Daniel Christopher Alaei was named the grand prize winner of the Doyle Brunson Five Diamond Poker classic that ended this week. He had outdone the other 328 players who are on the field and take home an astounding $1.4 million in bag 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 time comes for the final table to be set and Alaei was group with the most daunting opponents of the field and that includes: includes Josh Arieh, Faraz “The-Toilet” Jaka, Shawn Buchanan, Scotty Nguyen, and Stephen “MrTimCaum” O’Dwyer.
Scotty Nguyen, 5 times winner of the WSOP was trying to reclaim his fame and tried to get the WPT title. But he only came in fifth and brought home a prize of $249,976. He was praised by the other players for his skill and he said:
“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.”
The hardest part of the game for Alaei was when he was head to head with 2 time WSOP winner Josh Arieh. They played a good deal of cards before the final hand that decided it all appeared. Arieh holds 7 pockets and the flop is 10-2-5. He placed all his money on the pot post-flop. Then Alaei made a call with a 10, 8 card. Alaei won with the hand and Arieh went home $952,290 richer.
“It was not an easy call for me,” Alaei commented. “If he had a 10, I was pretty much dead.”
Alaei got the pot of $1.4 million and wins the WPT title. He was questioned about how he feels for his win. He stated that he wanted to win for a long while now and it feels great. All his friends already gained the title and he’s the only one who’s not.
