Grand Final - Latest Post

Ever seen the crowd dictate the terms of a deal at a big buy-in poker tournament? I just did. After a rash of eliminations in the first two hours of the day, play slowed down considerably for the next two. With not much change in the chip counts between Daniele...more

Daniele Nestola is up on his knees in his chair. He looks like a bearded version of a Labrador puppy at meal time. He's happy, and if he had a tail, he'd be wagging it right now. Let this image stand in stark contrast to Nestola's attitude 20 minutes ago....more

You hear a lot of Spanish in South America. It's the predominant language of almost every country on this continent. Even in Brazil, where the primary language is Portuguese, passable Spanish can get you pretty far. Daniel Negreanu, among the most bantering of table banterers, may have wished for some...more

"What the hell is going on in this game?" Daniel Negreanu asked the final table. "Welcome to Brazil!" Negreanu was voicing his opinion of the pre-flop action that resulted in an all-in confrontation between chip leader Daniele Nestola and Argentinian Juan Gonzalez. They were both in the blinds for the...more

Brazil is very good at hosting Latin American Poker Tour tournaments. Some people might argue that Brazil does it better than any other country. What Brazilian players have a hard time doing, however, is winning an LAPT title in Brazil. Though the country had a player at the final table...more

When the LAPT first visited this amazing city at the beginning of this season, the event happened in the same room of the same hotel. When the first event of Season 4 reached the final table in Sao Paulo, half of them called Brazil home. This year? Things look a...more

Daniel Negreanu, a man who plays $100,000 tournaments for fun and profit, entered this $2,300 LAPT Grand Final main event and found himself caring about the outcome. He could be out partying it up 24 hours a day for Carnival, but instead he set about the process of winning this...more

There are downsides to being a Team PokerStars Pro. Like, you have to do constant media interviews, be nice to fans, or show up early to tournaments for press conferences. There are probably more bad things, but you get the gist. Being a Team PokerStars Pro means a lot of...more

Three or four times a year, something happens that makes me want to run to a computer and write the story. The only thing that kept me from writing this story earlier is that I didn't want the experience to end. So, when I saw one of the most...more

Caio Pimenta has a single word tattooed along the length of the top of his left arm, in scripted letters a few inches high: Believe. I tapped him on the shoulder in between hands at the feature table and asked him why he chose that particular tattoo. "Believe the dream,"...more

In between all the samba dances, caipirinhas and Brazilian flash mobs, there's this little poker tournament going on in the WTC Shearton ballroom. We're halfway home on Day 3. Playing for three hours has resulted in eight of the sixteen executions scheduled for the day. Among the ranks of the...more

You've seen those Japanese tsunami videos from last year, I'm sure. Onlookers watch in horror as walls of water come pouring into Japanese coastal villages and flow over, under, around and through anything that stands in their way. What you don't see in those videos, for very good reason, is...more

At various times in the past, in this very space, I have waxed eloquent about the coffee in South America. The last time that happened I was blogging from the LAPT Colombian National Poker Championship in Medellin in October. But I beg your indulgence to allow me to spill the...more

A better writer than me would figure out what the link is between peppers and turtles, as both played prominently in Day 2 of the LAPT Season 4 Grand Final. They're both green is the best that I could do. That doesn't really lend itself very well to a description...more

Day 2 has put me in the awkward position of admitting something about the nature of covering poker tournaments: by and large, we reporter types hate dinner breaks. We understand they are probably necessary, and we grok the whole idea of "people needing sustenance to survive." But, really, dinner breaks...more