Winning the WPT Five Diamond Classic earns a player respect, and because of that, some of the best players in the world take the time to enter the $15K buy-in tournament. But that’s not the only reason why players enter the tournament, they also want to take a shot at the top prizes.
In ’08 the total prize pool exceeded $7 million and there where a total of 497 players in the tournament. The top honors were taken by Chino Rheem for $1.5 million, Justin Young for $936K, and Evan McNiff for $540K. Unfortunately for Rheem, his run at the ’09 event lasted much less and he exited the tournament before the third level of play.
The ’09 event was no exception when it came to pros registering for the tournament, as despite the rough economy, a total of 329 players entered the tournament and the first prize reached almost $1.5 million. Some of the famous players that entered the tournament were: PokerStars Pros Daniel Negreanu, Peter Eastgate, Carlos Mortensen, Full Tilt Pro Howard Lederer, Antonio Esfandiari, Doyle Brunson, and Barry Greenstein. But one player that stands above the field of poker superstars is Scotty Nguyen, who has won plenty of tournaments in his career and currently stands in sixth place on the poker all-time money list, with more than $10 million in career earnings. He will start to play today nursing a short stack but he wants to show people that he still has his A game, there where plenty of young guns at the tournament that insulted the poker veterans like Scotty but he did not lose his temper and wants to show them that he can still perform at the biggest live tournaments.
Scotty is currently among the remaining 16 players left in the tournament and they will play down to the final table tonight.
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