Change100 at PokerWorks

Tuesday night, “Poker Diva” Liz Lieu took down event #12 at the L.A. Poker Classic, a $1,000+60 buy-in NLHE affair that paid the 30-year old poker pro/fashionista a $148,370 top prize. Lieu now has another enormous horse-shaped trophy to go on her mantle next to the one she took home last year for winning the $1,060 limit hold’em event. Commerce is practically a second home for Liz, who is regarded as one of the most feared players in the lineup at the casino’s $300-$600 and $400-$800 limit hold’em cash games. Even better, Liz will be donating 20% of her tournament score to three seperate charities.

Women have been en fuego at the L.A. Poker Classic thus far. Remember Kelli Griggs from this fall’s WPT Ladies’ Night? She finished 2nd in event #8, $540 NLHE, for over $56,000. Griggs qualified for her Ladies’ Night seat by besting 419 fellow amateurs (including me!) in the Legends of Poker Ladies’ event last August. Though she finished 2nd to J.J. Liu on the WPT, she has amassed a number of strong tournament finishes since her TV poker debut, including another 2nd place in a $500 spread-limit hold’em shootout at Lucky Chances Casino in San Francisco for nearly $11,000. Griggs also cashed the LAPC ladies event in 12th place. With a buy-in of $1,060 it’s the highest buy-in ladies’ tournament outside the WSOP.

Victoria Cinquegrani of Whitter, CA won event #5, $330 seven card stud for $26,690, while Washington D.C.’s Saundra Taylor, typically an Omaha hi-lo specialist, finished 15th. Karen Manfrede made the final table of event #9, $1,060 limit hold’em, and L.A. tournament rounder Jenny Kang cashed in 30th place in the $1K NLHE event that Liz Lieu won. Nice work, ladies!

Speaking of female players, Michele Lewis has started blogging over at Pokerati as “The Fresh Princess.” This Texan certainly made her mark on the WSOP last summer, with three cashes and a 4th place finish in the $1,500 limit hold’em event. She has a great post up about her LAPC experience, Goodnight, Commerce.

As for this female poker player, she played the Hammer Day tourney and after having to make an early laydown of TPGK to Mean Gene’s turn push (with what turned out to be A-A), she bluffed off 3/4 of her stack to a guy who flopped quads in a blind-vs-blind hand. Left with ten big blinds, she donked off the rest of her stack pushing in over the top of an early position raiser with K-Q suited. He called, of course with A-K and I was out in 107th place out of 158 runners. (Only you can tilt you.) I totally suck at poker right now, everyone knows it, and I can’t seem to find my patience. So I was pretty disappointed in myself and my play. Poor Pauly got felted not long after I did, though he actually got in with way the best hand when he moved all in with T-T vs. 8-8. An 8 landed on the flop and another player noted in the chat that he folded an 8. So the Doc got one-outed. Now that’s really no fun.

Mysteriously, Grubby didn’t show for the Hammer Tourney. Sources tell me he was at the theatre.

Liz Lieu photo courtesy of her Flickr account.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 8:23 am and is filed under Uncategorized.