Latin American Poker Tour Shows Promise For The Future of The Region
Saturday, January 31st, 2009With the considerable success of the recently held PokerStars Latin American Poker Tour in Vina del Mar, Chile, the outlook is remarkably positive for the future of online casinos and poker playing in Latin America. Although it was an Argentine man named Fabian Ortiz who took the grand prize, the majority of the top contenders in the event consisted primarily of Latin American players. This is very heartening to people behind the scenes who have, for a long time, wanted to see an increase in popularity of gambling and online casinos and poker really develop as an industry.
A couple of professional sponsored players, Humberto Brenes, of Costa Rica, and Adre Akkari, of Brazil, took part in the competition while representing Team PokerStars but neither player was savvy enough to make it all the way to the final table. The final table saw Ortize taking home $141,426 and Vincenzo Gianelli of Venezuela taking second place and $78,570. In third place was Damian Salas of Argentina who scored $52,380. In fourth place securing $39,285 was a Brazilian man named Leandro Balotin. Rounding out the top five pack was a Colomian man named Hernan Villa who took home $28,809.
The next big casino event in the works for the Latin American Poker Tour will be in Uruguay at he Mantra Resort Spa and Casino in Punta del Este. With such an increase in enthusiasm for casino and poker games, these Latin American events are going to develop into big events in the world of poker. It is only a matter of time before many people in the online casino and poker industry look toward the happenings in Latin America to take their cues from.