Travel Report: Season XII WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic, Day 5 -- King Dan’s Two-Outer

Was a full day yesterday for Day 5 of the WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic as they played down from 21 to the final six.

The tourney was relocated to the “high-limit” area of the Bellagio poker room, an elevated section in the far right corner, which took the players out of the center of the very active cash games happening at the mostly filled tables in the rest of the room.

Once the three tables played down to a final ten-handed table, the final table of that $100K high roller event the Bellagio was putting on was moved over into the same area as well, and in fact would play out long after we finished with Brian Rast winning more than $1 million for topping a small field.

Rast was one of the couple of players who had actually entered the $10K WPT event seven times (thanks to the unlimited re-entry format), and so despite finishing in 32nd and in the money, he’d lost more than $40K in that one as his cash was only for a little over $26K.

Not sure if Rast re-entered the $100K or not, but you can check out reports on the event by Eric of Poker Telegraph who was on hand to file updates on that one from start-to-finish.

The big news entering Day 5, of course, was the prospect of start-of-day chip leader Jean-Robert Bellande perhaps making the televised final table and thus adding a bit of entertainment to the proceedings later today. JRB was still leading at mid-afternoon yesterday, but had one calamitous level that took him from the top of the counts to the bottom, and it wasn’t long after they’d gone to the ten-handed final table that he busted in 10th.

It took a good while, but finally they reached the final six with Dan Smith the chip leader. Smith had narrowly avoided finishing 16th in the tournament when he’d been all in with 10-10 versus the K-K of Steven Silverman and no help had come on either the flop or turn. But a 10 fell on fifth street to save Smith, and he’d go on to carry the lead to today while Silverman would be the one to finish 16th.

“King Dan” will be joined by Eddy Sabat and Joe Serock at this final table, as well as a player named Shaun Suller whom I met a few times covering WSOP Circuit stops. Suller is a friendly guy and I overheard him telling the WPT TV crew in an interview how he planned to donate a percentage of his winnings to the Jimmy V Foundation, which gave me another reason to be glad he’d made the final table.

Meanwhile others coming up short along with Bellande and Silverman were Christian Harder, Dan O’Brien, and Will Failla.

Have a hectic day ahead and so am cutting things short again. Check over at the WPT site for updates later on from tonight’s final table. Should be interesting to see the staging and presentation for the TV show, as Mike Sexton, Vince Van Patten, Lynn Gilmartin will all be there to do their commentary as it goes.