The Final Push

It's Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at the Commerce Casino in Commerce, California and that means that we've hit Day 5 of the 2009 L.A. Poker Classic Main Event. Of a starting field of 696 players, we're down to the last 20. One of these men will be almost $1.7 million richer tomorrow night.

The odds-on favorite at the start of play today has to be Chris Ferguson. The grizzled veteran and member of Team Full Tilt is known for his patient tournament style and his ability to steadily accumulate chips. He's at the top of the leaderboard to start the day, leading all runners with 1,721,000 chips, more than double the 696,000 average stack. Ferguson is not a "blaster", so don't expect him to dust off those chips any time short of the last table.

But any one of the remaining twenty players could be the next champion. As long as they have chips, they're not out of the tournament yet. We'll be paying special attention to short-stacked Teddy "the Iceman" Monroe, who had the rail in stitches yesterday with his unique brand of poker commentary.

When play kicks off in fifteen minutes, players will be at the same tables as they were at when Day 4 concluded. That table draw is as follows:

Table 1

Seat 1: Xuan Nguyen (1,130,000)
Seat 2: Blake Cahail (310,000)
Seat 3: Nick Schulman (850,000)
Seat 4: Donnie D'Auria (242,000)
Seat 5: Binh Nguyen (1,040,000)
Seat 7: Danny Lu (662,000)
Seat 8: Payman Arjang (1,488,000)

Table 2

Seat 1: Tam Ly (603,000)
Seat 2: Chris Ferguson (1,721,000)
Seat 3: Pat Walsh (760,000)
Seat 4: Cornel Andrew Cimpan (164,000)
Seat 5: Jeremy Kottler (614,000)
Seat 8: Mark Bryan (561,000)
Seat 9: Zach Hyman (320,000)

Table 3

Seat 2: Chris Karagulleyan (1,146,000)
Seat 3: Mike Sowers (626,000)
Seat 4: Peter Feldman (423,000)
Seat 5: Billy Pilossoph (188,000)
Seat 6: Teddy Monroe (264,000)
Seat 9: Matt Woodward (771,000)

PokerNews will have all the action throughout the day. Feel free to follow along.

Tags: Chris Ferguson