Home / Poker News December 2008 / LAPT Mexico to be completed
LAPT Mexico to be completed
Posted by: James Carter. - Wed, 2008-12-10 19:48
PokerStars, the LAPT’s main sponsor, decided the event which was supposed to take place in Nuevo Vallarta a few days ago, and which got interrupted by the intervention of Mexican authorities in a rather unexpected manner, will after all be taken to completion. The event has been in swing for at least 9 hours when an unscheduled break was called, which eventually culminated with the cancelling of the event.
89 players were still in contention when play was interrupted, and although all of them got reimbursed for their troubles, PokerStars decided they did in fact deserve to play the game down to the last man.
WSOP world champion Greg Raymer and professional player Victor Ramdin were both still playing when the break was announced. Initially, the LAPT had hoped that it could convince the Mexican government officials to allow the tournament to continue, so they called players back on Saturday, but all they could tell them then was that the event had indeed been cancelled for good.
Apparently, the Nuevo Vallarta LAPT event will continue online right down to the final table. The 89 players who were in the game when it was cancelled will receive a freeroll invitation, and they’ll be able to duke it out online at PokerStars until there are but 9 left of them. The final table will be held live at the LAPT event in Chile in January.
PokerStars has announced that it is currently enquiring the 89 players concerned on their availability and a date to the freeroll will be set as soon as they manage to make ends meet. The finalists will be flown into Chile at PokerStars’ expense. Well aware that despite the settlement (the distribution of the prize-pool) many of the involved players were greatly disappointed by the turn of events, PokerStars officials decided to give the green light to the online continuation of the tourney and even to add a further $50,000 to the prize-pool of the final table.
This is probably the first time ever that an event which started in a B&M casino will continue online due to the extraordinary circumstances. At any rate, it’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.
