World Poker Tour Five Diamond Classic: Tough Table Draws, Landfish Leads; Mizzi Cracks Rockets
Day 2 action at the World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic saw several interesting stories play out on the Bellagio floor. Arguably the biggest story of the day was the tough table draws as many pros found themselves seated next to other top-flight players.
Although there were several tough tables today, the honor of the toughest ended in a three-way tie. Recent WPT Foxwoods final tablist Matt "Allinat420" Stout began the day at a deep table that included fellow Foxwoods' final table players Kenna James, Soheil Shamseddin, James Mackey and Carlos Mortensen.
Table 58 featured Marco Johnson, Todd Terry, David Chiu, John Juanda, Yevgeniy Timoshenko and Tom "durrrr" Dwan.
The Table 63 stellar line-up included Doyle Brunson, Eli Elezra, Jamie Rosen, Allen Carter, John Hennigan, Mike McClain and November Niner Kevin Schaffel.
Ironically, Stout was shipped from his starting table to Table 58 before the start of Level 10.
The second story of the day was about the rise of the top six players. Although they may be sitting atop the leaderboard at the moment, a number of elite players remain in the field and are looking to steal the glory.
Leading the way going into Day 3 action is Steven Landfish with 385,900, but he has plenty of competition in second-place Brent Hanks who is only 2,900 chips behind him.
Several players are sitting over the 345,000 chip count including Matt Waxman (377,500), Chad Batista (355,000), Sorel Mizzi (348,000) and the always dangerous Toto Leonidas (347,300).
Several well-known players are still in the hunt including Eric Hershler (314,800), Kenna James (305,200), Matt Stout (300,800), Antonio Esfandiari (289,900) and Doyle Brunson, who ended the day with 283,000.
The third story of the day came with the late arrival of 37 players who decided to take advantage of the late buy-in opportunity. These latecomers swelled the tournament field to 329 before registration closed at 5:00 p.m.
Several of poker's biggest-name players tried to take advantage of the late sign-up opportunity, including the tournament's namesake Brunson, his son Todd, Eli Elezra, Team Full Tilt members Andy Bloch, Howard Lederer, Mike Matusow, Tom "durrrr" Dwan, and Chris "Jesus" Ferguson.
Other late signups included Vivek Rajkumar, Freddy Deeb, Hoyt Corkins, Joe Cassidy, Nenad Medic, John Phan, Alec Torelli, and French singer and WSOP bracelet winner Patrick Bruel.
Unfortunately for Elezra, Deeb, Medic, Torelli and Bruel, their tournament runs ended soon after they started.
Possibly the biggest hand of the day came late with Sorel Mizzi benefiting from the action. With the blinds at 1,000/2,000 with a 200 ante, Tommy Vedes limped into a pot and was raised by Mizzi who made it 5,600 to go. Vedes raised to 18,000 and after several minutes of contemplation, Mizzi reraised all-in. Vedes insta-called the shove for his remaining 80,000. Vedes then looked like a huge favorite pre-flop, holding pocket aces to Mizzi's pocket queens, but unfortunately for Vedes, a queen fell in the window and Mizzi cracked his rockets to climb to one of the top chip counts after dragging the monster pot.
One hundred and thirty remaining players take to the felt at noon on Wednesday hoping to drag the $1,428,430 first-place prize.
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