Poker Pro Phil Ivey Leader After Day 1B of WPT Doyle Brunson Classic

Poker pro Phil Ivey surged to a dominant chip lead at the end of Day 1B at the WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic. (Bodog Beat Image)

Day 1B of the Bellagio Five Diamond World Poker Classic's WPT Doyle Brunson Classic (BFDWPCWPTDBC) championship event turned out to be huge, drawing 110 more players than the first day. The official overall entrant number of 664 makes this event one of the largest poker tournaments in history. Only the WSOP Main Event and WPT World Championship have regularly had larger prizepools than the $9,661,200 collected here. Thanks to this, there will be two more WPT millionaires crowned this weekend as first place gets $2,484,605 and second place $1,252,640.

Well on his way to being one of those two players is poker pro Phil Ivey, who quietly assumed a dominating chip lead not only for Day 1b but for the overall field. He is about 100k ahead of his closest competitor from yesterday's competition, Keith Tilston, and about 35k ahead of Day 1A's leader, John Hennigan.

Joining Ivey as survivors of the days melee were poker pros Joe Sebok, Darrell Dicken, Nenad Medic, TJ Cloutier, Erick Lindgren, Mark Seif, Doyle Brunson, Gus Hansen, Jenn Harman, Mike Matusow, Hevad Khan, Allen Cunningham, Phil Hellmuth, Patrik Antonius....you know what, there were a lot of them, more than we have the time or patience to write down here. You can check CardPlayer.com for full chip counts.

All in all, 445 players are still in the running and will return today to play five more levels and get closer to the record-setting payout. Stay tuned to the Beat for more updates on what should be a very exciting tournament.

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