Travel Report: LAPT7 Chile, Pregame -- Poker by the Pacific

We’ve already gotten well underway here at LAPT7 Chile at the Enjoy Viña del Mar Casino and Resort (pictured at left), as I’m stealing just a few moments here during the dinner break to post a quick update. We’ll call this a “pregame” to the regular daily reports I’ll start submitting tomorrow.

Had too much to do this morning and in fact I’m still in need of chasing missed sleep which I look forward to doing this evening. Meanwhile had a nice breakfast today with Sergio who runs the Portuguese blog for PokerStars, then also have enjoyed reuniting with the rest of the LAPT staff, the Codigo Poker guys (who do live updates), and several of the players, too, as today’s first day has progressed thus far.

Last year they had a whopping 1,024 entries here, but with the buy-in tripping up to $1,700 from the previous $1,100 that overall total might go down some but the prize pool could still be a big one.

For those who might be curious there is a live stream happening from the tourney’s start which is somewhat like what you find at the European Poker Tour. The commentating is either in Spanish or Portuguese, but even if you don’t speak either you can obviously follow the action pretty well.

Thus far today Carter Gill -- who is red hot in tournaments on this continent at the moment -- started out on the featured table. Then David Williams and Nacho Barbero moved on there, and it sounds like after the break Lynn Gilmartin’s table will be there. So click those links and take a look.

You can peek as well over at the PokerStars blog for more reporting from now through Sunday’s final. Meanwhile, it’s back to more scribblin’ for me.