The World Poker Tour LA Classic has a surprise winner after Gregory Brooks beat off stiff competition to win the title.
Before the final day began it was expected that the title would either go to the most successful player in the history of the WPT, Carlos Mortensen, or former winner Vivek Rajkumar but both missed out on the $1,654,120 prize on offer to the winner.
Brooks went heads up with Rajkumar and after Rajkumar raised to all in with Jh 10h, the champion in waiting held 8s7c. The flop came with 7d3s2h and when the turn and river were 2d As that was it.
Darryl Fish (6th), Steve Gross (5th) and Amir Lehavot (4th) were earlier eliminated before Mortensen extended his run as the most successful player in WPT history with a third place and $640,680 putting his career record WPT earnings at $6,394,988.
Davidi Kitai was the lucky man to win the WPT Celebrity Invitational.
Surviving from a field of 482 that included a who’s who from poker and Hollywood the final six entered with chip counts very close in the race to win the $100,000 prize.
Earlier in the week we had seen the likes of Corey Feldman, Chaka Khan, Scotty Nguyen, Don Cheadle, Phil Laak, and Antonio Esfandiari all eliminated and it was shortly after the first break that Dinara Khaziyeza was eliminated in sixth place.
Chip leader at the start of the day David Schramm was next to go before George Rechnitzer left Dan Heimiller, Almira Skripchenko, and Kitai as the final three.
It wasn’t long before Heimiller and then Skripchenko were eliminated and we had a new WPT Celebrity Invitational champion.
