There was a time when young Scandinavian poker phenomenoms were as commopn as internet start-ups. With many looking for investment a short period of boom got everyone excited until capitalist realities, tied in with nature's 'survival of the fittest', seperated the high-minded from the high-skilled. Just as businesses floundered so...more
It's a lesson quickly learned by every player that as a game of skill poker remains a game of frustration and swings that can drive you to a misspent hour in an Omaha game. Whether it's in those ring games on PokerStars.net or on the tournament tables of the latest...more
by Brad Willis and Change100 In the late hours of Day 2, Tournament Director Mike Ward began joking with 20 year-old Norwegian Karl Hevroy. Ward called the young online poker player "Houdini." At first, it was an inside joke between the two men. Tonight, it has a lot more...more
Updates from the LAPT event in Punta del Este Level 23 (15,000/30,000/3,000) will be posted here and come courtesy of live bloggers Brad Willis and Change100. Click refresh to see the latest updates. Last update 9:12pm 9:12pm-- Karl Hevroy wins the LAPT Punta del Este ($283,500), Alejandro De Arruabarrena...more
Updates from the LAPT event in Punta del Este Level 21 (12,000/24,000/2,000) will be posted here and come courtesy of live bloggers Brad Willis and Change100. Click refresh to see the latest updates. Last update 5:51pm 6:11pm--A moving look at the final table 6:01pm--Hevroy takes a chunk out of Guillén...more
Updates from the LAPT event in Punta del Este Level 21 (10,000/20,000/2,000) will be posted here and come courtesy of live bloggers Brad Willis and Change100. Click refresh to see the latest updates. Last update 5:11pm 5:20pm--Half-million pot in battle of the blinds After play folded around to the...more
Updates from the LAPT event in Punta del Este Level 20 (8,000/16,000/1,000) will be posted here and come courtesy of live bloggers Brad Willis and Change100. Click refresh to see the latest updates. Last update 4:00pm 4:00--SIETE!!!!!!!!! Play folded around the the blinds and Bolivar Palacios almost immediately announced "All-in."...more
Updates from the LAPT event in Punta del Este Level 19 (6,000/12,000/1,000) will be posted here and come courtesy of live bloggers Brad Willis and Change100. Click refresh to see the latest updates. Last update 2:43pm 2:55pm--Magno Aragao forcing the action Magno Aragao is not going to be content to...more
The final table of the Latin American Poker Tour event in Punta del Este is scheduled to begin in about an hour. Nine people out of the original starting field of 327 remain and will be competing for the $283,500 first prize. The PokerStars Blog will have live coverage beginning...more
Latin American poker players are an emotional bunch. It's almost impossible to spend more than a few minutes inside of the tournament room here at the Mantra Resort & Casino without witnessing a wild outburst, hearing a palm slam against the felt in frustration or seeing a fist pumped...more
Updates from the LAPT event in Punta del Este Level 19 (6,000/12,000/1,000) will be posted here and come courtesy of live bloggers Brad Willis and Change100. Click refresh to see the latest updates. Last update 11:45pm 11:45pm--Final table to begin at 2pm Friday Join us here for a live coverage...more
Updates from the LAPT event in Punta del Este Level 16 (5,000/10,000/1,000) will be posted here and come courtesy of live bloggers Brad Willis and Change100. Click refresh to see the latest updates. Last update 10:38pm 10:38pm--Mario Salvagno out in 13th ($15,540) You might have noticed a trend here. People...more
Updates from the LAPT event in Punta del Este Level 16 (4,000/8,000/500) will be posted here and come courtesy of live bloggers Brad Willis and Change100. Click refresh to see the latest updates. Last update 9:04pm 9:30pm--Level ends Dinner must be digesting slowly. That level ended with no more...more
Updates from the LAPT event in Punta del Este Level 16 (3,000/6,000/500) will be posted here and come courtesy of live bloggers Brad Willis and Change100. Click refresh to see the latest updates. Last update 6:20pm 6:20pm-- Gabriel Loyo eliminated in 24th place ($10,000) Ron Wasiel opened the action with...more
Updates from the LAPT event in Punta del Este Level 15 (2,000/4,000/400) will be posted here and come courtesy of live bloggers Brad Willis and Change100. Click refresh to see the latest updates. Last update 5:01pm 5:01pm--Alex Fitzgerald and Edson Esquio eliminated back to back ($7,220) Lisandro Gallo may get...more
Updates from the LAPT event in Punta del Este Level 13 (1,500/3,000/300) will be posted here and come courtesy of live bloggers Brad Willis and Change100. Click refresh to see the latest updates. Last update 3:42pm 3:42pm--"I don't not want to risk losing with a pair of aces." Bolivar Palacios...more
