The Season XV World Poker Tour® Five Diamond World Poker Classic $10,400 Main Event from Bellagio in Las Vegas continued play on Tuesday with Day 2 action. The biggest news of the day came from the record-shattering field that turned up. When registration was closed at around 5:15 p.m. local time, a wall-bursting 791 entries were tallied, generating a $7.673 million prize pool. That is the largest field ever for the WPT® Five Diamond Main Event at Bellagio, blowing the doors off the 664 entries that came out in Season VI back in 2007.
The top 72 spots were set to reach the money, with all eyes locked squarely on the $1.938 million first place prize. Second place will also win well over $1 million, with the runner-up receiving $1.124 million.
Ryan Hughes bagged the most chips on the day with 364,400. In the last level of the night, Hughes busted an opponent who held two kings to Hughes’ ace-king, but the hand wasn’t your standard situation you might’ve thought.
With the blinds at 500-1,000 with a 100 ante, a player in early position opened to 2,200. Hughes reraised to 6,000 from middle position, and then the original raiser kicked it back up to 16,200. Hughes called, and the flop came down 
. Hughes called his opponent’s 13,000-chip bet, and the 
came on the turn. After his opponent checked, Hughes bet 21,000. His opponent called. The river was the 
, and Hughes’ opponent checked again. Hughes moved forward a bet of around 50,000 to put his opponent all in, and the player made the call with the 
. Hughes tabled the winner with the 
and pulled in the pot.
After the day, Hughes told members of the WPT production team that he felt he was both playing well and running well, which can be a lethal combination for opponents to have to deal with.
Just about tied in second place on the leaderboard were Jennifer Tilly (279,100) and Samuel Bernabeu (279,000), while Corey Hochman (260,400), Anthony Spinella (226,700), David Pham (224,300), and Justin Bonomo (219,800) were a handful of the other notables to bag up big stacks going into Day 3.
One player who had a particularly rough go of it on Day 2 was three-time NFL Super Bowl champion Richard Seymour. Seymour managed to advance to Day 3, but it took more than one bullet after he ran pocket kings into pocket aces not only once, but twice.
Rainer Kempe, Natasha Barbour, Pat Lyons, and Garrett Greer were a few of the notable faces that busted out of the event, as did Gus Hansen, one of the very last registrants. Hansen was the winner of the very first WPT Five Diamond Main Event, which was also the very first WPT event ever held, but he’ll have to wait until next year for a run at another WPT Five Diamond Main Event final table.
Due to the extra large field size, Bellagio staff made the decision to change the schedule for tomorrow. Players will now play seven 90-minute levels on Wednesday’s Day 3, instead of the originally scheduled five. After the first five levels, there will be a one-hour dinner break before the players return to battle for two more levels. Play should end around 1 a.m. local time in Las Vegas.
The top 72 spots are set to reach the money, although it is not expected that the money will be reached on Day 3 with approximately 270 players still remaining and a deep average stack.
Stay tuned right here to WPT.com for continued coverage of the Season XV WP Five Diamond $10,400 Main Event.