The Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic saw 626 hopefuls who each paid $15,000 + $400 to enter the tournament for a shot at the top prize of $2,482,605. The spectacular Bellagio was the venue of this 7 day event which spanned from December 12 – December 18, 2007. The entire tournament witnessed 100 payouts from the total pool prize of $9,661,200.

Final game kicked off at 4pm and the chip leader was Eugene Katchalov with 8,360,000 chips in Seat 4 followed by Jordan Rich with 6,585,000 chips in Seat 3. The rest of the players had the following seating arrangements and chip count:

Seat 1 – Kenneth Rosen with 1,135,000
Seat 2 – Ted Kearley with 1,620,000
Seat 5 – Ryan Daut with 330,000
Seat 6 – David “Devilfish” Ulliot with 1,900,000

Game play was fast and furious at the final table and Daut was the first to be eliminated, taking home $192,715 in winnings. Next to follow Daut to the exit was Rich whose cash prize came to $289,070. Rosen bagged $433,675 before being shown the door and third place winner was Ulliot with prize winnings of $674,500.

That left Katchalov and Kearley at the start of heads up play. The Ukrainian native had a massive chip lead of 16,755,000 over Kearley’s 3,175,000. In just 53 hands, Katchalov won the final table WPT title with a winning hand of J hearts and 10 diamonds as well as $2,842,605 in cash. He broke Doyle Brunson’s record set in 2004 at the WPT Legends of Poker. Kearley, the 75 year old tournament rookie was runner-up with an impressive $1,252,640 prize.

Eugene Katchalov was born on February 21, 1981 in Kiev, Ukraine and moved to Brooklyn, New York with his parents when he was aged 10. Now 27, this young poker professional still calls Brooklyn his home town where he’s a stock trader most of the time. Katchalov began playing poker in his early twenties with friends and later progressed to online poker to improve his game.

He graduated from New York University (NYU) with a degree in finance and international trade and has played in 23 tournaments to date. He’s ranked 18 in the world and prior to winning the WPT title, Katchalov had 3 WSOP cashes and won the $5,000 No Limit Hold’em event at the Bellagio Cup III in June 2007, pocketing $118,785 in prize money. His total live tournament winnings as at end 2008 exceeds $2.9 million.

-- Reinu C.