Home / Poker News December 2011 / WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic – James Dempsey Wins
WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic – James Dempsey Wins
Posted by: James Carter. - Tue, 2011-12-13 13:09
The 2011 edition of the WPT’s Five Diamond World Poker Classic is in the books and James Dempsey is the winner. Antonio Esfandiari, the previous winner of the event was still in contention at the beginning of the day, and quite naturally, all eyes were on him. He rode a relatively short stack into battle though and he just couldn’t get anything going. Under pressure from the very beginning, he was forced to commit on an A,10 he’d picked up. Dempsey made the call with A,4o and the Magician looked like he was going to double up without problems. The flop fell 7,3,2 and Esfandiari’s hand looked better than ever. The 4 which landed on the turn dashed his hopes though and the K on the river sealed his fate.
The official short stack of the final table was Vitor Coelho as he had an even shorter stack than the ill-fated Magician. Only two hands after first blood had been drawn, he pushed all-in with pocket 8s and got called by Vanessa Selbst and Soi Nguyen. Nguyen was the one who took down the pot with a K,J on a board of A,K,3,2,10.
Coelho picked up $159k+ for his efforts.
Andrew Lichtenberger locked horns with Soi Nguyen next, and he was the one who ended up drawing the shorter straw. His 4th place was worth $218.9k, not too shabby for a consolation prize.
Next, it was Vanessa Selbst’s turn to come to grips with the increasingly dominant James Dempsey. Selbst was the one who shoved first, throwing her chips into the middle on a K,9o. Dempsey made the call with an A,9o. The board only brought blanks with the exception of an A on the turn which changed nothing.
The heads-up stage found Nguyen and Dempsey quite even in chips. Over the first 82 hands of the
NL Holdem bout, Nguyen pulled away opening up a 4-1 chip lead over his opponent.
Dempsey rebounded though and fought back with 2 double-ups which put him back into the driver’s seat. The final hand of the event saw Dempsey’s K,Qo triumph over Nguyen’s K,Jo
