Dennis Blieden is the LAPC champion

The 2018 World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic attracted 493 players, who added up a total prize pool of $4,681,035. Blieden hits his biggest ever score with this $1,000,000* payday.

Amongst the last 6 players was 2018 Aussie Millions Main Event champ, Toby Lewis, who led the field for a long period of time, but this day Dennis was unstoppable. The heads-up between the aforementioned two only lasted for two hands, out of the total of 79 hands of the final table. Considering that he only needed 4 and a half hours to seal the deal, it’s safe to say that the champ averaged a pretty good hourly. This was by far his biggest live tournament score, the other two registered scores of his only amounted to $22k combined.

Blieden entered the finals with the second biggest chip stack, behind only Lewis, but he managed to take the lead by knocking out Manuel Martinez (6th; $186,235). However, Toby managed to reclaim the chip lead after winning a huge pot against Dennis. Lewis maintained the lead for a few hands but Blieden was able to narrow the gap when he knocked out Peter Hengsakul (5th; $244,430).

He remained pretty active during the following hands as well, he was able to take down a big pot against Derek Wolters worths 1.46 million. On the 35th hand, Blieden finally took the chip lead, thanks to a 1.71 million pot going his way, against the Aussie Million champ. He increased his lead by winning two additional pots with a chunk of chips in the middle once again at Toby’s expense. The latter finally got some space himself, as he successfully eliminated Marc Macdonnel in fourth place, good for $319,310.

Blieden won 5 of the first 6 hands in the three-handed period, which put him in an even more comfortable lead, he had ten million chips, while both of his peers were sitting on 2 million. He finally finished off Derek Wolters, after he got crippled by Lewis. Derek left the table to collect his $430,210 paycheck for finishing 3rd.

Toby’s enjoying a great year so far

The heads-up play saw Blieden with a chip stack of almost 12 million, while Lewis had less than 3 million. He won the first hand of the duel, but in the very next hand, the tournament was over. On the final hand, Lewis opened to 120,000. Blieden three-bet to 300,000 and called the four-bet of 750,000. On the flop of ♦6♠6♠3 Blieden check-called the 400,000 continuation bet. The ♥Q hit the turn and after Dennis checked, Toby announced all-in, putting his last 2.2 million into the middle. Blieden made the call and the cards were turned up.

Lewis: :Ts :Tc
Blieden: :As :Qd

The river was a meaningless ♥6 and Dennis Blieden became the champion and a winner of $1,000,000. Runner-up, Toby Lewis increased his live tournament earnings to $4,979,866 with this $600K score.

Final results

*includes a $15,000 seat into the season-ending WPT Tournament of Champions