Poker pro Antonio "The Magician" Esfandiari is currently the chip leader at the EPT Grand Final. (Bodog Beat Image)

The man who was just named the face of the World Poker Tour Poker-Made Millionaire could actually earn his next million dollar payday on the European Poker Tour. Antonio "The Magician" Esfandiari currently holds an impressive 300k chip lead over the rest of the field as Day 4 gets underway at the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo.

The play yesterday during Day 3 of the tournament can only be described as roller-coaster like. The players sat down needing to rid the field of 44 of their compatriots in order to walk awauy with a little something for their troubles. However, eliminating that last bubble player would take an incredible three hours of hand-to-hand play on the bubble. Surinder Sunar finally succumbed to poker gods and was sacrificed as the bubble boy, leaving the 80 players who would take away at least $26,908.

Once the field crested the peak of Sunar's elimination, and much like a roller coaster after that seemingly interminable clinking climb up the first hill, they went screaming toward the end of the day, finishing not too long after with just 39 players remaining.

Obviously, and as per usual, play is already underway for those 39 players and the field has already lost several players today, including Freddy Deeb, and are down to 28 players. At the top of the pile remains Esfandiari with online poker pro Isaac "westmenloAA" Baron, Johnyy Lodden, Joe Hachem, Luca Pagano and Raymond Rahme also still up on the leader board.

All players are currently guaranteed at least $60,082, but would all really rather go home with the $3,193,822 first-place prize. Who wouldn't? Play will continue until only the eight who will make up the 2008 EPT Grand Final final table are left standing. So, stay tuned to the Beat, the home of amazing theme park analogies, for more updates from this event.

Charles Simmons is a regular poker news contributor to the Bodog Beat and a lover of roller coasters.

Feelin' the love: Poker pro Antonio Esfandiari is introduced by WPT founder and CEO Steve Lipscomb as the new face of the WPT. (Bodog Beat Image)

Reporting live from what is now thankfully a sunny Los Angeles, it's the Bodog Beat!!!

Thank you, thank you. We're out here to bring you all of the happenings from the WPT LA Poker Classic and catch all of the madness for ourselves. It was cloudy and overcast when we got here, not the LA we see on TV all the time. Thankfully, the skies are now blue and we are surrounded by beautiful celebrities hanging on our every word sweaty, kind of smelly, poker players who ignore us. Ah, the glamor of poker tournament media life.

Upon arriving, we checked into our hotel and headed straight for the scene of the action, the Commerce Casino. We arrived in time to catch the WPT press conference featuring a big announcement from WPT founder and CEO Steve Lipscomb, something we were assured was a first for the WPT. And that was correct. For the first time the WPT has chosen to use a specific poker player to promote their enterprises, and that person is Antonio "The Magician" Esfandiari.

Esfandiari was introduced as the logical choice for the position as he won the WPT LA Poker Classic in 2004, taking home $1.4 million, and has cashed in a total of eight different WPT events. The promotional video touted him as embodying the spirit of the WPT, and the arrangement seems to work well for both parties.

However, as Lipscomb pointed out himself during the speech, most well-known poker players are already representing other brands and their prerequisite was that the "Face of the WPT" have no other attachments. The logical interpretation of this would be that Esfandiari was maybe not the first choice for the position, but the first without any prior engagements. Our sources confirm this, but no word as to who was considered before him.

As the new face of the WPT, Esfandiari's face will be attached to promotions for Club WPT (the new subscription poker site in the US), the new WPT Traktor Poker Tour in China and the WPT Poker Made Millionaires, of which there have been 84 so far with a new one coming very soon.

So, expect to see many, many magic tricks in association with WPT promotions, especially when the new season airs on GSN.

We'll continue with our live WPT reports from the Commerce, but maybe leave out the fact that we already busted out of the media tournament, which is why we have time to write this right now. Or we could just tell you everything.