After Tuesday’s Day 4 of the Season XV WPT L.A. Poker Classic $10,000 Championship, Daniel Strelitz (pictured above) led the final 18 players, Mike Sexton advanced in search of his second World Poker Tour title, and Season X WPT Player of the Year Joe Serock inched closer to his first WPT title.
Strelitz commanded the chip lead at the end of the night on Tuesday, finishing with a stack of 2.02 million in chips and nearly 400,000 in chips ahead of his next closest competitor, Allan Le, who bagged 1.68 million. Strelitz was the big stack to enter Day 4 and maintained his position at the top of the leaderboard for most of Tuesday. In the final half hour of the night, Strelitz made two straights against Visnja Luetic, the last women standing, to helped secure the end-of-day chip lead.
“It’s pretty cool,” Strelitz said of being the chip leader for a second night in a row. “I was not planning on being chip leader since I lost a bunch of chips, so I had less than I actually came into the day with. But then I caught some heat again on the last level to bag a bunch of chips.”
As with any poker tournament in the modern era, success can be determined far beyond the hands you are dealt, especially the big ones. Although Strelitz admitted to getting dealt some big hands, he was also aware of his surroundings and his position that allowed him to ramp up the aggression in the latter part of the day.
“I just kept making lots of strong hands,” Strelitz said of Day 4. “I was opening a lot, and they were letting me kind of just win the blinds over and over, and then I made two straights, made a flush, and got paid off a bunch.”
Looking a little further down the leaderboard, just about smack in the middle of the pack, is the name of Mike Sexton. Sexton needs no introduction in poker, and is the biggest name left in the field. Sexton is chasing his second WPT title in Season XV after winning WPT Montreal back in November to become a member of the prestigious WPT Champions Club, and he finished Day 4 with 908,000 in chips.
Sexton entered the day second in chips behind Strelitz, but William Vo, who finished fifth in the Season XV WPT Legends of Poker for $113,105, made quads against Sexton’s flush to hurt the Poker Hall of Fame member early on. Nevertheless, Sexton fought hard and once again contended for the chip lead throughout the day, ultimately finishing eighth on the leaderboard.
Also in the cards for Sexton is a run at becoming Hublot WPT Player of the Year for Season XV. Sexton entered this event with 1,000 points in the race — 1,500 behind the leader Ben Zamani — and he’s already guaranteed another 200 by reaching the top 18. Although Sexton cannot pass Zamani in the WPT L.A. Poker Classic $10,000 Championship, he can narrow the gap a lot and get as close as 100 points behind if he were to win the event.
Then there was Joe Serock, who won WPT Player of the Year in Season X thanks to two third-place finishes for more than $625,000 combined, and a 10th-place finish in the WPT $25,000 World Championship. Serock finished Day 4 with 1.1157 million in chips and will be eyeing his first WPT title as this event wears on.
Other notables still remaining to enter Day 5 were Jesse Martin (1.581 million), Matt Berkey (1.118 million), Simeon Naydenov (448,000), and WPT Champions Club member James Calderaro (318,000).
The Season XV WPT L.A. Poker Classic $10,000 Championship attracted a field of 521 players and generated a prize pool of more than $5 million. The final 18 players are guaranteed $53,760, but it’s the $1 million first-place prize everyone is truly chasing.
Stay tuned to WPT.com for more coverage of this spectacular event.