Five Diamond Classic: Esfandiari’s Second WPT Title

Antonio Esfandiari won the $10,300 Main Event of the World Poker Tour Five Diamond Classic. Beating Andrew Robl heads-up, Esfandiari earned $870,000 together with his second WPT title.

The unusually strong 6-handed final table presented Vanessa Rousso, Andrew ‘good2cu’ Robl, Antonio Esfandiari, John Racener, Ted Lawson and Kirk ‘Captain Kirk’ Morrison. See stacks below.

They started playing at blind level 25 (5,000/25,000/50,000) and it took only two hands to reduce the field to five: the shortstack Lawson went all-in preflop with 9 9 on Vanessa Rousso’s UTG raise to 125,000. Although flopping a set, the Q turn ruined Lawson’s hand as Rousso had pocket queens and the K on the river could not make any difference.

After winning a huge pot against Rousso, Robl took the lead, sending Morrison to the rail at level 28. Racener and Rousso were both eliminated by Esfandiari, who in turn doubled up so that the two started the HU with almost equal stacks. After a relatively long and respectful play, Robl went all-in with Q T. Esfandiari called, holding K J, and the A K 6 6 5 board gave the 2004 LA Poker Classic winner two pairs and the $870,000 first prize.

Final winnings were as follows:

Watch an interview with Esfandiari here.