Ari Engel picked up yet another mixed-game victory at the Commerce this week in the $1,100 Omaha8/Stud8 Mixed event at the 2025 LA Poker Classic (LAPC). It’s his fourth LAPC win at the hallowed Los Angeles card room, a place where Engel built a good part of his reputation in mixed-game tournaments.
But the 18-time WSOPC ring winner and premiere mid-stakes grinder of our generation is worried about the state of the mixed game. Structures are slow, rake is high, tournaments are long, and turnout is down.
While some factors remain out of a poker player’s control, tournament structures are influenced by player feedback. That influential feedback, Engel says, is coming from a very small part of the poker population right now: Allen Kessler.
Engel and Commerce go way back
It takes a while to scroll all the way to the bottom of Engel's page on The Hendon Mob, but when you get there you’ll find that he cashed in the $10,000 WPT event at the 2007 LAPC — a 49th-place finish for just the third cash of his career.
“It was quite an experience for a young poker player to have,” Engel said. He picked up $22,780, his second five-figure score after a maiden run in the WPT event at Foxwoods in 2006 for $12,525.
Less than a month after his run at the LAPC, Engel cashed for the first time on the WSOP Circuit in Atlantic City. Just 24 hours after that, he had his first of 18 rings in a $340 NLH event.
It would be a few years before he would crush mixed-game tournaments on the regular, but his love for split pots would find fuel in Los Angeles.
“Fast forward to 2018, 2019, where I would come [to Commerce] and play the mid-stakes mixed tournaments. I got into the mixed-game scene way more.”
Engel credits Matt Savage and Justin Hammer with the quality of the tournaments at Commerce. “They ran these unbelievable schedules and I made a lot of friends in the mixed community there. It was really a great time.”
'It's not the same as it once was'
The four-time Remington Trophy winner still pencils in a West Coast swing to the LAPC every year for a string of mixed-game tournaments, but the experience has a long way to go to get back to the heights of those early days. “It's nice the way it is now where they actually have a bunch of mixed games, but it's not the same as the way it once was. Turnouts are way down.”
Players can point to multiple reasons for low turnouts, and the problems are not specific to Commerce. Rake is high, travel is expensive, and slow structures have stretched the length of a tournament beyond reason.
The rake problem is ever present, and poker rooms can’t do anything about the cost of fuel. Structures remain firmly within a poker room’s control, however, and Engel says that managers are favoring a very vocal minority when making decisions.
“I do think the structures are really bad in a lot of places, including [at Commerce]. 33-person tournaments should never be two days and that's what they've been here and the one the tournament I won only made the money at maybe two in the morning or something like that. I think that's pretty crazy.”
Engel vs. Kessler
Normal people who have jobs cannot commit to two-day tournaments, Engel says. And Day 2 often starts in the middle of the day because Day 1 went so long. “It's no shock that the turnouts were in the 30s, but even if they were 50s or 60s, one-day tournaments just play so much better for basically everyone — professionals, amateurs — for everyone except for that one guy.”
That “one guy” Engel refers to is Allen Kessler, another mainstay on the mixed-games circuit. The two recently traded barbs over this topic on social media, where Kessler is known to tell tournament directors how to do their jobs.
It’s a problem, Engel says, because sometimes they listen.
“When it comes to structures, a lot of these venues are basically giving in to the fact that one person is going to be super loud on social media or in person. And instead of having to deal with that headache of them complaining, they ruin the structures for all of us. Having people bubble at two in the morning is just really bad. And this has been happening on both coasts recently.”
“It's really only a couple of loudmouths who want these super slow stretched-out elongated tournaments where people are bubbling after midnight. Most of us want a more efficient structure.”
The 2025 LAPC will continue at the Commerce through March 2 with a $10,000 Main Event beginning on February 22.
LAPC winner's photo courtesy of Commerce Casino
