The World Poker Tour’s Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic has reached its penultimate moment, determining the six handed final table during play Saturday night.
Thirteen players came back on Saturday afternoon to the Bellagio, prepared to work their way down to the traditional six handed WPT final table. 2010 World Series of Poker “November Nine” member Soi Nguyen held a nearly one million chip lead over his nearest competitor, Andrew “luckychewy” Lichtenberger, while other formidable foes such as the United Kingdom’s James “Flushy” Dempsey, defending champion Antonio Esfandiari, Kyle Julius, Vanessa Selbst and David Williams lurked down the leaderboard. The potential existed, at the start of the day, for the creation of one of the most difficult final tables in WPT history.
The short stacks in the tournament – William Reynolds and Rudy Maarek – got the action going right off the bat on Saturday. Within moments of the opening bell, Reynolds had shoved his stack in against Esfandiari (but didn’t get a call), while Maarek doubled his stack through Vitor Coelho. Reynolds would not make it through his next shove, however, as he squared off against Coelho again.
After a raise from Reynolds, Coelho and Larry Wells called to see an A-K-9 flop, after which Reynolds fired a continuation bet, with Coelho calling and Wells dropping out. On the four turn, Reynolds kept up the pressure with another bet, but Coelho dropped his remaining chips in the center. Reynolds made the call, tabling A-J for top pair, but Coelho had him drawing dead with his flopped set of nines. After the unimportant river, Coelho moved up to just shy of one million chips, while Reynolds dropped to less than 200,000. On the next hand, Braden Hall would eliminate Reynolds in thirteenth place.
In a key hand, Selbst sent Julius to the rail in a hand where the chips went to the center pre-flop. After a six-bet all in by Julius, Selbst immediately made the call and tabled pocket Kings against Julius, who was making a move on the veteran pro with only a 7-5 of diamonds. The J-5-4 flop paired Julius and a turn six opened up some more outs for Julius, but a river ten would give the hand to Selbst. After a count of chips, Selbst held a scant 50K more, eliminating Julius’ run at this WPT championship in twelfth place and moving Selbst up over the two million mark.
Once Maarek was eliminated in eleventh place by Esfandiari, the final ten players gathered on a single table to work to the final six barely two hours into Saturday’s play. Nguyen still held a lead, but it had shrunk to just 500K over Selbst and 800K over Esfandiari. Over the next 122 hands (and seven hours), the leaderboard would blaze with lead changes as the contenders for the last WPT championship of 2010 were determined.
At some point during the unofficial final table, Selbst, Nguyen and Dempsey all held the lead, while David Williams (tenth, $47,767), Anthony Yeh (ninth, $55,728) and Braden Hall (eighth, $63,960) all fell away from the felt. With the final table bubble looming, the players took more than two hours to determine who would sit at the final table.
Lichtenberger made some moves up the leaderboard during this period, but it would be Nguyen who would maintain his Day Four chip lead to the final table by eliminating the “bubble boy.” In this case, it was Larry Wells, who went to battle after Nguyen raised pre-flop.
On an A-7-6 flop, Nguyen fired after raising pre-flop and Wells only called, as he did pre-flop. With a five on the turn, Wells once again simply called a 275K chip bet from Nguyen. On the Ace river, Nguyen decided to quit playing nice and moved his remaining stack to the center. Wells made the call, turning up an impressive A-J for trip Aces, but Nguyen would show a 9-8 of diamonds for a flopped open ended straight which got there on the turn. For his efforts, Larry Wells took home $91,544 for his seventh place finish.
At 4PM (Las Vegas time), the final six players will gather to determine a champion in this event:
Seat One: James Dempsey, 3.86 million
Seat Two: Vitor Coelho, 560,000
Seat Three: Antonio Esfandiari, 1.255 million
Seat Four: Andrew Lichtenberger, 3.605 million
Seat Five: Vanessa Selbst, 2.25 million
Seat Six: Soi Nguyen, 4.995 million
There’s something for every poker fan at this particular final table. Dempsey is looking for the second leg of poker’s “Triple Crown” by winning this tournament, while Esfandiari looks to make history by being the first player to be a repeat champion of a WPT event. Selbst, for her part, is looking to become the first female champion of an open WPT tournament, while Nguyen is looking for his first major title to add to his excellent WSOP performance in 2010. Lichtenberger is a highly respected online player looking for his first major title, while Coelho faces the arduous task of rising from the short stack to becoming a WPT champion.
The WPT website will be live streaming the tournament this afternoon on a thirty minute delay (the broadcast will begin at 4:30 Vegas time). Hosted by Tony “Bond_18” Dunst (who drove deep in this tournament) and other prominent pros, we should know this evening who will take home the final championship of the calendar year on the World Poker Tour.
