The third day at the World Poker Tour Five Diamond World Poker Classic came to a close with 60 players and Antonio "The Magician" Esfandiari as the chip leader (918,500). Esfandiari won this tournament 2 years ago and finished 6th last year. Now he has about 300k chips more than his closest opponent, Freddy Deeb, and more than 3 times the average stack. In other words, he has a fantastic chance of winning a second title!
Even though many big names failed to make it through Day 3 (Michael Mizrachi, J.C. Tran, Scotty Nguyen, Sorel Mizzi, Barry Greenstein, Andy Frankenberger, Joe Hachem etc) there are still quite a few poker stars left besides Esfandriari and Deeb - Brian Rast, Noah Schwartz, Yevgenly Timoshensko, Andrew Lichtenberger, Chino Rheem and Phil Galfond - just to mention a few.
Day 4 kicks off tonight and the plan is to play down 27 players. The money bubble will burst when 54 players remain (everyone will be guaranteed at least $19,516). The winner of the tournament will take home a whopping $1,268,571!