California Poker
Welcome to Pokerfornia! We are the one and only authority site
for poker players in California. This will be your one stop shop for the best
California poker room reviews and information. We will regularly be adding trip reports from our loyal
visitors. We are also following the CA poker legislation closely with our California poker news section. Good luck at the tables.
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Biggest California Poker Tournaments
The California poker arena has been the host of many of the biggest poker tournaments in the past year. Tournaments, such as the LA Poker Classic Championships, the Bicycle Casino Legends of Poker, the World Poker Tour Celebrity Invitational and the Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament.
The last LA Poker Classic Championships took place from February 18th to 26th, 2009. Things got started with the LA Poker Classic Heads-Up Championships from February 18th to 20th. This event had a buy-in of $10,000 and had a field size of 111 players. Vivek Rajkumar was able to win the event when his pocket nines held up against second place finisher, Chris Moore’s, pocket sevens. Rajkumar took home $350,000 for his efforts. After the heads-up championships the main event began. This was another $10,000 event, which built a prize pool of $6,681,600. After five long days of play, Andrew Cimpan was able to take the first place prize of $1,686,760. Cimpan won the tournament when Cimpan’s ace-four of hearts drew out on Nguyen’s pocket tens.
The last Bicycle Casino Legends of poker tournament took place from August 23rd to 28th of 2008. John Pham was able to take down the main event, which had a prize pool of $3,655,400, for a first place prize of $1,116,428. Other notable mentions in this tournament included Layne Flack in 8th and Allen Cunningham in 24th.
The World Poker Tour Celebrity Invitational brought in many of Hollywood’s brightest stars for a fun poker tournament with a $200,000 prize pool. Freddy Deeb, a professional poker player, was able to outlast the field and take home the $100,000 first prize. Deeb won when his pocket eights were able to hold up against actor Nick Gonzalez’s ace-six.
The Bay 101 Shooting Star tournament most recently took place from March 16th to 20th of 2009. The event was a $10,000 buy-in event, which generated a prize pool of $3,714,500. Steve Brecher won the main event when his ace-nine held up against Kathy Liebert’s queen-jack of spades. Brecher earned $1,025,500 for the victory. Honorable mentions from this tournament included Hoyt Corkins who finished in 21st, Joe Sebok who finished in 25th, and Paul Wasicka who placed 35th.
California is home to some of the biggest live poker tournaments every year, including many World Poker Tour events. These events always generate a first place prize of over $1,000,000 and if you have the money and are in California during an event, I would definitely suggest trying your luck against some of poker’s top players.