Wednesday will see a star-studded final table get underway at the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic. Leading the six-player pack by a comfortable margin is Vanessa Rousso with 5.8m chips. Rousso will be looking forward to taking part in her first ever WPT final table and the chance to add the $870k first prize to her 2010 winnings (because she has to buy a new car and all). But she’ll have plenty of competition. Sitting in second place with 3.235m chips is WSOP runner-up John Racener, with Andrew Robi right behind him at 3.21m. The rest of the field, which begins playing at 4pm PST, is as follows: Kirk Morrison (2.65m); Antonio Esfandiari (2.105m) and Ted Lawson (635k).
Across the Paciic Ocean, Day 1a of the Asia Pacific Poker Tour Sydney is in the books. With the High Rollers Event also taking place on the day, the Main Event drew a smallish field, with 75 players buying-in for AUS $6,300. Local boy Manuel Hansimikali ended the day with the biggest stack of the 41 survivors.
In other tournament news, Nick Abou Risk defeated Trish Mallin in heads-up play to triumph at the UKIPT Galway event, earning €67k and becoming the tour’s first ever two-time champ. The Grosvenor UK Poker Tour’s Champion of Champions title was won by Luke Fields at Coventry’s G Casino. Fields defeated 152 other entrants to collect the £42k prize.
Finally, we head to Frederick, Maryland, where a live poker promoter is suing another promoter for stealing players. The operators of the Stars-N-Bars Poker Series claimed rival promoter East Coast Poker Productions sent a person to hang around Stars-N-Bars events, talk to players and collect their cell phone numbers. Later, it is alleged that the East Coast folks sent these players text messages claiming that Stars-N-Bars events were cancelled, and that they should attend East Coast Poker events instead. Personally, we hope East Coast’s defense will be built around the semantics of whether those text messages were lies or bluffs.
