After what turned out to be a short day of action for those in attendance, the World Poker Tour has set the final table for the L. A. Poker Classic at the Commerce Casino. Of the six men who will come to the tables this afternoon to contend for the championship, one is looking for his second WPT title, another is looking for the second leg of poker’s “Triple Crown” and yet another looks to recapture his momentum from earlier in the tournament.
12 men were all that were left when the cards hit the air on Wednesday afternoon in the Commerce and the first departure wasted little time in finding his way to the rail. Barely 20 minutes into the action, Ken Aldridge pushed his stack to the center on a J-10-6-Q flop and turn, only to find Igor Yaroshevskyy more than happy to look him up. Yaroshevskyy had a massive edge over Aldridge, his A-Q good for top pair (with Broadway straight and flush outs) against Aldridge’s A-10 off suit (third pair, Broadway straight for chop) and, after an innocent four hit the river, Aldridge was headed for the exits in 12th place.
After Vadim Baranovsky’s elimination in 11th place, the ten survivors gathered together after a redraw and continued the drive towards the official six-handed WPT final table. At this point Peter Tran, who had dominated the run towards the final ten after being the chip leader over the previous two days, held a massive lead (4.39 million chips) over Mike Leah (2.475 million) and Yaroshevskyy (2.04 million). Also in the mix as the short stacks were notable pros Ray Henson (510K) and the most recent champion on the WPT, 2015 Fallsview Poker Classic champion Anthony Zinno (540K).
The ten men took nearly three hours before the eliminations started coming fast. Henson, who had battled valiantly off his short stack, was the first departure in tenth place after his pocket Aces were run down by Tran’s flopped Queen high straight. Roughly 30 minutes later, Tim Cramer was the next casualty, bumping his pocket sixes into Chris Klodnicki’s pocket Aces and failing to find a six on the board to help him. With only two more eliminations to go, Yaroshevskyy now assumed the lead as the sun set on the Pacific Ocean.
Leah, the champion of the 2014 World Series of Poker Asia/Pacific High Roller bracelet, was nearly the next departure except for fate. In a pre-flop raising war with Klodnicki, Leah’s final chips went in with pocket Queens. Klodnicki, however, held the cooler as he turned up pocket Aces to have a sizeable advantage going to the flop. The J-J-4 flop didn’t improve anyone and neither did a ten on the turn. The river Queen, however, was one of only two outs that Leah could find to survive and he did, rocketing up to nearly 3 million in chips and chopping Klodnicki down to just over a million.
Yaroshevskyy continued to torment his tablemates, knocking off Edward Ochana in eighth place to bring the players to the television table bubble. That bubble would pop only ten minutes after Ochana’s departure when Leah was on the right side of the race with his pocket Aces over Vladimir Dobrovolskiy’s A-Q on a ten-high board to eliminate Dobrovolskiy in seventh place and set today’s final table:
1. Igor Yaroshevskyy, 5.315 million
2. Mike Leah, 4.715 million
3. Peter Neff, 2.12 million
4. Peter Tran, 1.585 million
5. Anthony Zinno, 1.48 million
6. Chris Klodnicki, 920,000
There are plenty of subplots to today final table action. Zinno, while attempting to take down his second WPT title, is also looking to become only the second player in WPT history to win back-to-back events (following Marvin Rettenmaier). Leah, with a victory in this WPT championship event, would capture the second leg of poker’s “Triple Crown” and Klodnicki is looking for his first major payday since June of last year when he finished ninth at the Bellagio’s $100,000 Super High Roller event.
The final table will take place at the Commerce Casino at 4PM (Pacific Time) and will be taped for broadcast during the Season XIII schedule of the WPT on Fox Sports Network. The eventual champion will have their name etched on the WPT Champions’ Cup, earn an entry into the WPT World Championship next month and, perhaps more importantly, take down $1,015,860.
