What’s happening tonight at the WSOP, while Wicked Chops Poker is celebrating the good news.

JC Tran takes his name off of the “Best player to never win a bracelet” list, taking down the $1,500 NL Holdem event against Danish pro Rasmus Nielsen. JC, at one point down 3-1 headsup, chipped away at Rasmus until he eventually took the chip lead, winning when his KQ nipped the Dane’s QJ on a Q-high flop. Tran takes home over $631,000 plus 100 WSOP POY points, moving him into 6th in the race with 1 event remaining. Nielsen will be consoled with almost $390,000 to take back to Denmark.

Other tournament happenings on the next page:
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The $5,000 PLO w/rebuy event is down to its final 3, with Phil Galfond the dominating chip leader, David Benyamine is a distant 2nd. Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu and John Juanda were eliminated in 8th, 7th and 6th respectively in a short period of time. Johnny Chan was later eliminated in 4th place. The $1,500 NL event finally reached its final table, with Vitaly Lunkin currently the chip leader with 7 left.

The $10,000 Limit Holdem World Championship is closing in on the money with about 45 left. Current chip leader is two-time bracelet winner Eric Froehlich. Others near the top include Hoyt Corkins, Michael Mizrachi, and JC Tran. The $3,000 NL event is currently on dinner break with 30 left. Alex Zaslavsky is chip leader, with new father David Singer in 2nd.

The only tournament to start today was the $2,500 NL 6-handed event, which started with a field of 1,012 already down to 190 at the dinner break. Notables in the top 10 include “Devilfish” Ulliot, Max Pescatori, Kenna James and Dario Minieri.

More from me tomorrow with final results, and the Tuesday preview.

The Five Diamond World Poker Classic brings the best in the poker world to the Bellagio each year, and 2007 was no exception. The preliminary events began in late November, and here are some of the better-known winners:

• Event #3 - $2,500 NLHE – 247 entrants, Dutch Boyd won $237,685
• Event #6 - $1,500 NLHE – 508 entrants, Chris McCormack won $239,590
• Event #7 - $2,000 NLHE – 362 entrants, Roy Winston won $230,365
• Event #8 - $2,500 NLHE – 319 entrants, David Pham won $279,845
• Event #12 - $5,000 NLHE – 307 entrants, JC Tran won $523,075

It should be noted that Tom Schneider came in fourth place in Event #3, and Courtney Harrington of PocketFives and PokerRoad made two final tables. Sully Erna, lead singer of Godsmack, came in second to JC in Event #12. Other notables who made final tables included Theo Tran, Kevin Saul, Jared Hamby, Nick Binger, Amnon Filippi, Dan Alspach, Marco Johnson, Shannon Shorr, and David Williams.

David Pham also sealed his status as the CardPlayer Player of the Year.

Next up was the $15,000 WPT Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic main event. The total number of players was 664, and the prize pool was $9,661,200 – the biggest prize pool ever outside of the WSOP main event and WPT World Championship.

Hopes were high that several big names would make the final table, but many of them just couldn’t get there. Phil Ivey was the Day 1 and Day 2 chip leader but imploded on Day 3 to be eliminated. Gus Hansen was doing well for days until he busted in 22nd place, and Daniel Negreanu took a chip lead into Day 5 but was sent home in 14th. Other bustouts included Erick Lindgren in 10th, Jimmy Tran in 8th, and Raymond Davis in 7th.

Five Diamond Final Table - Courtesy of the World Poker Tour

The best known player at the final table was David “Devilfish” Ulliott, Ryan Daut is a young player who won a WPT title in January, and Jordan Rich and Eugene Katchalov are young pro players. Ken Rosen is a virtual unknown, and Ted Kearly is a 75-year old former college football coach.

In the fastest WPT final table on record, Eugene Katchalov took his final table chip lead to victory for a $2,482,605 payday. All of the action was summed up here.

LAS VEGAS–This post woulda been much more timely and sensible had it appeared a week ago, but hey, sometimes what happens in Vegas takes a little while before it becomes public. Anyhow, the last day of the World Series is the point where all unofficial media outlets have to take a back seat in terms of coverage. Understandable considering that, for the first time in nearly seven weeks, all eyes are focussed on a single table … and it just won’t be possible for all interested parties to sit ringside until Brobdingnagian dominance forces Harrah’s to make structural changes to the TV stage.

So that left most of us doing what you were doing … following some rather exciting coverage of a relatively unexciting, straightforward final table on PokerNews while listening to play-by-play on Bluff Radio (which was being piped into the media room) while watching live-camera coverage on a flat-screen monitor.

The media room, anytime there was an all-in and a call. CardPlayer decides not to run with the hedline: ESPN blogger violates Rio chair-standing policy

Actually, large-scale LCD screens were sprinkled throughout the hallways and the Amazon itself, so we could watch the overhead cam pretty much anywhere we went. We just couldn’t camp out for more than a few minutes near the real action. But that was fine by me, because we’ll all get to see The Jerry Yang Show soon enough on TV, and the World Series really is about so much more than just poker. As it turned out, there was lots of fun stuff going on away from the table that provided a little insight into how the poker industry really works …

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… is up. Have a listen (and if you’re a blogger who would like your own custom BTT jukebox like the one you see at the top-right of Pokerati and at Hard Boiled Poker, let us know and we may be able to hook you up.)

Can’t really tell you what Tom, Karridy, and I cover in this episode … mostly because I have yet to listen to it in full. However, I can assure you that you will get to hear:

• Devilfish expressing desires to bang people’s daughters while declaring us “his boys”
• Chau Giang working on his English-only
• Sean Sheikhan talking about “nappy ass players”

Beyond the Table - 4/18/07
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As always … awesome, right?

UPDATE: Oh yeah, right … in this episode we talk about Tom’s performance at the WPT 5-Star World Classic, Anna Wroblewski, Karridy’s early midlife crisis, crapping your pants while at the table, and calculating pot odds when it comes to giving a blow job. Hardcore intellect and aural pleasures to go.

From across the pond:

And as if our Euro friends weren’t having enough fun, here’s a hidden message relayed by Roland de Wolfe as Phil Hellmuth was in the broadcast booth: