December 11 2011, Brett Collson

The World Poker Tour will celebrate its 10th Anniversary with a bang on Sunday. The six-handed final table of the Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic is loaded with heavy hitters that includes not only the event’s defending champion, but also a former November Niner and one of the world’s most accomplished female tournament players.

All eyes will be on Antonio Esfandiari when the televised final table commences Sunday evening. In last year’s Five Diamond World Poker Classic, Esfandiari bested a field of 438 players to win his second WPT crown and a prize of $870,000. He has a chance to do the unthinkable Sunday by going back-to-back at the Bellagio, an achievement that would tie him with Gus Hansen and Carlos Mortensen for the most titles (three) in the ten years of the World Poker Tour.

Esfandiari enters the final table fifth in chips with 1,255,000 and has quite a hill to climb in order to catch chip leader Soi Nguyen. The 2010 November Niner bagged 4,995,000 when play ended on Saturday, including the remaining chips of seventh-place finisher Larry Wells on the final table bubble.

According to the WPT Live Update Team, Nyugen min-raised preflop to 120,000 from under the gun and Wells called from middle position to see a flop of . Nguyen bet 130,000 and Wells called, and the turn brought the . Nguyen fired again, this time for 275,000, and Wells tossed in a call. The fell on the river and Nguyen moved all-in, having his opponent’s stack covered. Wells called and tabled for trip aces, but Nguyen revealed a straight with to win the pot and end play for the evening.

Others joining Wells on the rail Saturday were William Reynolds (13th place), Kyle Julius (12th), Rudy Maarek (11th), David Williams (10th), Anthony Yeh (ninth) and Braden Hall (eighth).

Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Selbst will be looking to block Esfandiari’s road to history at Sunday’s final table. Selbst, who is fourth in chips entering Sunday’s final table, is the last player to repeat in a major live tournament; in April, she defended her title at the PokerStars North American Poker Tour Mohegan Sun Main Event. Selbst also has major titles at the World Series of Poker and the Partouche Poker Tour, and can move closer to Kathy Liebert for No. 1 on the women’s all-time earnings list with a victory at Bellagio. Selbst currently stands roughly $1.4 million behind Liebert. A win on Sunday would net her more than $820,000.

Rounding out the Sunday’s final table lineup are Andrew Lichtenberger, James Dempsey and Vitor Coelho. Lichtenberger, 24, finished eighth in this event last year and boasts more than $1.4 million in live tournament earnings in his short career. Dempsey is a rising star in the game, having won his first WSOP bracelet in 2010 and making appearances on several televised poker programs in the U.K. in 2011.

Coelho won’t stand out among his famous tablemates but has found some recent success on the WPT. Last month, Coelho took fourth place at the WPT Jacksonville Main Event for $70,000, his biggest cash since winning a WPT prelim at Borgata in 2009 for $107,100.

Sunday’s final table kicks off at 1600 PST (0000 GMT) and will be live streamed with hole cards on a 30-minute delay by WorldPokerTour.com. Commentary will be provided by Tony Dunst, David Sands and Dan O’Brien.

Here’s a look at the seat draw for the final table:

WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic Table Seat Draw

In addition to the WPT Five Diamond event, the Bellagio $100,000 Super High Roller tournament came to a close Saturday with a familiar face landing back in the winner’s circle. After coming to a three-way deal with David Sands and Isaac Haxton, Jason Mercier went on to beat Sands heads-up for the title and a $25,000 seat to the WPT World Championship in May.

According to Mercier’s post on Twitter, his share of the chop was worth $683,767, while Sands collected $619,000 and Haxton earned $582,000. The 29-player field drew big names like Daniel Negreanu, Erik Seidel, Ben Lamb and Justin Bonomo to generate a prize pool of nearly $3 million.

*Photo courtesy of the World Poker Tour.

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September 04 2011, Cory Dowd

After almost 12 full levels of play on Day 1b of the Epic Poker League $1,500 Pro/Am #2, the second starting field of 53 players has been narrowed down to 11. Just because the field was on the small side, this did not mean that it was easy to prevail. A host of professionals turned out, many already a with an EPL membership card. Among these pros were David “Bakes” Baker, Layne Flack, Bryan Devonshire, Chau Giang, John Hennigan, David Singer, Dutch Boyd and Eric Buchman. There were also three World Series of Poker Main Event champions playing on Saturday: Huck Seed, Carlos Mortensen, and Jamie Gold, although, none of those world-class players were able to make it to Day 2.

In the end, it was Ryan Young, Tim West, Sean Getzwiller, Nam Le, Andreas Hoivold, Jeremiah DeGreef, JJ Liu, Brent Roberts and Michael Divita who are moving on to play on Sunday. Finishing on top, though, was Greg Mueller with 140,500 chips. He’ll be the overall chip leader going into Day 2.

Combined with the nine players from Day 1a, a star-studded field remains, few of whom would even consider themselves “amateurs.” Headlining the Day 1a players to make it through is Phil Hellmuth, ending his Day 1a conquest with 27,800. He’ll be joined by Rep Porter, Matt Marafioti, Brandon Meyers, Russell Rosenblum, Christian Harder, Jamie Kaplan, Orson Young and Jeremy Ausmus who bagged up a Day 1a high 96,500 in chips. Ausmus will start in third place when the fields combine.

On Sunday, these 20 competitors will play down to nine. Each member of the final table will win a $20,000 seat into the Main Event, which starts Tuesday. More importantly, those who are not already EPL card members will need this achievement in order to even be eligible to play the upcoming Main Event. For those “amateurs,” Sunday will be the key to poker’s most exclusive event and a chance to test their skills with the absolute best in the world. Plus they’ll have a shot as a large sum of money never hurts either.

Another story that developed Saturday is the overlay. Because 132 players are needed to reach the $180,000 guarantee, and drawing only 97 between both starting days, there is a significant amount of money that will have to be put up by the EPL, creating some great value for the players in the event.

Almost half of the remaining players will get their hands on $20,000, and with the field almost as good as the EPL Main Event itself, the action is sure to be intense. Day 2 begins at 1200 PDT (2000 BST) at the Palms Resort Casino in Las Vegas on Sunday. As usual, stay tuned to PokerNews for all the poker you can handle!

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