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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Follow Brett Collson on Twitter – @brettcollson

October 23 2011, Chad Holloway

The 2011-2012 World Series of Poker Circuit continued on Saturday with Day 1b of the Hammond Main Event. On Friday, the Horseshoe Hammond housed a record 912 entrants for Day 1a, surpassing the 2010 Main Event’s field of 872 players. That meant the 703 Day-1b entrants were just icing on the cake, making the total field 1,615 and creating a $2,349,825 prize pool, $393,584 of which is reserved for first place. The man who finished the day with the best chance of capturing that prize was Mike Scarborough, who bagged up 324,500.

Scarborough is no stranger to poker and actually made a televised final table at the 2011 World Poker Tour Hollywood Poker Open in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. Not only that, he went on to win the tournament for $273,644 after defeating a final table that included Ali Eslami, Tom Marchese, William Reynolds, and Erik Seidel. For the victory, Scarborough defeated Seidel in heads-up play.

Unfortunately, not everyone had as good a day as Scarborough. Day 1b was filled with numerous re-entries, but many found their luck hadn’t changed since Day 1a. Some players who played both flights and failed to survive include Allen Kessler, Kathy Liebert, Chris Tryba, Micah Raskin, Kyle Cartwright, Steve Verrett, Tim Vance, and last year’s winner, Kurt Jewell.

One man who did have a good day was former online pro Mark “P0ker H0” Kroon, who was eliminated on Day 1a on just the third hand, after his pocket aces were cracked by pocket kings. Re-entering the event proved a wise decision because Kroon ended up finishing with an average stack of 108,000.

Much of that stack came late in the evening when a player in middle position opened for 3,300 only to have Khang Nguyen move all-in for 33,000. Action folded around to Kroon in the big blind and he moved all-in after squeezing out his cards. The original raiser quickly got out of the way and the cards were turned up:

Showdown
Kroon:
Nguyen:

“All red,” Kroon commanded the dealer, who obliged with a flop; however, it did give Nguyen a gut-shot straight draw to a jack. The turn was a blank as far as Nguyen was concerned, and so was the river. Kroon eliminated his opponent and chipped up to around 184,000 in the process, obviously losing a bit before night’s end.

Other notables who survived the Day 1b minefield and will return on Sunday include “Captain” Tom Franklin (41,000), Eddie Blumenthal (79,500), Eric Bair (189,500), Jeff Fielder (216,500), Nadya Magnus (91,000), and Jacob Bazley (255,000).

Those players will join Paul Bianchi, who ended Day 1a as the chip leader with a staggering 358,000; as well as, notables from Day 1a like Eric Crain, Dwyte Pilgrim, Chad Brown, Josh Brikis, Mohsin Charania and Kenny Nguyen.

The 158 Day 1b survivors will join the 184 players Day 1a survivors on Sunday at 1400 CDT (1900 GMT) as the final 342 work their way past the money bubble and toward the final table.

You can follow all the action from Hammond as our Live Reporting Team brings you all the hands, action, and eliminations on the way to crowning the latest WSOP Circuit Main Event champion.

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Follow Chad Holloway on Twitter – @ChadAHolloway