Updates from the LAPT event in Punta del Este Level 13 (1,200/2,400/300) will be posted here and come courtesy of live bloggers Brad Willis and Change100. Click refresh to see the latest updates. Last update 2:25pm 2:25pm--Break time The remaining 45 players are headed to a 15-minute break. While you're...more
Updates from the LAPT event in Punta del Este Level 11 (1,000/2,000/300) will be posted here and come courtesy of live bloggers Brad Willis and Change100. Click refresh to see the latest updates. Last update 1:22pm 1:22pm-- Alberto Font takes out Pablo Zarnicki We caught up with this hand on...more
When we began the Latin American Poker Tour event in Punte del Este yesterday, the 327 starting players were scattered over three rooms. Today, with 64 players remaining, we've moved to one room. By the time the day ends, we'll only need one table. When we last left our...more
A wise man once said, when a room is packed to the rafters, it's good to have an escalator.* Fortunately, the Mantra Resort and Casino has several. The buy-in for the second season in Punta del Este went up this year to $3,700. Most folks here expected the field to...more
Alex Fitzgerald had a rough go of it at the EPT Dortmund. On an A-J-5-A-4 board, he flopped top pair and turned trips, value betting his A-Q beautifully on each street and getting called down each time. The only problem was, his opponent turned up 4-4 on the river...more
If he would take off his shiny shades, Alberto Font might be easier to read. Maybe he knows this, because it's rare to see him without them. We first spotted the Spaniard this year at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure when he final tabled a side event and picked up nearly...more
Things looked dire for Victor Ramdin. With the blinds up to 500-1000 with a 100 ante, Ramdin had only 4,900 left-- barely enough to survive two orbits. With the action folded around, the button moved all in, having Ramdin well-covered. The small blind folded and Ramdin peeked at his...more
We'll concede Jim Croce's point. The south side of Chicago might very well be the baddest part of town, but go a little farther down Illinois' I-55 and you best beware of a man named Ron Wasiel. You might be a little bit like we are tonight and wondering where...more
Alex Brenes is no stranger to this venue. Back in Season 1, Brenes had the LAPT Punta del Este title in sight, but came up just short of a victory, finishing second to Spain's Jose Miguel Espinar. Yesterday, he played his second career final table here at the Mantra...more
If you've ever thrown a really big party, you know the feeling. You invite everybody, spend a of of time preparing, and then deal with the rush of people through the front door. People are eating, drinking, and rummaging through your drawers. One of your friends has shaved your cat...more
Scientists have determined that large amounts of red meat in a short period of time can cause a rapid onset of euphoria and nausea typically associated with illegal hallucinogenic drugs. As we and the assembled poker rumblers have just exited the hotel's House of Steak Orgy, assume that we will...more
Mere feet from the tournament room sits a giant hearth. A sweating man in a chef's hat maniacally throws giant logs into the flames. He stares at the fire until he feels it's right and then he throws giant slabs of red meat on the adjoining grill. It is, in...more
Greg Raymer showed all the signs of a man who was card-dead. With a ring of spectators watching his every move, Raymer folded hand after hand, giving a little eyebrow raise or shaking his head ever-so-slightly as he was dealt pair after pair of rags. Still, he chatted up...more
Melina Villegas offered to eat a wax candle holder a couple of nights ago. "I'll do it for $3,700," she said. The thing was bigger than a grapefruit. It hardly seemed healthy. So, I undercut her and offered to do it for $1,000 (she was painfully unaware that I have...more
It's about 20 degrees Fahrenheit at the moment in Uppsala, Sweden, the town 40 miles north of Stockholm that Johannes Korsar calls home. With the forecast looking grim and gray, Korsar and a friend decided to take a holiday in Buenos Aires to escape the frozen Nordic winter. After...more
Of our 327 starters, 238 remain after four and a half levels of play. Already we've witnessed the departures of Humberto Brenes, Martha Herrera, and Jim "MrBigQueso" Collopy, who is currently enjoying a sandwich in the atrium outside the tournament room and recounting his bad beat story to a few...more
