WPT LAPC Day 2: Maimone Stays Hot, Berkey Second After Huge Call
Nick Maimone maintained his chip lead in the World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic $10,000 Main Event through Day 2, tripling his start-of-day stack to lead the 111 players who made it to bagging time with 567,400.
His closest competitor is Matt Berkey, who has a number of World Series of Poker final tables and nearly $3 million in live cashes to his credit but has yet to do better than 14th in a WPT event; that came in 2015 at the WPT World Championship. Berkey finished with 493,100.
Also of note on Day 2, registration closed up for the event and a final prize pool was determined. Players were able to enter the event a little into Day 2 and the total wound up being 521 entries for the freezeout, a hair over last year's 515 entries. The prize pool tallied up to just a bit over $5 million and the winner will take home $1,001,110 if no deals are made at the final table.
Maimone came into the day as a sizable chip leader over recent WPT Five Diamond champ James Romero and he continued to run hot. Relatively early in the day, at Level 10 (500/1,000/100), Maimone played a four-bet pot with Stefan Schillhabel where both players had 20,000 in the middle preflop. The board came down Q?8?2?2?2? and Maimone bet all three streets to put Schillhabel all in. The German called down with A?Q? but saw Maimone turn over Q?Q? to drag a pot of around 170,000.
Maimone then ended his night on a high note against another former WPT champ Jordan Cristos. Maimone opened for 5,000 in middle position at 1,000/2,000/300 and Cristos flatted. The flop came KxJx7x, giving Maimone bottom two with J?7?. Cristos got his stack of about 80,000 in with aces and bricked the turn and river.
Berkey had a much lesser hand to work on his big pot, as he held A?Q? on a board of J?7?5?2?4? during the same level. Berkey checked and called a bet of 140,000 into about 180,000, winning against a cutoff opponent's 9?8? for a whiffed double-gutter.
Other players making it to Day 3 included two-time WPT champ Mohsin Charania (435,400), Antonio Esfandiari (349,300), Mike Sexton (270,400), Stephen Chidwick (198,400), Dzmitry Urbanovich (150,100), defending champ Dietrich Fast (123,500), and three-time WPT champ Chino Rheem (44,100).
Meanwhile, players eliminated included Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Shawn Buchanan, Phil Laak, Daniel Negreanu, Anthony Zinno Matt Salsberg and JC Tran.
Day 3 play is underway in the LAPC with live updates available here.
Top 10 Chip Counts
| Place | Player | Stack |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nick Maimone | 567,400 |
| 2 | Matt Berkey | 493,100 |
| 3 | Mohsin Charania | 435,400 |
| 4 | Daniel Strelitz | 410,000 |
| 5 | Bryce Yockey | 354,800 |
| 6 | William Vo | 350,000 |
| 7 | Antonio Esfandiari | 349,300 |
| 8 | Daniel Lawrence | 317,200 |
| 9 | Igor Yaroshevskyy | 314,400 |
| 10 | Mike Sexton | 270,400 |
Photo courtesy of WPT
