Antonio Esfandiari is a 33-year-old professional poker player. Known to the poker community as “The Magician,” the Las Vegas resident is a former magician turned poker player. With nearly $5 million in lifetime earnings, including one WSOP gold bracelet and two other titles, Esfandiari is one of the game’s most recognized and entertaining personalities. In fact, if he fails to make this final table, you will hear him commenting the event as part of ESPN’s live television coverage.
Biggest Win: Won 2004 WPT L.A. Poker Classic — $1,399,135
Bobby Baldwin is a 62-year-old resident of Las Vegas, Nevada, and a longtime casino industry executive. In 1978, he cemented his standing as a premier poker player by winning the $10,000 World Series of Poker World Championship . In all, Baldwin has nearly $1 million in lifetime tournament winnings and is the owner of four WSOP gold bracelets, a rare distinction among the world’s millions of poker players.
Baldwin, who served for a time as a consultant for the Golden Nugget Casino, was named its president in 1984. He has also headed The Mirage and was named president of the Bellagio in 1998. He served under Steve Wynn as Chief Financial Officer of Mirage Resorts from 1999-2000. He now serves as President and CEO of City Center.
Biggest Cash: 1978 WSOP Main Event Championship — $210,000
Sam Trickett is a 25-year-old professional poker player from East Retford, England, is well-positioned with a second-place chip count of 37,000,000.
Arriving at the final table second in chips, Sam Trickett is without doubt one of the best players in the world and one of the favorites at this final table.
In 2010, Trickett had one of the best years of any player as he collected six World Series of Poker cashes including two final tables in a $5,000 No-Limit Holdem and the $25,000 No-Limit Holdem Six-Handed. A fourth place in the European Poker Tour Vilamoura Main Event saw Trickett close out the year with over $1 million in earnings.
In 2011, things got even better for him, if you can believe that. Trickett earned over $4.5 million and grabbed not one, not two, but three million-dollar scores. He started of the year winning the Aussie Millions A$100,000 Challenge for A$1.525 million. He then finished runner-up in the Aussie Millions A$250,000 Super High Roller for A$1.4 million. Both of those were in the month of January in Melbourne. Later that year, Trickett scored first in the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event for a smooth €1 million. He also final tabled the €5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event at the WSOP Europe in October of 2011 for another €77,642.
Richard Yong is a businessman from Asia and often seen along the tournament circuit in the largest events held in Asia and Australia. Yong is also rumored to be one of the players from the famed Macau cash game that regularly takes place in Macau and has become the most talked about live game in the world over recent years.
Yong will bring 7.275 million in chips to the final table and that's good enough for seventh place out of the final eight. Yong's showed some great play throughout this event and he's a force when he has chips. If he's able to heat up early, Yong could easily make a run at this title.
David Einhorn is a 43-year-old hedge fund manager from Rye, New York. He is the Founder and President of Greenlight Capital, which is a "long-short value-oriented hedge fund." Started in 1996 with $900,000, Greenlight’s annualized return for investors is about 22 percent.
When not running his successful business, Einhorn has been known to play cards, and play them well. In the 2006 WSOP Main Event — the largest poker tournament in history with 8,773 entrants — Einhorn finished in 18th place and went on to donate his $659,000 in winnings to the Michael J. Fox Foundation.
An active philanthropist, Einhorn has stated his intent to donate all of his winnings from this event to the City Year Foundation. City Year is an education-focused non-profit that partners with high-need public schools to provide full-time targeted student interventions.
Along with Einhorn's 2006 WSOP Main Event cash, he finished in the money in the $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em Championship at the New England Poker Classic in 2004 and won an event for nearly $90,000 at the 2008 World Poker Finals held at Foxwoods.
The World Series of Poker $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop event, the largest buy-in tournament in poker history, is down to its final table. A charitable group of 48 players put up the $1,000,000 buy-in, $111,111 of which was set aside for One Drop.
Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté, the Chair, describes One Drop as “a charitable organization that develops integrated, innovative projects with an international scope, in which water plays a central role as a creative force in generating positive, sustainable effects for local and foreign populations and in the fight against poverty.”
Laliberté is among the final eight players, each looking to capture the largest first-place prize in tournament poker history, $18,346,673, as well as the platinum WSOP diamond bracelet. He sits in third place to start the day while Antonio Esfandiari tops the bunch. Twelve-time WSOP gold bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth has also made it and will be on the hunt for lucky number 13.
Here are the seating assignments and chip counts for the final table:
Seat
Player
Country
Age
Chip Count
1
Guy Laliberté
Canada
52
21,700,000
2
Brian Rast
USA
30
11,350,000
3
Phil Hellmuth
USA
47
10,925,000
4
Antonio Esfandiari
USA
33
39,925,000
5
Bobby Baldwin
USA
62
7,150,000
6
Sam Trickett
UK
26
37,000,000
7
Richard Yong
China
54
7,475,000
8
David Einhorn
USA
43
8,375,000
The cards are expected to be in the air at 12:45 PM local time. PokerNews will have bios for each player up shortly.
Poker history is going to be made today and PokerNews is proud to have the privilege of providing you hand-for-hand coverage of the action.
