of the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic Main Event are Justin Bonomo, Corey Hochman, Anthony Spinella and David Pham. The three-time winner of the NFL Super Bowl Richard Seymour also managed to get to Day 3 of the event, but that turned out to be not an easy task for him.
After the day was over, Hughes commented on his performance, saying that his opponents would face a lot of difficulties, considering the fact he was “playing well” and “running well”.
Unfortunately for them, there were some notable poker professionals, who did not manage to get to Day 3, including Gus Hansen, Pat Lyons, Rainer Kempe, Natasha Barbour, etc.
The staff of the Bellagio casino decided to make some changes in the schedule of the event’s Day 3 due to the large number of the entrants. Now, players will play seven 90-minute levels, instead of five, which were initially announced.
- Author
Harry Evans
