The L.A. Poker Classic is held annually at the Commerce Casino located in Los Angeles California, and is known to be consistently, since 2005, one of the largest live poker events of the season.
This year’s championship event didn’t let poker fans down. So many players registered for the LA Poker Classic that 4 tables of players began play downstairs in the casinos high stakes poker room. Additionally, the casino was take off guard by the high buy in numbers so much that they didn’t even have enough standard poker tables to seat all of the 665 Poker players that bought into the event for $10,000.00. Together those 665 poker players created a combined prize pool of more than 6 Million USD ($6,384,000.), the first place winner of the event will become an instant millionaire. How’s that for a life changing moment.
To make it to the end of this battle players are going to need a lot of skill, intuition, patience, and a just a little plain old luck. At the end of today’s bout, the field was picked clean of about 200 players, leaving approximately 450 poker hopefuls left in the competition.
During the first hour and a half blind level, about 25 players busted, our first professional poker play to bust today was “Shanghai” known also as Shame Schleger, he was sent to the rail by “fouruhaters” Noah Schwartz, both previous WPT final tableists.
Of the WPT L.A. Poker Classic’s previous winners, four made it to the 2008 event. Including Antonio Esfandiari who won the event in 2004, and has just recently signed a deal with the WPT. Other previous winners in attendance included Mizrachi (2005 WPT Champ), Goehring who took it down in 2006, Hershler the 2007 champion. At the end of the days play, all of the above were still present and accounted for.
Gus Hansen, the 2003 tournament champ didn’t make it for today’s game.
Also in attendance was Montel Williams, known for his television talk show Montel, as well as his support of the Muscular Dystrophy foundation. Jennifer Tilly, actress and ’05 WSOP & WPT Ladies Champion and Rick Solomon, Pamela Andersons new fling/husband.
Now wouldn’t it be something if Jennifer Tilly got something going with Mr Solomon during the tournament? That would surely give us news writers something to talk about.
The group played through five blind levels before finishing up for the night. According to Card Player, David Singer was chip heavy at the end of the night with close to 140k in tournament chips, followed closely by Esfandiari who is just under 120k,
The cards go into the air again tomorrow at 12:30 Cali time (PST), the blinds will be at the 200-400 level, with players paying a $50 anti per hand.
100% up to $3,000 Bonus
Bovada is our most recommended ONLINE CASINO and POKER ROOM for US players with excellent deposit options. Get your 100% signup bonus today.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.