Bodog Beat

Poker pro Chino Rheem is currently in the lead at the LA Poker Classic HORSE event. (Bodog Beat Image)

Just in case you didn't know, the marathon-long LA Poker Classic has been going on since January 22 at the Commerce Casino. However, for the most part the events have been small ball with mainly friends and family fields. Until now.

The LA Poker Classic $10,000 buy-in HORSE event kicked off yesterday and pulled in a star-studded field of 96 entrants. After five full blind levels, only 26 players had been eliminated, leaving 70 to chase down the $340,993 first-place prize. Among those who didn't make it through Day 1 were Chad Brown, Allen Cunningham, Shaun Deeb, Men Nguyen, David Benyamine, Eli Elezra and Marco "CrazyMarco" Johnson. With a list like that of those who busted out, you can imagine what the list of players still left standing looks like.

At the top of the leaderboard heading into Day 2 and continuing his sick streak is 2008 WSOP November Nine member Chino Rheem (95,100), who has a substantial lead over second-place David Oppenheim (61,400). After that, the field tightens up a bit with Jeff Madsen (55,500), David Chiu (54,500), Erik Seidel (50,000), Jennifer Harman (49,100) and Amnon Filippi (45,200). Other notables still in the field include Bodog poker pros Justin Bonomo and Jean-Robert Bellande, Howard Lederer, Gavin Griffin, Mike Matusow, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and a whole lot more.

Play gets underway at 2pm local time (so roughly 5pm ET if our math is right) and will theoretically continue until they reach the eight-handed final table. However, since they only shed 20 players yesterday, we'll take the over on that. If you want to play against some of the biggest names in poker, then qualify online for poker tournaments through Bodog Poker's Flight Club promotion and travel the world over in true Bodog style.