LAPT8 Peru, Day 3: Well, That Escalated Quickly

We are about a half-hour away from the final table getting started here at the Latin American Poker Tour Peru Main Event. That to the left is a look at the scene at present -- quiet now, though sure to enliven shortly.

Day 3 was kind of a weird one yesterday, as they managed to hustle down from 32 players to eight in just four-and-a-half hours -- in truth just about four hours’ worth of play.

It wasn’t as though the stacks were especially short. The calls of “all in” just kept happening over and over, seemingly every time we’d looked down from the last one. Was kind of interesting as well to see the top four players in the counts with 32 left all fall shy of making the eight-handed final table.

The day’s final hand kind of stood as a ready emblem of the whole day, actually. They’d just redrawn for the nine-handed table, the “unofficial” final table which would play on until one more fell. The stacks were plenty deep, thanks in part to the rapid pace, and we were settling in for what often at the LAPTs becomes a lengthy final table bubble, sometimes lasting a couple of hours or more as they try to get from nine to eight.

But after just a couple of hands one arose in which Carlos Moya defended his big blind with a call after fellow Chilean Patricio Rojas -- winner of this same event two years ago -- had made an early-position raise. The flop came 8-6-4, and suddenly all of the chips were in the middle, with Rojas showing pocket kings and Moya a flopped straight with 7-5.

Two cards later Rojas was out, and as I say the cracking of those kings seemed appropriate on a day when those who had begun the day with the biggest stacks had all been toppled.

Another strange bit of trivia coming out of yesterday -- the final table will feature exactly zero Peruvians, which we believe is the first time ever on the LAPT that a final table doesn’t feature a player from the host country.

The early finish gave Reinaldo, Sergio, and myself a chance for a leisurely dinner, then I managed to get a nice, full night’s sleep. Always seems to go the same way on these trips, sleep-wise, insofar as I start out getting practically none, then by the time I’m about to leave I’m finally getting close to a regular schedule of rest.

Head over to the PokerStars blog today to follow the action as they play down to a winner, where we’ve already gotten profiles of the final eight up there, if you’re curious.