Listen, we're not the kind of people to just throw out wild accusations. In the world of online poker, calling someone a multi-accounter is the equivalent of calling someone a witch in Salem, Massachusetts. That said, there is something very fishy going on around here. There's this cat named Lerner...more
If you've spent any time in farming country, you know the Back 40. Those acres on the back part of the property make for a long walk. The Back 40 here at the Mantra Resort and Casino takes us out the door, through the Wine Bar, up an escalator, through...more
It's not exactly the cheeriest term, but for those of us in the poker media, the word "deathwatch" is our shorthand for "lost most of his stack, about to bust." After taking a walk around the tournament room, we noticed that Victor Ramdin's starting stack of 10,000 had all...more
It's always a pleasure to chat with Maria "Maridu" Mayrinck. One of Latin American poker's great success stories, Maridu used to... well... do our job as a writer for PokerStars' Brazilian blog before she started cashing major events left and right, leading to her present status as a PokerStars...more
We like to think we're giving you a pretty clear picture of what's going on here at the Punte del Este stop on the LAPT. We passed carpal tunnel a long time ago and have moved into a state of arthritic bliss. Still, there is something to be said for...more
For nearly ten hours yesterday, Josh Prager sat in the audience of the LAPT Mexico final table and called out, "Way to go, Helen!" No matter how tedious the night, no matter how slow play went, Prager held his seat and cheered on his wife. Anymore, there isn't a...more
Let's just state the obvious here: People really like them some poker. Nowhere is that more clear today than in Punta del Este where more than 320 poker players have shown up for the second stop in this fine city. Even in the face of the best planning money...more
Over 300 players have packed themselves into our tournament room here at the Mantra Resort and with space at a premium, play has begun eleven-handed and will continue in this fashion until the field has been sufficiently thinned. A cadre of Team PokerStars Pros, past LAPT winners and the premiere...more
As the LAPT Mexico final table crept toward Rory Cox's victory last night, we heard tales of a party going on. We struggled with our inner demons. We could either continue our duties live blogging the final table or slip off to one of PokerStars signature welcome parties. We chose...more
If the breeze wasn't an issue, we would just pick up the tables here at the Mantra Resort and Casino and play this tournament outside. The sky is blue, the sun is shining, and the temperatures are perfect for kicking back for a few hands of poker. Alas, we're...more
by Brad Willis and Change100 If you don't know the story of LAPT Mexico by now, it's hardly worth re-telling in its entirety. Suffice to say, this is almost certainly the first time we have ever arrived at a champion in such a fashion. And what fashion would that be?...more
"You'll like it," someone told us as we prepared to come to Uruguay. "It's very European." We weren't sure what to make of the recommendation. When we last crossed the border into South America into Chile, we found an arid fishing community that looked like California--rolling green vineyards, desert mountains,...more
Two years ago at the Victoria Casino in London, Vicky Coren triumphed on home soil to become the first woman to win an EPT main event. Coren remained alone until about an hour ago at Hohensyburg Casino, Dortmund, when Sandra Naujoks, a PokerStars ShootingStar, joined her in the exclusive...more
Four years is a long time in poker. If we cast our minds back to season one of the EPT, we can probably remember the sight of a spiky-haired young Swede and a suave young Italian making quiet yet confident progress through fields of about 200 players, anteing something...more
It started 11 hours ago. I remember something about fog in the trees but everything else since is just a blur. Such was the pace of eliminations today that in that relatively short time the hopes of 216 players were wiped away, a ruthless period of pain and suffering...more
There was a brilliant sideshow going on today in Casino Hohensyburg. While the cabaret of singers, dancers, gymnasts and burlesque performers took their well-earned occasional break, 358 poker players anted up €5,000 and squeezed in eight levels of an EPT event. And in those brief moments when the lights...more
Maybe it was the late start or maybe the rising temperature in the tournament room while the rain lashed down outside, but there was something about day 1a that made it feel like a long one. No one could put their finger on it but the 121 players from...more