WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic Winner – Daniel Alaei
by downloadfulltiltpoker ~ December 23rd, 2009. Filed under: Poker News.With a field of 328 players the Doyle Brunson Diamond World Poker Classic event is a tough cookie. But someone was there to climb to the top and fated to crush his opponents. Daniel Christopher is the man to be who won the WPT title bagging more than $1.4 million as prize money.
Alaei specializes on NLHE cash games and has already collected more than $3.7 million dollars in live games during his poker career. He has 2 WSOP bracelets to his name and had won the $10,000 World Championship Omaha Hi/Lo 8-or-better event and made 18 cashes in the WSOP earning him an amount of $1,533,917 respectively.
During the very first day of the $15,000 buy-in tournament he joined the side tables where stakes are high and leave the first set of the proper tournament behind. He said, “I signed up to play and some guys were starting up a big cash game,” “So, I played in that over the tournament for the rest of the day.”
The final table finally came and Daniel was faced with very tough opponents on his table. This player pool was comprised of Josh Arieh, Faraz “The-Toilet” Jaka, Shawn Buchanan, Scotty Nguyen, and Stephen “MrTimCaum” O’Dwyer.
Fives times WSOP bracelet winner, Scotty Nguyen, was trying to gain his previous fame by taking the chance to win the WPT title. However, he ended up as 5th and taking home $249,976. Nguyen gained praises from his co-players and he commented:
“Everybody is a good player these days. You’ve got to respect that. All these young kids these days, they come in to play and they have nothing to fear. They have nothing to lose, only gain.”
He ended up head up with 2 time WSOP winner Josh Arieh in the final two. The last hand came up and Arieh had pocket 7′s in a 10-2-5 flop. Arieh go all in post flop. However, Alaei holds a 10, 8 card and called. Arieh ended up being second with a wealth gain of $952,290.
“It was not an easy call for me,” Alaei stated. “If he had a 10, I was pretty much dead.”
Daniel Alaei took home $1,428,430 for his winnings. He was asked about what it felt to win his first WPT title and he said, “This is great. I’ve wanted one of these for a while. I was one of my only friends who didn’t have one.”
