February 26 2011, Donnie Peters

Day 1 of the 2011 World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic Main Event took place on Friday at the Commerce Casino in Commerce, California. The $10,000 buy-in event attracted 666 runners as registration was open through the first five levels of play and created a prizepool worth $6,393,600. Leading the way into Day 2 will be Mike Baxter. The hedge fund manager and recreational high stakes player wrapped up the day with 125,400 in chips.

As expected, there were plenty of big names in the field. Antonio Esfandiari, Jason Mercier, Daniel Negreanu, Faraz Jaka and Erick Lindgren were just a few of the names that showed up. Barry Greenstein, Phil Ivey and a late-arriving Phil Hellmuth also joined the mix in this star-studded field. Out of that bunch, it was Mercier whop finished with the largest stack. He was able to building his starting stack of 30,000 up to 106,625 in chips and finish in fifth place overall.

After Level 1, Mercier tweeted, “Have 72.5k already from 30k after 1 level. Lol. @lapokerclassic,” to let the Twitter world know how well he was doing. Although he didn’t give the details, Mercier did catch up with the WPT’s Kimberly Lansing after the day and he discussed how he was able to accumulate so many chips.

Mercier mentioned that he was getting three-bet a lot early on. After he opened preflop with a wired pair of sixes, an opponent three-bet him. This time Mercier made the call and the flop came down . He checked and his opponent bet 600. Mercier made it 2,000 with a check-raise before the player came back with a reraise to 7,600. Mercier clicked it right back to 13,200 and his opponent went all in. Mercier called and was up against two aces. His set of sixes held on the turn and river and he won a big pot early.

Then, Mercier said he was fortunate to get pocket aces against David Paredes’ pocket kings for another 20,000 or so. His performance and Day 1 earned him RISE Clothing Player of the Day.

At the end of the day, 507 players survived to bag up chips and continue on their quest for the WPT title. Here’s a look at the top ten stacks moving into Saturday.

The average stack sits just under 40,000 and the field is still jam packed with notables. A few others who will be returning for Day 2 are Jordan Morgan, John Racener, Ryan Daut nd Dan Heimiller. They all finished with right around and average stack. Marco Johnson is the shortest stack to make it through the day and will come back with only 1,475 chips to play with.

Day 2 begins on Saturday at noon local time. Be sure to check back with PokerNews for the recap.

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February 25 2011, Dana Immanuel

When the final three tables returned for the penultimate day of the 2011 PokerStars European Poker Tour Copenhagen, Sweden dominated the field. Three of the top four — Per Linde, Joel Nordkvist and Michael Tureniec — were flying the yellow cross on the blue background, with only Team PokerStars Pro Florian Langmann breaking up the Swedish party. There was a markedly uneven chip distribution at the start of the day, with the five biggest stacks in the room — the only five over a million — all seated at one table, meaning that the potential for a single monster stack to emerge was huge. By the end of the day, that uber-stack was in the hands of Linde — at 4.98 million. He goes into the final table with over a third of the chips in play.

Perhaps the most notable name in the field started with the smallest stack, but it was all change within minutes of the shuffle-up-and-deal. Juha Helppi’s mighty shoving hand came good against Lars Krogh who had reshoved after a call from Pernille Ravn with . Helppi continued his upward movement in the chip counts and made it to the final table with 1.47 million in chips.

The first casualty of the day was the last woman standing, Ravn. The lady failed to spike a lady and her lost out to Helppi’s . She was swiftly followed out the door by EPT Tallinn finalist Dmitry Vitkind ( into ) in 23rd place, Mikhail Lakhitov in 22nd, British poker veteran Surinder Sunar in 21st and Irish online qualifier Charles “Alan” McIntyre in 20th.

Langmann began the day in second place but suffered a steady decline throughout his brief Day 4 run. Eventually, reduced to 650,000, he got it in with against Linde’s . Langmann hit nothing, Linde rivered a set, and the last Team PokerStars Pro busted in 19th place for DKK 85,000.

Next to go were Danish nationals Jan Sørensen and Helge Rahbek in 18th and 17th place, respectively, and the sole Venezuelan in the field Ivan Freitez was right on their heels in 16th place. Daniel Johansson ran his into Johnny Jensen’s , thus proving that Swedes were not completely indestructable in this tournament. He took home DKK 105,000 for 15th place.

In 14th place, the home country Denmark suffered another loss in the form of Krogh — and the assassin was once again a Swede. Krogh got his stack in with , but was most unfortunate to smack into Per Linde’s . Linde had a third of the chips in play at the end of that hand; Krogh meanwhile had just happy memories and DKK 130,000 to console himself with.

Another Dane, Jensen, was next to go in 13th place, and the last Norwegian standing, Simen Johannessen, went out in 12th. The demise of Jens Lauridsen in 11th place ( into Nikolas Liakos’ ) and Simon Hanninger in 10th ( into Nordkvist’s ) reduced the tournament to a single, nine-handed table.

The pace slowed considerably once the official final table was in sight, and it was an hour and a half before Nordkvist struck a blow to Sweden’s domination plan and exited in ninth place. Nordkvist’s mistake was four-betting Helppi all in with . Helppi called with pocket and held; he will go into the final table in decent shape. Just a few hands into the next level, Nordkvist pushed from the small blind with and John Eames called with . The board came down , and we were down to our official eight-handed final.

When the players return tomorrow, the final table will look like so:

PokerNews will be glued to the giant live-feed screen at the Radisson Blu Scandinavia from noon local time Saturday, typing hands poised to capture all the action.[/i]

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