Recapping last night’s action, with an eye on what’s going on today:

As noted below, Scotty Nguyen takes down the $50,000 HORSE event, taking down almost $2,000,000, his 5th bracelet, and the first to have won the WSOP Main Event and the $50k HORSE event. Erick Lindgren’s 3rd place moves him into first in the Milwaukee’s Best WSOP Player of the Year race with just 2 tournaments left.

The $1,500 NL Holdem final table has been set, scheduled to start at 3pm. The two most notable names are two WPT winners, JC Tran and Joe Pelton, here’s how the rest of the table will look like:

Seat 1: Christoph Kohnen 293,000
Seat 2: Joe Pelton 1,093,000
Seat 3: Jesper Hoog 320,000
Seat 4: John Conroy 501,000
Seat 5: Robert Kalb 456,000
Seat 6: J.C. Tran 1,438,000 (his 3rd final table of the Series)
Seat 7: Chad Siu 185,000
Seat 8: Peter Nguyen 870,000
Seat 9: Rasmus Nielsen 2,998,000

Other tournament stuff on the next page:
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Recapping last night with a preview of Sunday activities:

In the $1,500 NL holdem event, Jesper Hougaard returned from the dinner break seemingly in better spirits, as he was able to recover from giving up a 6.5-1 chip lead to Cody Slaubaugh to get back to having a very slight chip lead. A single $25,000 chip separated the two when the final hand was played out as Jesper’s QQ (with a 3rd Q on the flop) crushed Cody’s A-10. Hougaard takes home the bracelet and $610,000, while Cody has the consolation of winning $389,128 for finishing 2nd.

The $10,000 Omaha 8 or Better World Championship led to another name being removed from the list of best players to never win a bracelet as David Benyamine won $535,687 and the coveted WSOP bracelet. Greg Jamison finished in 2nd, Mike Matusow finished in 5th, Eugene Katchalov was 6th, while David Chiu ended up in 8th. Benyamine’s win places him only 2 points behind Jacobo Hernandez in the ESPN WSOP Player of the Year race. The announcement that the $50,000 HORSE event later this week will count towards the standings means that plenty of big names are still in the hunt to take down that title.

The final table for today, and other stuff on page 2…

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Happenings tonight at the WSOP.

The $1,500 NL Holdem final table is now heads-up between Jesper Hougaard and Cody Slaubaugh. Jesper had been dominating the final table and started heads-up with $6,500,000 in chips to about 800,000 for Slaubaugh. Just 6 hands later, Slaubaugh had a nearly 2-1 chip lead as Hougaard decided it was now an opportune time to take the dinner break. They’ll return at about 9:30 PT to finish, the way it’s going it won’t take long either way. Follow along on the World Series of Poker’s update site here.

The other final table on Page 2.

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Recapping the Friday action and a preview for today:

The $1,500 7 Card Stud winner turned out to be Mike Rocco, who endured the barbs of Al Barbieri to take down his first bracelet and about $135,000.

The $10,000 Omaha Hi/Lo 8 or Better World Championship stopped play with 18 left, they get to return at 3pm to determine their winner. The final two tables have plenty of notable names remaining, which consist of:

Table 14

1 Danny Dang 257,000
2 Stuart Paterson 96,000
3 Eugene Katchalov 252,000
4 Chau Giang 384,000
5 Shun Uchida 134,000
6 Pat Pezzin 65,000
7 David Benyamine 378,000
8 Ram Vaswani 569,000
9 Toto Leonidas 269,000

Table 15

1 Brent Carter 114,000
2 Jason Gray 347,000
3 Berry Johnston 338,000
4 Mike Matusow 396,000
5 David Chiu 372,000
6 Greg Jamison 208,000
7 Hieu “Tony” Ma 319,000
8 Ray Dehkharghani 149,000
9 William McMahan 76,000

The ESPN360 final table for today on the next page…

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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.