Tournament: Mortensen leads Day 4 of LA Poker Classic

Former World Series of Poker Main Event champion Juan Carlos Morentsen is the chip leader after Day 4 of the World Poker Tour LA Poker Classic at the Commerce Casino. Mortensen has nearly 1.67 million in chips, well ahead of Day 3 chip leader Mark "newhizzle" Newhouse's 1.31 million. Another former Main Event winner, two-time champion Johnny Chan, is still in contention for his first WPT title; he is seventeenth out of the twenty-two remaining players with 406,000 chips.

Two of the top female players are still alive in the tournament, hoping to be the first female to win an open WPT event. California poker pro Mari Lou "scarimari" Morelli sits in fourteenth place with 456,000 chips. Annie Duke, one of the top female pros on the tournament circuit, is in next-to-last place with only 241,000 chips. Although each player is guaranteed to get at least US$45,000 for their four-day effort, they are all vying for the top prize of US$1.8 million.

Meanwhile, some other top women did not make it through Day 4. Both Erica Schoenberg and "GoDaddy Girl" Vanessa Rousso made it into the money, but not much further. Schoenberg finished in forty-second place and earned US$33,000, while Rousso was eliminiated in fifty-ninth place and took home US$23,600.

Some other famous names did not make it through to the next day's play. The most notable poker pro to bow out on Day 4 was former WPT and WSOP Player of the Year Daniel Negreanu. Negreanu barely limped into the start of Day 4 play and only survived long enough to finish in sixty-sixth place, taking home just over US$19,000.

This US$10,000 buy-in no-limit Texas Holdem tournament has become a tradition over the eight years of the WPT circuit. The twenty-two remaining players will play down to six for the televised final table.

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