Phil Hellmuth Jr. Leads Doyle Brunson Classic After Day 1A

Published on December 14th, 2008 9:41 am EST

Day 1A of the 2008 Five Diamond World Poker Classic Main Event, aka the "Doyle Brunson Classic", is now in the books. A familiar name is sitting with the chip lead, as Phil Hellmuth Jr. finished the day with a stack of 188k, putting him comfortably in the lead at the conclusion of the first day of play.

Hellmuth won a particularly big pot right near the end of the day that vaulted him into the chip lead.

After a flop of 8-4-2, Hellmuth bet 10,000 and Theo Tran re-raised to 25,000. The "Poker Brat" called, and the turn brought the Three of hearts. Tran bet, Hellmuth pushed all-in and Tran called.

Tran quickly saw the bad news when Hellmuth turned over the nuts, the 5-6 of hearts for a turned straight. Tran was drawing dead with his pocket Aces, and soon hit the rail.

The tournament structure is very slow, which resulted in just 53 of the 203 players who played on Day 1A hitting the rail. Some of the well-known names who exited the tournament on Day 1A included John Juanda, David Williams and Josh Arieh.

Clonie Gowen is currently sitting near the top of the leaderboard with a stack of just over 160k. Gowen is currently embroiled in a nasty legal dispute with Full Tilt Poker, and you have to wonder how she has been received at the tournament, considering she is suing a number of other players that are participating.

Kido Pham, Nenad Medic, Greg Raymer and Amnon Filippi also possess top ten stacks after Day 1A.

Some of the other notable names who are still alive include:

-Mike Matusow (113k)
-Steve "MrSmokey1" Billirakis (103k)
-Justin Bonomo (102k)
-John "World1969" Hennigan (89k)
-Phil Ivey (83k)
-Gabe Kaplan (81k)
-Kevin Saul (80k)
-Barry Greenstein (76k)
-Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier (63k)
-Doyle Brunson (60k)
-Erick Lindgren (57k)
-Jennifer Harmon (54k)
-Eugene Katchalov (41k)
-Ivan Demidov (37k)
-Eli Elezra (34k)
-Isaac Haxton (30k)
-Aurangzeb "Ozzy 87" Sheikh (18k)
-John Phan (12k)
-Jennifer Tilly (9k)

Day 1B will get underway at 12 pm local time on Sunday, and is expected to include the likes of Daniel Negreanu, Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Patrik Antonius.

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Filed Under: Tournament Results