Were down to 20 players at the World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic, after a surprising Day 4 that saw the demise of the Day 3 chip leader and the all to familiar rise of "Jesus."

Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, started Day 4 with a below average chip stack despite being well within the top ten, thanks to the huge stacks of the chip leaders, Kofi Farkye and Mike Sowers, substantially throwing off the curve.  As the 63 starting Day 4 players slowly reduced down to 20 throughout Tuesday's play, Ferguson methodically built his stack, until it was his 1,721,000 pile messing with the average (696,000).

Much of Ferguson's success came at the expense of Farkye, thanks to a million-plus chip pot which he lost to the former WSOP Main Event champion, on a river bluff with only fourth pair (which Ferguson called with a pair of aces).

Farkye was not the only player to have an unfortunate fourth day at Commerce, other players who headed to the rail include Bertrand Grospellier, Nancy Todd Tyner, Men Nguyen,  David Pham, Will Failla, Paul Darden, David Daneshgar, Maria Ho, Paul Wasicka, Hoyt Corkins, Greg "FBT" Mueller and PokerRoad favorites Erica Schoenberg and Haralabos Voulgaris.

Players faced with the daunting task of dethroning "Jesus" include Chris Karagulleyan (1,146,000), Peter "Nordberg" Feldman (423,000), Mike Sowers (626,000), Nick Schulman (850,000) and Teddy "Iceman" Monroe (264,000).

Day five of the L.A. Poker Classic should bring us all the way down to the WPT final Table, and is scheduled to begin again at noon PST right here in Los Angeles.  To catch all the action visit www.worldpokertour.com for live updates, chip counts and videos with PokerRoad's Ms. Amanda Leatherman.


Story by Mark Anderson