Home / Poker News December 2010 / Esfandiari scores second WPT title
Esfandiari scores second WPT title
Posted by: James Carter. - Fri, 2010-12-10 06:51
Wednesday saw the final table of the WPT’s Five Diamond World Poker Classic reconvene to decide a winner. The 6 players who survived the initial starting field of 436 were all name pros and they all came into the final table well-stacked. The start of the day chip leader was Vanessa Rousso, with 5.8 million chips.
Antonio Esfandiari started the home stretch on a 2.1 million stack, but in the end, it was he who stood alone at the top, his second WPT title secured and the top prize of $870k set to disappear in his pockets.
The first elimination of the final table came on the second hand of action and it was indeed a truly spectacular one. Ted Lawson ran his pocket 9s into Vanessa Rousso’s pocket Qs. The flop brought another 9 to give Lawson a set and to turn the tables on Rousso, but the Q on the turn righted the evil and gave the lead back to the favorite. The K on the river sealed the deal. Lawson still made more than $126k with his 6th place finish.
Vanessa Rousso proceeded to take a hit from Andrew Robl next. Robl doubled up and Rousso sank to 5.4 million.
The two of them tangled again a few hands later and Robl doubled up yet again to take the chip lead.
Kirk Morrison was the next victim when his pair of aces proved to be no match for Robl’s set of 5s.
John Racener exited 4th, ushered out by Antonio Esfandiari, to pick up $232k for his 4th place finish.
Vanessa Rousso had to be eliminated too to set up the heads-up stage between Robl and Esfandiari. She bowed out after running her Qh,2h into the Magician’s A,Q.
The heads-up action between Robl and Esfandiari was a truly jovial one. After a bit of back and forth though, Esfandiari brought it all home, leaving Robl “stuck” with the $549k second-place reward.
