2009 L.A. Poker Classic

$10,000 No Limit Hold'em Championship
Day: 1
123456
Event Info

2009 L.A. Poker Classic

Final Results
Winner
Winning Hand
k♣5♣
Prize
$1,686,260
Event Info
Buy-in
$9,600
Entries
696
Level Info
Level
35
Blinds
125,000 / 250,000
Ante
0

Our Surroundings

[user75032]
[user75032]
If you've never been to the Commerce Casino, you're missing quite an experience. From the self-park lot, you enter the building from the rear and step into the Asian gaming pits. Three-card poker, pai gow poker and several other similar games are spread before you. Many people who first take in that vista think to themselves, "That's it? This is what all the fuss is about?"

Not even close. Take a few steps further into the building and the room opens up considerably to the right side, revealing roughly forty tables of medium- and high-stakes poker games. The large bulk of the poker tables (the low-stakes games) aren't even visible; they're in a separate room around the way.

But don't stray from your course. Just past the medium- and high-stakes games is an elegant, red-carpeted curving staircase that leads up to the second floor. At the top of that staircase you'll find the grand ballroom that houses the LAPC tournament action. 68 tables are squeezed into this space. Clotheslines are strung across the length of the room, about ten feet in the air; a large black and white table-number placard hangs over each. The room is lit by nine chandeliers and a phalanx of ceiling fluorescent lights. A snack bar at the back of the room provides reasonably-priced sustenance for hungry poker players.

The Commerce is, in every sense of the word, a premier poker destination. It's fitting that it has drawn all of the premier poker players of the world for this $10,000 tournament.