Something like a month ago, the chances are that most poker players will have never heard of Punta del Este, Uruguay. Similarly, most residents of Punta del Este, Uruguay, probably didn't know that much about poker. But this week, thanks to the PokerStars Latin America Poker Tour (LAPT), the two have come together in a happy union.

The LAPT has already been a spectacular success story, and this the first day of the last event of the first season has been as good as any we’ve seen. The good news? There are still two more days of play.

It was expected that 300 players would begin today, but as midday came and went there were 351 players in line waiting, a line that stretched around the exterior of the Mantra Resort, Spa and Casino.

By 1pm though, each had put up the $2,500 entry fee, creating a prize pool of over $850,000. That makes the first prize $241,735 and 33 players will be in profit come the end.

The field included some of the heavyweights of the world game and some hardy locals aiming for a shot at the big time. In the first category were the Team PokerStars Pros Greg Raymer, Vanessa Rousso, Humberto Brenes, Alexandre Gomes, Barry Greenstein, Chad Brown and Andre Akkari. While the cards did not fall in the favour of Greenstein, Brown and Akkari, the first four of those big names are all still well in the hunt, with Raymer, in particular, enjoying the trip south.

The 2005 World Champion won a huge pot with kings against ace-king, then busted Akkari with aces against queens. That catapulted him to the chip lead with close to 85,000, a level kept up throughout the day.

Brenes, of course, loves playing poker and he loves playing it on Latin American soil better than anywhere else in the world. He struggled through the early levels, plunging to a low of about 5,000 in chips, but once the feature table had been assembled and he'd been invited to sit around it, the comeback began.

Brenes bagged up 53,000 at the end of the day, and the shark is well in the hunt.

(As a side point, that wasn't quite enough to be the most chipped-up Brenes in Punta del Este, however. That accolade went to Humberto's brother Alex Brenes, who is our probable overnight chip leader, with 110,000.)

World Series bracelet winner Alexandre Gomes has become a big attraction on the South American poker scene after his fantastically successful sojourn to Las Vegas this summer.

And the spotlight suits Gomes well: the most recent addition to Team PokerStars Pro was still sitting pretty among the 95 finishers, with 31,000.

Vanessa "Lady Maverick" Rousso, meanwhile, ended the day with just less than 20,000, no mean feat given that she played alongside the formidable Raymer all day.

Video blogs of the day’s action can be found over at PokerStars.tv

Tomorrow's fun starts at noon, when they will return to play level 10 with blinds at 600-1,200 and a 100 ante. They'll play down to the final nine. Be sure to join us.

All photographs (c) Joe Giron/IMPDI