Jam packed with poker

Read about all the exciting events being held at the next LAPC, there are brand new events and more prize money on offer than ever before

The details of the Los Angeles Poker Classic (LAPC), which is being held at the Commerce Casino, have recently been released. It seems that the 50-event series will have something which appeals to everyone. Aside from the World Poker Tour (WPT) LAPC Main Event and the WPT Celebrity Invitational, there will be a whole series of additional events held at the Commerce Casino, they include the first ever Badugi tournament to take place in the U.S and an Ironman event during which the players will play a tournament without breaks and deals.

Last tournament saw the newly hired Tournament Director Matt Savage add a number of events to the already busy LAPC schedule including a $10,000 buy-in HORSE and a Heads-up competition. Scotty Nguyen was the winner of the HORSE event and Full Tilt Poker professional Vivek “Psyduck” Rajkumar won the double elimination Heads-Up tournament. The next tournament will see the return of these events and they are adding in a $25,100 buy-in High Rollers event on February 28th.

The tournament is running from January 21st until March 4th 2010 and begins with a $335 buy-in No Limit Hold’em competition which has a massive $1 million in guaranteed prize money. This is a significant increase on last year’s $220 buy-in game with its $500,000 guarantee, probably because last year over 4000 people turned up to play. To ensure smooth running of the event there are three different starting days available this year and a nice new feature is that if a player goes bust on Day 1A or Day 1B then they may come back the next day, buy-in and start again.

As mentioned the tournament will also included the first U.S. based Badugi tournament as well as a $1,065 No Limit Hold’em event with rebuys, a Chinese Poker event and Matt Savage’s latest invention the Ironman event. There have been no breaks scheduled for the Ironman event and first place will receive 50% of the prize pool, it also explicitly forbids making any deals at the final table. Commerce Casino held an Ironman event in September which had 64 players and lasted over 19 hours. Eventually it was won by Brett Radin, also at the final table was Eric “basebaldy” Baldwin who finished in sixth place.

Normally the WPT Celebrity Invitational takes place after the LAPC Main Event has finished, however, this year this freeroll event is running over February 20th and 21st with a break until March 3rd to film the final table. The $10,000 buy-in Main Event this year is running from February 26th to March 4th, last year it had a massive 696 participants.