Final Table is Set at Bellagio with Antonio Esfandiari in the Lead

The final television table of six is set at the World Poker Tour Five Diamond World Poker Classic and the chip leader going into tomorrow is Antonio Esfandiari with 4.3 million. He has now made the final table at this event an unprecedented third year in a row, and he is in a good position to win the WPT Five Diamond title for the second time in three years. And on top of all that, it is Antonio’s birthday today. He had strong rail support throughout the day, including members of his family, his professional best friend Jeff Gross, and Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps.

Joining Esfandiari at the final table are Shawn Buchanan, Ravi Raghavan, Andrew Lichtenberger, Jeremy Kottler, and Thomas Winters. This is one of the most talented final tables that Season XI of the WPT has seen and it should be a great day tomorrow at Bellagio.

The level of play was very high today with solid, measured poker setting the tone for the day. It is easy to see why the level of play was so good today considering the large amount of notables left in the field. Along the path from 22 players down to the final six we lost Joe Elpayaa, Eddie Sabat, Brian Rast, Jeremy Ausmus, Noah Schwartz, Scott Clements, Andrew Robl, Greg Mueller, Freddy Deeb, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Jason Somerville, Theo Tran, and the final table bubble boy Jonathan Aguiar, who busted in seventh place to end the night.

Cards will get into the air at 4 p.m. PT on Sunday and you can follow along with all of the action in our hand-for-hand live updates and chip counts updated in real time. You can also watch the final table on WPT Live Stream starting at 4:30 p.m. PT with hole cards and commentary from Tony Dunst, Dan O’Brien, and Jonathan Little. Stay tuned tonight for a photo blog of the day’s events, and bios for all of the final table contestants will be posted before the start of play tomorrow.

Thanks to Joe Giron for providing photos throughout the day’s coverage. We’ll see you Sunday.