There are just two days left for the 2016 World Poker Tour (WPT) L.A. Poker Classic Main Event, as the field has gone from a stout 515 to just 14 players. Today should be a relatively short day; action will conclude when the six-handed final table is concluded, though at this point in major tournaments, eliminations tend to come slowly. Mike Shariati leads going into Day 5 with 2.45 million chips, making him the only player above the 2 million chip mark.
If Shariati can continue his run and earn the tourney crown, it would send him shooting up the WPT Player of Year standings. Now, normally a win would do that for a person, but in Shariati’s case, it would be even more significant to the POY race, as he has already won a WPT title this season. In August, he clinched the WPT Legends of Poker Main Event at the Bike, earning over $675,000. Los Angeles has been very friendly to Shariati in the past year.
Shariati’s live tournament resume, as seen at TheHendonMob.com, is actually pretty interesting. The vast majority of his cashes are below $1,000, with a few in the four-figure range, as he mostly participates in very low buy-in events (relative to other live tournaments). He has won nearly a million dollars on the live circuit, though, thanks to his big WPT Legends of Poker win and a victory last March on the World Series of Poker Circuit in which he banked $275,000. He is guaranteed at least $57,180 for the WPT L.A. Poker Classic, which would be his third-highest cash.
Shariati isn’t the only former WPT champ still alive in the tourney. An “old” face that poker fans from a decade ago will recognize from his frequent television appearances during the poker boom is John “Johnny World” Hennigan. Hennigan has nearly $6.3 million in live tournament earnings, with recorded cashes spanning back to 1997. His WPT title came in 2007, when he won the WPT Borgata Winter Open for $1.6 million. Hennigan also has three World Series of Poker bracelets, 29 total WSOP cashes, and nine WPT cashes.
The WPT L.A. Poker Classic Main Event will resume at noon local time on Wednesday as the fourteen remaining players battle it out for one of the six seats at the final table.
2016 World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic Main Event – Day 4 Chip Counts
1. Mike Shariati – 2,450,000
2. Farid Jattin – 1,960,000
3. Anthony Spinella – 1,785,000
4. John Hennigan – 1,638,000
5. Dietrich Fast – 1,400,000
6. Seth Davies – 1,082,000
7. Sam Soverel – 1,049,000
8. Ty Reiman – 861,000
9. Binh Nguyen – 767,000
10. Tim Cramer – 549,000
11. David Farber – 534,000
12. Alex Keating – 504,000
13. David Sands – 402,000
14. Jesse Yaginuma – 364,000