The Latin American Poker Tour Season 9 Panama $1,500 Main Event is entering its final day with only 8 survivors left. Spanish player Raul “El Toro” Paez will start Day 4 of the prestigious tournament at the top of the chip counts chart with a total of 2,580,000 and as the only player beyond the two-million chip mark.
Panama is the third stop on the schedule of the current LAPT season. Sortis Hotel, Spa & Casino is playing host to the major tournament and the $1,500 Main Event is definitely the one worth to be paid the most attention. This year, the event attracted a field of 553 entries, with those being from Latin America and other parts of the world.
All players who paid the $1,500 buy-in fee created a prize pool of $721,665. The top 79 positions are to get paid, with lowest payouts starting from $2,460. The money bubble burst on Day 2 of the event. If no deal for chopping the remaining prize pool occurs today, the winner is to take home the amount of $138,225 and the tournament trophy, of course.
As mentioned above, Raul Paez, who is to start Day 4 as the chip leader, is a Spanish player. So far, he has collected $1,884,282 in live tournament earnings from various Spain-held events as well as from ones to have taken place in other parts of the world. It could be said that Paez’s best tournament performance was his third-place finish in the 2006 Gold Strike Poker Open WPT $10,200 Championship event. The Spaniard collected a little less than $300,000 for his deep run into the major poker event.
Being the chip leader on the LAPT Season 9 Panama $1,500 Main Event’s final day, Paez is in a really good position to take down the tournament and to scoop the lion’s share of the prize pool. And here are all eight finalists left to play and their respective chip counts:
Raul Paez – 2,580,000
Aaron Mermelstein – 1,802,000
Ruben Suarez – 1,477,000
Austin Peck – 1,351,000
Paul Cukier – 1,341,000
Anderson Blanco – 1,225,000
Andres Carrillo – 659,000
Alcides Gomez – 562,000
The official eight-handed final table is set to be played today at noon local time at Sortis Hotel, Spa & Casino.
