WPT South Africa: Diana Svensk With 5th Place Finish

Last time we heard from Diana Svensk she was deep in the WSOP Main Event, and one of the last two women standing; the other was Kelly Minkin. Svensk was eventually eliminated in 83rd place for $68,624.

Today the fashion designer and poker player from Sweden made another deep run, this time in Johannesburg where the WPT Emperors Palace Poker Classic played down to a winner. Svensk has enjoyed success at the venue before. In 2013 she won the WPT 6-max event for $30,096 at a final table that among others included Leo Margets, who finished third.

Pretty unusual for a WPT-event three of the final 23 players today were women. Besides Svensk, poker pro Melanie Weisner and poker player and model Sara Chafak had made it to the final day of play. Even though Chafak was third in chips at the start of the day, she was the first of the trio to be eliminated – and unfortunately outside of the money in 17th place, when her

failed to improve versus Aaron Overton’s .

Melanie Weisner had more luck, and the experienced pro was able to extract max value in a hand, where she turned a straight and was up against Jarred Solomon’s set of aces. After the elimination of Jonathan “xMONSTERxDONGx” Karamalikis on the money bubble, Darren Elias in 15th place, and Kinesh Pather in 14th place, Weisner was sent to the rail in 13th place, when she was all in with pocket tens and got looked up by Overton with AK. Overton paired his ace on the turn, and Weisner was out of the tournament with $4,365 in her pocket.

Diana Svensk started the day with 28 big blinds, and she was able to build her stack throughout the day. At one point she was sitting with the second largest stack behind Aaron Overton, but when the official final table of six was set, Svensk had 571,000 (36 bb) to her name; around average.

After the elimination of Dean Doucha in 6th place, Svensk was involved in a hand that left her crippled. The action started with Mark Liftman raising to 40,000 from the cutoff, and Svensk 3-betting to 80,000 from the button. Liftman called. On the

flop Liftman moved all in and Svensk snap-called with . Liftman needed help with , and unfortunately for Svensk he got what he was looking for, when he rivered the to give him two pair.

In what became Svensk’s final hand of the day, she shoved with

and was called by Nipun Java’s . The board didn’t improve Svensk’s hand, and she was eliminated in 5th place after an amazing performance. Svensk takes home R273,640 ($19,800) for her deep run.

Svensk is the 7th woman to enter a WPT final table this year as Esther Taylor-Brady, Kelly Minkin, Lu Zhang, Gaëlle Baumann, Mina Greco and Cate Hall all made WPT final tables this year.