The final table of the World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Five Diamonds World Poker Classic featured two former WPT Champions as well as one of the top young talents in the game, but in the end it was Ravi Raghavan, a man whose previous largest cash had been just over $100,000, who would take home the seven-figure top-prize and be crowned the Season XI WPT Five Diamonds champion.

The talk of the tournament heading into Sunday’s action was Antonio Esfandiari who was at his third consecutive final table in this event, having won the WPT Five Diamonds in 2010, and finishing in 6th place at last year’s Five Diamonds Championship. With the chip-lead, and considering his incredible 2012 run Antonio seemed primed for a historic run, alas his run ended with a respectable 4th place finish after having the misfortune of picking up A-K when Raghavan picked up Pocket Aces.

Another player at the final table was looking for his own bit of history, Andrew Lichtenberger. Lichtenberger, known as “luckychewy” online, was in search of his first major tournament victory at the Five Diamonds, but his run ended with a 5th place finish.

Not only did Raghavan defeat Antonio Esfandiari, Shawn Buchanan, and Andrew Lichtenberger on his way to the title, but he did so by coming from behind as the short-stack to start the day. Raghavan was nearly eliminated early on at the final table, finding himself all-in pre-fop for all of his remaining chips (fewer than 1 million at this point) with 99 and facing the AQ of Lichtenberger. There wasn’t much of a sweat after the flop came down J-9-9, and Raghavan was back in business and wouldn’t look back for the rest of the day.

When the tournament reached heads-up play Raghavan found himself pitted against former WPT winner Shawn Buchanan, with Raghavan holding a solid chip-lead of 9.3 million to 5.7 million. Buchanan, one of poker’s top talents, never got anything going against the formidable amateur; only managing to increase his chip-stack to 6 million chips a few times during the 68-hand heads-up battle. In the end Raghavan had Buchanan all-in and in a dominating position, holding Pocket 7’s to Buchanan’s K-7.

Here is a look at the complete final table payouts from the 2012 World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic:

1. Ravi Raghavan – $1,268,571

2. Shawn Buchanan – $746,502

3. Thomas Winters – $483,031

4. Antonio Esfandiari – $329,339

5. Andrew Lichtenberger – $234,197

6. Jeremy Kottler – $187,845

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Tags: 1 Million, Aces, Amateur, Antonio Esfandiari, Aq, Buchanan, Champion, Chips, Diamonds, Fop, Game, Heading, Lead, Misfortune, Rest Of The Day, Stack, Sweat, Talents, Tournament Victory, World Poker Tour

This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2012 at 8:02 am and is filed under Tournament News, WPT News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.