D-Train Rolls Through 595 Players at Commerce Casino

For the past few months, Commerce Casino ran a bad-beat promotion in which it gave away seats to the $1,500 limit hold'em event at the L.A. Poker Classic. This was a great opportunity for some low-limit live-action players to have a chance of winning a share of the guaranteed $1 million prize pool. After all, first place was guaranteed to be at least $370,000 even if only 100 players showed up. The tournament was scheduled to start at 3:30 p.m. (and it started on time), and by noon, the buy-in lines were more than 100 players long. There were so many people in the new tournament room that people began to talk about the possibility of having 500 players in one room in a $1,500 rebuy limit hold'em event. It was amazing. The actual number was 596 players with a couple hundred rebuys and add-ons. All of a sudden, it was the largest limit hold'em prize pool ever, and the second-largest prize pool in the United States behind the World Series championship event. It was truly a great sight, as energy was flowing through the air. I know a few people who were in for more than $7,500, because it was going to pay a few hundred thousand dollars more than the average $7,500 buy-in event.

At the end of the first night, 27 players were in the money, and the top two chip leaders were Diego "D-Train" Cordovez and Toto "The Ripper" Leonidas. Both had more than $130,000 in chips when the average stack was $50,000. Typically with 27 players left, one of the top two will make the final table, but because it was limit hold'em, anything could happen. As it got down to the final table, both were still in, and would end up winning more than $100,000 each. The final table had some very aggressive limit hold'em players. They were Prasert (Win) Jankrasang (a crowd pleaser), Toto Leonidas, Diego Cordovez, Eskimo Clark, Eli Balas, Lonnie Williams, Billy Gazes, Raymond Davis, and Kenny "The Kid" Tran. By the time it got down to threehanded between Diego, Toto, and Lonnie, one of Lonnie's friends told me that he played in one of the last satellites to win a seat, and did not rebuy. Meanwhile, Lonnie went on a huge rush and got heads up with about a 2-1 chip lead on Diego. At that point, D-Train went on a complete tear for 20 minutes and won almost every hand. When it was all said and done, Diego Cordovez won almost $570,000 and the honor of winning the biggest limit hold'em event in the history of poker.

An interesting note is that players who were originally from Latin America have won the last three events that had more than a $1 million guarantee. Carlos Mortensen (Ecuador) won the World Series of Poker championship, Humberto Brenes (Costa Rica) won the World Poker Open championship, and Diego is also from Ecuador. Once Diego had the chip lead in the event, Carlos Mortensen discovered that he was related to Diego. This was a classic example of hopping on the D-Train bandwagon.