You could just feel that the something special was going to happen throughout the entire World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Five Diamond Poker Classic main event, as the big names kept surviving, and the story-lines began to develop.

Now with just six players remaining for the coveted title, Antonio Esfandiari is a mere five eliminations away from defending his WPT Five Diamonds title from a year ago, while Vanessa Selbst is five eliminations away from being the WPT’s first female champion in an “open” Main Event.

Whomever takes down the title will have a tough row to hoe, considering that in addition to Selbst and Esfandiari the final table also features UK poker pro and WSOP bracelet winner James Dempsey, online superstar Andrew “luckychewy” Lichtenberger, 2010 November Niner Soi Nguyen, and the least known player of the bunch Vitor Coelho who is only making his third Top 10 finish in a WPT Event this year!

The chip-leader is Soi Nguyen, who will take nearly 5 million chips into Sunday’s final table. Nguyen has been amongst the chip-leaders throughout the tournament and has yet to be tested in the event.

Nguyen proved to be no fluke by winning a 2010 FTOPS event, after reaching the 2010 WSOP Main Event final table in 2010 with very little poker experience (if I recall he had played less than 10 tournaments in his entire life at the time).

Esfandiari (who is probably struggling with the lack of US Online Poker Sites since Black Friday) would be the first player to win the same event in back-to-back years, and would pick up a record-tying third WPT title, matching Gus Hansen and Carlos Mortensen.

Selbst, who is known as a finisher in the poker world, will try to get women off the schnide on the WPT, and what better place for a woman to win the first WPT open event than in the 10th anniversary of the Five Diamonds Poker Classic. Two women have won WPT titles, but one was an invitational event (Van Nguyen at the 2008 WPT Celebrity Invitational), and the other was not an “official” WPT Championship event (Natalia Nikitina at the WPT Paris Regional Event).

Here is a look at the seating assignments and chip-counts of the six remaining players:

* Seat 1: James Dempsey – 3,860,000

* Seat 2: Vitor Coelho – 560,000

* Seat 3: Antonio Esfandiari – 1,255,000

* Seat 4: Andrew Lichtenberger – 3,605,000

* Seat 5: Vanessa Selbst – 2,250,000

* Seat 6: Soi Nguyen – 4,995,000

The final table will begin at 4PM local time, and anyone who doesn’t want to wait for the televised episode can watch all the action at the worldpokertour.com website where Tony Dunst, Dan O’Brien and David “Doc” Sands (who just finished second in the $100k Super-High-Roller tournament) will call the action on a 30-minute delay.

Tags: 10th Anniversary, Antonio Esfandiari, Black Friday, Carlos Mortensen, Coelho, Eliminations, Entire World, Female Champion, Fluke, Gus, Gus Hansen, James Dempsey, Niner, Poker Experience, Poker Sites, Poker World, Two Women, Van Nguyen, Vanessa Selbst, World Poker Tour, WPT, WSOP Main Event

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