Home / Poker News February 2013 / WPT LA Poker Classic – Day 1 Report
WPT LA Poker Classic – Day 1 Report
Posted by: James Carter. - Mon, 2013-02-25 05:05
Barely has the WPT’s Baden Main Event wrapped up, a new major WPT event kicked off on the other side of the globe, in LA’s famous Commerce Casino. Featuring a $10k buy-in, the
poker tournament saw 505 players belly up to its tables on its only Day 1 flight. Registration will only close on Day 2 though, so it is not yet clear exactly how many buy-ins there will be and how big the prize-pool will be either.
A total of 375 players survived the first day of action, at the end of which Kamaleddin Abdolrahimi emerged with the largest stack. He finished the day in possession of 140k chips. Wartan Jalnakrian was the runner-up, with 131k chips to his name.
Joe Hachem was the highest finishing “name” player: he ended up in 4th place, with a stack of 116.7k chips.
Hachem’s day 1 was a pretty outstanding one from the get-go: he started out by eliminating Antonio Esfandiari. The hand which led to the Magician’s demise saw a three-handed pot develop. Darryl Fish had his opponents covered, and he had an A,K against Hachem’s pocket Ks and Esfandiari’s pocket 10s. The board gave Hachem another K on the river to seal the deal in his favor. Esfandiari hit the rail while Fish was left with just 3k chips.
Esfandiari wasn’t the only name competitor to be foiled on Day 1 though. Others who hit the rail were Jeff Madsen, Dan Smith, Jonathan Duhamel, Vanessa Selbst and Tom Marchese.
Jonathan Little and Will Failla didn’t fare any better either. Andy Frankenberger and
PokerStars’ Eugene Katchalov won’t be back for Day 2 either.
Scott Seiver and Maria Ho on the other hand both made the cut, together with Shannon Shorr, David Williams and Joe Serock.
