Masaaki Kagawa Leads WPT LAPC Main Event After Day 1

Published on February 27th, 2010 4:20 am EST

The 2010 LAPC (L.A. Poker Classic) main event got under way on Friday, with Masaaki Kagawa finishing Day 1 as the tournament chip leader.

An impressive 745 players turned out to play in the main event, easily topping last year's total of 696. The strong turnout created a total prize pool of over $7 million, which means that the eventual winner of the event will take home nearly $1.8 million. Many of the players who took part in the NAPT Venetian main event decided to make the short trip to LA for this tournament - the close proximity of the two events surely helped strengthen the turnout for the LAPC main event.

As mentioned, Masaaki Kagawa is currently sitting as the tournament chip leader after the first full day of play. The Japanese player will take approximately 125k chips with him into Day 2 on Saturday. Mark Seif (122k) and Charles Dolan (121k) are close behind Kagawa.

Some of the more recognizable names who are still alive in the event include:

David Singer, 73k
Robert Mizrachi, 69k
Jimmy Fricke, 63k
Vanessa Rousso, 61k
Paul Wasicka, 59k
Yevgeniy Timoshenko, 56k
Tom Marchese, 49k
JC Tran, 45k
Prahlad Friedman, 41k
David Benyamine, 38k
Barry Greenstein, 38k
Todd Brunson, 35k
Annie Duke, 34k
Joe Hachem, 31k
Daniel Negreanu, 29k
Phil Hellmuth, 20k
Gus Hansen, 19k
Tom Dwan, 15k

There are still a total of 477 players left in this event after the first full day of play.

Some of the players to hit the rail on Day 1 included Jeff Madsen, Jared Hamby and Joe Sebok.

Previous winners of this event include Alan Goehring, Michael Mizrachi, Gus Hansen and of course, Phil Ivey. According to Worldpokertour.com, Phil Ivey wasn't seen on Day 1, and it appears as though he won't be around to try and win another LAPC main event title.

Day 2 will start at 12 pm local time on Saturday afternoon, with the final table taking place on March 4th.

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Filed Under: Tournament Results