LAPT Punta del Este

Well, here I sit, all by myself in a land far, far away.

I am in the lounge at the luxurious Mantra Resort Spa Casino in Punta del Este, Uruguay, having just checked out of my excessively comfortable room. I have been down here since Tuesday covering the PokerStars.net LAPT Punta del Este. It was really a great tournament to report on, though it was a lot of work being all by myself. I had to take pictures, count chips, record hands, and upload all that information to the blog in a timely fashion.

Play began on Thursday with 351 players, most of them semi-local South Americans. Also on hand were PokerStars Pros Humberto Brenes, Vanessa Rousso, Chad Brown, Greg Raymer, Barry Greenstein, Andre Akkari, and Alexandre Gomes, who managed to make the final table. Not exactly a star-studded event, but there were enough of the big names kicking around to keep things interesting. UltimateBet Pro Mark "P0ker H0" Kroon was also in the field, and he and I got acquainted with each other. I'm a die-hard UB fan, so I was excited to be covering and photographing H0. He's a really nice guy and has a damn good sense of humor.

Out of the 351 runners, only 93 of them manged to make it to Day 2. It took about 11 hours to whittle that down to our final eight who returned the following day to play for it all. After all was said and done, it was the Spaniard Jose Miguel Espinar who captured the title, taking home $241,735 and an enormous glass vase of some sort. I'm not sure who owns a shelf tall enough for that thing. Anyways, Espinar is a good story for all the new poker players out there. He just began playing in December 2007 and has already racked up some very nice cashes early in his career. He plays very solid poker and makes good decisions throughout the hand. During the final table, he never really won any monstrous pots, but his chip count steadily climbed all day until he was the only one left with chips.

The one big pot he did win came heads up with Alex Brenes, brother of the aforementioned Humberto. The two men had been playing one-on-one for several hours with the chips being passed back and forth like a tennis match. Finally, after a break, the blinds went up to 50,000/100,000 with a 10,000 ante, and that got play rolling. The two were dead even in chips when Jose Miguel Espinar raised to 250,000 from the button. Alex Brenes moved all in over the top, and it took Espinar just a second to make the call. The hands were shown down:

Brenes:
Espinar:

With a pot of more than 3,000,000 chips in the middle, the dealer spread out the flop: . The nine right in the door vaulted Brenes into the lead and put Espinar in very big trouble. Not to worry for him though. The ripped off on the turn, pushing Espinar back in front. By this time, there was a huge crowd gathered around the two men, and the throng of spectators was going ballistic. The river was a blank, and Espinar raked in the massive pot, leaving Brenes with just 40,000 funny money. The tournament ended on the next hand when Espinar's topped his opponent's .

So that was the end of the LAPT for season one. It included only three stops this year: San Jose, Costa Rica; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Punta del Este, Uruguay. All indications were that it was a resounding success, and there are plans to expand the series to include more venues next season. I certainly wouldn't mind getting the opportunity to cover some of those as well.