Don Nguyen Leads As The Bubble Approaches At WPT 5 Diamond

Brian Rast looks set to make something back on his outlay

Jeff Madsen lost the chip lead but remains well ahead of the average stack

It was a pretty tough field to start with at the Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic but as the number of remaining players shrank, day 3 saw some especially tough tables forming. For example Sorel Mizzi, Tony Dunst, Jason Koon, Mohsin Charania and Tom Marchese were sat together and over the other side of the room Daniel Negreanu, Nam Le, Dan O’Brien and Steve Silverman were sat with chip leader Jeff Madsen.

 That appeared to matter little to Madsen who continued his strong run to retain his chip lead up until the second break, but a clash with Mohsin Charania for a 200 big blind pot saw the lead change hands for the first time in the day. Having taken a flop of QJ8 Charania shoved for a little more than the size of the pot with 98for a strong combo draw, which sent Madsen into the tank. Eventually he made a bit of an optimistic call with AKbut found none of the cards he needed and Charania became the new chip leader.

Yesterday we mentioned how Joseph Cheong and Brian Rast had spent $130,000 between them to stay in the tournament on day 2, and by the end of day 3 only one of those two remained. Joseph Cheong’s endeavour to get something back for his six buy ins came close to succeeding but ultimately failed just short of the money when he busted in 65th place. Brian Rast had a more successful day though and was involved in a lot of pots throughout the day. Twice he found people shoving the flop when he held aces and despite winning the first encounter when he was well ahead, he did come unstuck against Don Nguyen on the second one.

The flop of AK10 had given Rast top set but Nguyen held QJ and played his flopped nuts strongly by simply shipping it all in straight away. Rast called, the board didn’t pair and Nguyen pulled in the biggest pot of the tournament worth close to 300 big blinds. That huge hand was enough to place Nguyen as the end of day chip leader with 774,500 (258 BBs) and despite the setback Brian Rast recovered well and ended the day with 459,500 (153 BBs) for one of the better stacks left in the tournament.

59 players remained by the end of day 3 which means that the money is very close for those who will be returning. 45 get paid so day 4 could see a cautious start followed by a rush of eliminations once the first 14 players go.

The top five stacks going into day 4 are:

Don Nguyen                                       774,500

John Holsonback                              594,000

Mohsin Charania                              573,000

Dan O'Brien                                        504,500

Dan Martin                                         496,000

Further reports from day 4 to follow.