Dietrich Fast Denies Mike Shariati Second WPT Title To Win LA Poker Classic Main Event
Germany's Dietrich Fast won the World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic $10,000 Main Event for $1,000,800, which includes a $15,000 seat into the WPT Tournament of Champions. He beat a field of 515 players for by far his largest career live cash. After winning a gold bracelet in the €550 Oktoberfest event at World Series of Poker Europe, Fast is now one leg away from the poker's triple crown, needing a European Poker Tour title to complete the feat.
To get his WPT win, Fast had to defeat Mike Shariati in a drawn-out heads-up match. Shariati was seeking his second WPT title inside of a year after taking down the Legends of Poker Main Event in August for $675,942.
Official Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dietrich Fast | $1,000,800 |
| 2 | Mike Shariati | $656,540 |
| 3 | Alex Keating | $423,890 |
| 4 | Sam Soverel | $316,440 |
| 5 | Farid Jattin | $238,070 |
| 6 | Anthony Spinella | $191,250 |
The tournament paid out 63 places, including a host of well-known names. Former WPT champs Scott Clements (63rd), Phil Laak(54th), James Calderaro (42nd), Dylan Wilkerson (22nd), Will Failla (21st), Matthew Lapossie (19th), and John Hennigan (7th) all cashed, as did WSOP Main Event winners Joe McKeehen (45th) and Ryan Riess (15th).
The remaining six players were tightly bunched, according to the live updates, with the exception of WSOP bracelet winner Anthony "holdplz" Spinella, who had 93 big blinds with everyone else sitting between 45 and 66.
Fast wasted no time taking a huge pot off Spinella to grab the chip lead, though. With blinds at 20,000/40,000/5,000, Spinella opened early to 90,000 and saw Fast three-bet him to 265,000 in the cutoff seat. Spinella came along and the two saw the J♥9♥4♦ flop. Spinella check-raised a 275,000 continuation bet to 920,000, and Fast called. They checked through the A♥ turn and 2♥ river, and Spinella's J♣9♣ was no good, having been caught on the turn by Fast's A♦A♠.
Spinella continued to slide from there after losing a couple more big pots and ultimately could not recover, exiting in sixth.
Aces were a winner for Alex Keating as well as he eliminated Farid Jattin when the latter shoved about 20 big blinds with 9♦8♠ over a Keating open and did not pull off the big comeback when the board ran out K♥Q♦8♥J♥2♣.
Fast then won another huge pot, knocking out Sam Soverel in the process. He limped jacks blind-versus-blind, flopped an overpair, and caught Sam Soverel bluff-shoving the river after missing an open-ended straight draw that he picked up on the turn.
The very next hand, Fast caught Keating four-bet shipping the A♥Q♥ when Fast held ace-king, and the ace-king stood as neither player improved on the community board. All of a sudden, Fast found himself heads up with 120 big blinds against 35 for Shariati.
Nonetheless, the heads-up match was a fairly lengthy affair, lasting more than 50 hands. Shariati at one point closed the gap to where he was less than 2-1 behind in chips, but Fast was able to pull back away. When a few levels passed and he was unable to chip up significantly, he found himself shoving in preflop with a stack around 20 big blinds.
Shariati managed to double through once with the A♠4♦ against Fast's K♣6♦, but just a few hands later it was all over as Fast raised preflop and called a shove holding the A♣9♥. Shariati was dominated with ace-eight but turned a leading two pair on the A♠J♠4♣8♣ board. Unfortunately for him, a river J♥ gave Fast the winning two pair with his nine kicker.
The good news for Shariati is that with a mere four events left in the WPT season, he's the runaway leader in the WPT Player of the Year race.
*Image courtesy of the WPT.
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