The prestigious World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic is now down to only 15 players, and Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari still leads the field with over 2.6 million in tournament chips.

Esfandiari, and his dominating stack, has to be considered a favorite at this point to collect the Five Diamond top prize of $870,124, however the less than two table field of survivors still includes many other skilled and notable pros with an awfully good shot as well.  Some of the big names still in the hunt include, Andrew Robl, Amit Makhija, Kirk Morrison, Vanessa Rousso and 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event runner-up John Racener, currently second in chips overall. 

If Racener were to pull out the win, he could quickly reach the top most section of CardPlayer’s 2010 Player of the Year race, but he still wouldn’t win it.  The same can’t be said however for Sorel Mizzi, who is also still in the tournament and could overtake current POY leader Thomas Marchese, right at the end of the race with a win at the Bellagio.

Even if Mizzi doesn’t quite earn POY honors he’s still at this point guaranteed at least a $42,231 payday, as are all of the last 15 competitors.  39 other deep finishers were destined not to earn quite as much, and instead were eliminated during Day 4.  Some of the notables to cash yesterday included Jonathan Little (38th- $21,116), Will Failla (27th- $25,339), Freddy Deeb (24th- $25,339), Eugene Katchalov (19th- $33,785) and Doyle Brunson (18th- $33,785).

Day Five of the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic begins at noon Vegas time and is currently set to play down to the 6-person final table.  To read updates as it does, or for more information on Day Four visit www.worldpokertour.com.