Home / Poker News August 2008 / Jose Miguel Espinar wins the LAPT’s Punta del Este event
Jose Miguel Espinar wins the LAPT’s Punta del Este event
Posted by: James Carter. - Mon, 2008-08-11 17:41
For a guy who’s only begun playing poker seriously in December last year, Jose Miguel Espinar sure didn’t let all those big names in the field of 351 intimidate him. At the end of 3 days of dog-eat-dog poker action, and a final table not recommended to those faint of heart, he walked away with the first prize worth $241,735 and an additional reward which is slowly but surely turning into a commodity even scarcer than cash: respect.
The makeup of the final table reflected it well that it was the Latin American Poker Tour indeed.
Alexandre Gomes began the final table as chip-leader, followed in the chip-count by Gylbert Drolet, Jose Miguel Espinar himself, Lisandro Gallo, Alex Brenes, Paulo Cesar Ribeiro, Juan Jose Perez and Sydney Chreem.
The largest final table stack was Gomes’ 763,000, the small-stack was Chreem’s 93,000. Day 3 action began furiously and it didn’t take long until Paulo Cesar Ribeiro fell victim of the attrition. On a starting hand of J,J he re-raised Espinar’s preflop raise. Riding a K,Q into battle, Espinar called him, and as the flop came 6,K,K he set up a simple but effective trap by checking. Feeling he needed to fire that second bullet to assert control, Ribeiro bet, and Espinar moved in over the top. Already pot-committed, Ribeiro called and watched in awe as the Q on the turn improved Espinar to a full house, and then the K on the river to quads.
Juan Jose Perez also fell victim to Espinar as his A,A got cracked by a broadway straight. Sydney Chreem pampered his short-stack along for a while, but he was soon forced to act. He went all in on Qd, 9d, got called down by Lisandro Gallo with pocket 7s, failed to improve, and hit the rail in 6th place.
Gylbert Drolet was the next to bust out after a prolonged struggle, followed by Alexandre Gomes who got busted out by Alex Brenes. Lisandro Gallo headed to the rail in third at Brenes’ hands. The heads-up stage lasted for hours as Brenes finally took a big hit ramming an A,9 into Espinar’s A,10. The final hand was an A,10 vs K,3 confrontation between the two, and as luck would have it, the weaker hand prevailed because of a K which came on the flop.
