Latin America Poker Tour Reaches Costa Rica
May 23rd, 2008
The second three-day US$2,500 No Limit Hold’em poker tournament in the Latin American Poker Tour is about to kick off in San Jose in Costa Rica, with the event starting on 22nd May highlighting the growing popularity of poker all over the world.
Expected to take part in the tournament amongst many are US talk show host Montel Williams, who went through to Day 2 in last year’s World Series of Poker main event, Orel Hershheiser the former Major League Baseball player, David Wells and Sam Simon the co-creator of the Simpsons and the Brazilian star racer Gualter Salles. Also included in the tournament is poker legend Daniel Negreanu.
The first tournament of the Latin American Poker Tour was held in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil earlier in May and saw a large number of different nationalities reach the final table. Players from 8 different countries were left on the final table, with Julien Nujiten from the Netherlands claiming the first victory in tournament history and receiving $222,940 in prize winnings.
Julien, only 19 years old, went into the final day with a massive chiplead and ended up beating construction company manager Vitaly Kovyazin from Russia for the victory.
Julien said, “I was playing pretty aggressively heads-up and I knew I could break him. I’m feeling pretty good about it. I had some two horrible bad beats but in the end I got him on tilt”.
The Latin America Tour will move onto Uruguay in August following the tournament in Costa Rica.
LAPT Rio de Janeiro Final Standings:
Julien Nuijten, Holland - $223,000
Vitaly Kovyazin, USA - $117,750
Nikolai Senninger, Germany - $86,350
Alex Brenes, Costa Rica - $62,800
Oliver Kugler, Germany - $47,100
Eduardo Henriques, Brazil - $31,400
Rafael Pardo, Colombia - $23,500
Juan Carlos Burguillos, Venezuela - $15,700
Severin Walter, Switzerland - $11,775
