Friday, 29th March 2024 12:54
Home / Uncategorized / LAPT Peru: Home-field advantage

It’s the end of the beginning…of the end of LAPT Season 5.

Day 1 is over and only 122 players remain. A total of 376 players signed up for the grand final, but less than one-third remain. There were lots of casualties. Team PokerStars Pro suffered a few losses today. Vanessa Selbst, Christian de Leon, Leo Fernandez, Angel Guillen, Chris Moneymaker and Andre Akkari were all eliminated today.

But there’s still a shark in the field. Humberto Brenes spent the latter half of the day at the feature table and finished the day with 27,800. Jose “Nacho” Barbero also joins his oceanic carnivore teammate in Day 2, Barbero finished the day with around 50,000.

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The shark survives to feast another day

We saw the fall of one hometown hero today, but we saw another emerge. Peru’s Marcelo Marchan is our end-of-day chip leader with 306,900. Born and raised in Lima, Marchan is hoping to kept the title home this year.

While Marchan’s stack was growing steadily all day, he says he got a big boost when his pocket tens turned into quads against pocket queens. Winning this pot added more than 70,000 chips to Marchan’s stack and propelled him into the lead.

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Our chip leader going into Day 2, Marcelo Marchan

Marchan was a sneaky chip leader, his tower of blues was surrounded by smaller stacks of 10 chips. Our other suspected chip leader was Colombia’s Daniel Ospina. Ospina, whose stack was organized in neat stacks of 20, finished the day with 273,900.

While Marchan will have the home-field advantage, Ospina has LAPT Lima final table experience. Last season, Ospina made the final table and finished 7th in LAPT Lima for $23,220. He’s got the hunger in his eyes now that he’s back in Peru (this could partly be due to Peru’s outstanding cuisine) and will be looking for another final table finish.

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Daniel Ospina

The tournament area is now devoid of any would-be LAPT champions. The chips have been bagged and casino staff is slowly turning off the lights. Exhausted floor staff are huddled around a table, verifying slips and preparing for another day.

In just another 11 hours, players will be coming back to play down to “24 or 23 players, whichever comes first.” According to weary, humorous tournament staff. Our guess is we’ll hit 24 players first.

Tomorrow will also see payout slips. While 122 players are remain, only 56 players will make the money. The final 56 will have a guaranteed payday of $3,710.

Making it down to the final table will guarantee $20,130 and a LAPT Lima victory will pay out $187,300.

Play will resume at 12:00 pm ET. Join us for more LAPT coverage as we get down to the money and bring our list of potential LAPT Lima champions down to 24.

Previous coverage from Day 1:

¿Busca la transmisión en vivo de LAPT5 Peru en español? Haz click aquí.

Alexander Villegas is a freelance contributor to the PokerStars Blog

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