AUTHOR: Jerry "Jet" Whittaker
TITLE: World Poker Tour: Five Diamond World Poker Classic
DATE: 9:14 AM
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BODY:
<p class="mobile-post">Today at 5pm pacific the final six will compete for a first prize of
$2,182,075. The favorite has to be Daniel Negreanu, the 2004 Player of the
Year. Negreanu, holder of three WSOP bracelets (04 $2,000 LHE, 03 $2,000
S.H.O.E., 98 $2,000 PLHE), previously won this event in 2004. That was good
for $1.77 million. This would be his largest single score in an event.
Negreanu grabbed the chip lead after starting on a short stack with around a
dozen players remaining in the event. Mads Anderson battled adversity at the
final two tables. He lost some key pots and made some ill-timed moves. After
getting lucky a few times, he finally won some big pots and stormed into
second place. He's only 360k shy of Negreau. Anderson won the EPT
Scandanavian Open in Copenhagen earlier this year for over $400,000. He's
also won a PLO tournament at the Jack Binion World Poker open in 2005.
Joseph Hachem, much like Negreanu, needs little introduction. He held a
large stack most of the final three tables today. A few hands didn't work
out for Joe, and he gave some ammunition to Negreanu &amp; others. He's still
sitting on a very healthy 2.345 million chip stack. Hachem of course was the
winner of the 2005 WSOP Main Event for $7.5 million. He's had a heck of a
follow up this year, with final tables in numerous tournaments, and a near
second bracelet this summer. Ed Jordan previously made a WPT final table in
Foxwoods this April. He took third place for $417k, and he's looking to
score his first major victory. Jordan is a resident of New Jersey. In some
key pots, Jordan had the luck break his way when he was well behind. The
chips stayed with him throughout the final table.  Negreanu's style is
likely to clash with that of Jordan, who plays an overly aggressive game
with lots of all-in moves, in contrast with Negreanu's "small ball" play.
David Redlin is a local Las Vegas poker pro. He's a young, proven winner,
with a victory in the NPL Open $1,000 NLHE event at Caesar's. He also took
second in one of the Bellagio $1,000 weekly tournaments. His lifetime cash
total of $50,346 has already been boosted significantly by the $169,145 he
is guaranteed.  He skyrocketed in chips just before reaching the final
table, winning key pots against Hachem &amp; Fred Goldberg. Jim Hanna has no
previous major cashes in poker tournaments.  He's a resident of Florida and
played a fairly solid game all the way to the final table.  He won a big
race against Haralabos Voulgaris for over 1.4 million chips to slide into
the WPT final table.</p>
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