Latin America Poker Tour (LAPT)

History of Latin America Poker Tour

The Latin America Poker Tour was founded in 2008, having its first tournament in May 2008 in Rio De Janeiro. The LAPT is sponsored by Pokerstars, who also sponsors and co-created the European Poker Tour (EPT), Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) and North American Poker Tour (NAPT). The LAPT is the first major poker tournament series in Latin America and has established itself as the most popular for Latin Americans.

Created by David Carrion and Mike Ward, both with experience from the casino business, the LAPT had a professional setup from the beginning and has experienced growth every year it has been running. LAPT is establishing itself as one of the leading tournament series in the world, attracting lots of players from outside Latin America with its exotic locations and great tournament schedule.

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Over the years, due to the increased popularity of the series, LAPT has increased its venues from three to seven, including the Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) event taking place in the Atlantic Hotel in the Bahamas. The PCA is a new addition to the LAPT schedule, but has been hosted on its own for ten years. The PCA is the biggest poker festival in the LAPT, with its main event costing $10,300 to participate in, four times as much as the grand final costs.

Just like with any other tour sponsored by Pokerstars, the series travels around different countries and visits many different casinos in each country as well. This provides players with a new experience at every event and ensures that as many players as possible can take part of the LAPT. So far the LAPT has visited 9 different countries and 14 different venues over the Latin American region. Pokerstars also offers players the possibility to qualify for the tournaments online, with their many satellites guaranteeing a buy-in for the main event, flight and hotel money. This gives players a chance to qualify to the events for only $1.

The LAPT series finishes off with a Grand Final, hosted in the Punta Del Este Casino in Uruguay. The Grand Final has the biggest turnout of the entire series (with the exception of PCA) and provides a big prize pool along with several side events.

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Player of the year award

Since 2011, LAPT has awarded the “Player of the year” award, based on a point leaderboard. Players earn points by finishing in the money in each event and the higher the position, the higher the amount of points earned. The winners of the awards receive packages for the upcoming season of the LAPT, meaning that they will be able to compete for free. Below you can find the winners of the first two seasons:

Year

Player

Country

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2011

Pablo Gonzales

Colombia

2012

Daniel David Ospina Villegas

Colombia

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When the current season of LAPT has finished, we will update here with the latest winner.


Winners by Country

Despite being a Latin American poker tour, LAPT attracts players from all over the world, who come to play the tournaments in exotic surroundings. Most players participating are locals or from the Latin American community, which can also be seen on the list of countries who has won the events the most.

Players from Argentina have won the LAPT six times, making them the number one winning country. Players from Brazil and Chile have won the event three times and players from Germany have won the event two times.

So even though the tournaments are far away from Europe, Germany is still the fourth most winning country of the LAPT. Other European countries such as Austria, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Hungary, Ireland and Norway have all won one event of the series. This proofs that LAPT is a rising tournament in the live poker community and it will continue to grow the next many years.

Top 10 Biggest Prizes

Despite its modest buy-in tournaments, the LAPT has made some big prize pools and first prizes over the six seasons it has been running. Below you will find information about the 10 biggest first prizes there has been won in the LAPT series.

                   Rank                  

Winner

Country

Prize

1

Dominik Nitsche

Germany

$381,030

2

Alex Manzano

Chile

$368,703

3

Martin Sansour

Peru

$322,280

4

Ryan Fee

USA

$285,773

5

Karl Hevroy

Norway

$283,580

6

Jose Barbero

Argentina

$279,330

7

Valdemar Kwaysser

Hungary

$274,103

8

Victor Sbrissa

Brazil

$252,971

9

Jose Barbero

Argentina

$250,000

10

Matthias Habernig

Austria

$248,004