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PokerStars LAPT Punta del Este – Day 3 report
Posted by: James Carter. - Sun, 2010-02-28 11:09
The Mantra Resort in Punta del Este saw 24 players return to the green felt to battle it out for a final table seat, on day 3 of the
PokerStars LAPT’s Punta Del Este Main Event. The goal set by the organizers was for the remaining players to play down to the final table. That goal was reached, though it was by no means easy to achieve: it took over 8 hours for the field to whittle down to the final 8. Norbert Ludger was the player who amassed the largest stack by the day’s end. He took down a huge pot (the biggest of the day), during 13-handed play, thus he’ll head into the final table with almost 1.6 million chips.
The early story of the day was the battle between Stephen Chidwick and Norbert Ludger. Chidwick got off to an excellent start, and took his stack from 255,000 chips to 450,000. He then ran into Ludger, and soon put the squeeze on him too. The two players got it all-in on a flop of 8,7,9 with Chidwick holding 9,8 for the two pair and Ludger having an 8,6o for the straight draw. The turn brought a 5 though, and Chidwick took a huge blow. A few hands later, the two tangled again, and this time Chidwick hit the rail after Ludger’s pocket 5s caught another 5 for the set.
The chips collected from Chidwick allowed Ludger to optimize his play and to cut risk-taking to a minimum. As a result of that, during the later stages of the day he was able to take down a huge pot which thrust his stack over the 1 million chip mark. The pot that turned out to be the biggest one of the day, developed between Ludger and Martin Sansour. Following a 2,4,8 flop and a little bit of back and forth, the 2 on the turn ignited the gunpowder keg. All the chips went into the middle and Ludger showed down pocket 4s for the flopped set. Sansour had nothing really, apparently he’d been bluffing all the way as his A,Q never even put a dent into Ludger’s odds.
PokerStars’ Humberto Brenes had had an excellent
poker tournament up until day 3, but he fell short of the final table. Jose Barbero didn’t fare much better either.
