World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic

Filed in archive Tournament News on February 25, 2007

After nearly a month of prelim events, the World Poker Tour's L.A. Poker Classic main event is currently running with multi-costume wearer Joe Sebok leading the way at 208,000 chips after day one. Sebok, who lost a bet with fellow degenerate gambler Gavin Smith during the 2006 World Series of Poker, was forced to wear several different costumes including not-looking-much-like-Lynda-Carter as Wonder Woman.

Also joining Sebok near the top of the leaderboard is "Shawn" Shiekhan and Daniel Alaei of High Stake Poker on the Game Show Network fame. Granted the chips are not worth face value during the tourney, first place is allowed to cash in for nearly two point five million dollars.

Not to be ignored, is the 2005 World Series of Poker main event runner-up Steve Dannenmann who is sitting in 9th place with 84,000 chips.

Here's the offical day one recap from the WPT website:

Day 1 Recap
Sunday, February 25, 2007 03:41 AM PST
What's the all-time record for the most players to enter a $10,000 buy-in World Poker Tour Event? 791, set today at the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles. The LA Poker Classic broke records as almost every name in American poker made their way to 'Poker Mecca', the name alternatively used to describe the 370 poker-table host casino.

While a few notable names like Hellmuth, Brunson and Ivey were overseas, the rest of the stars came to play. Reese, Grinder, Negreanu, Gavin, Hachem, Laak, Esfandiari, Greenstien...the list of luminaries runs longer than my arm. A lot of them are still in the running as I write this on the tail end of day one.

Of the 365-some players remaining, Joe Sebok is our chip leader with T204,000. Sebok has been tearing it up this year in events ranging from $1K to $5K in buy-ins, but has yet to break through in a $10K event. That lone deficit on his resume caused him to be one of the biggest snubs from this year's National Heads-Up Poker Championship. If he keeps this up, they won't make the same mistake next time around.

On Sunday, Sebok, Toto Leonidas, Daniel Alaei, Bill Edler, Shawn Sheikhan and the rest of the chip-leading stars will be looking to further their quest to join Gus Hansen, Antonio Esfandiari, Grinder and Allan Goehring in the LAPC winner's circle. We start our coverage day tomorrow at 3:30 PM PST. Be sure to check back tomorrow for all the juice. See you then.