Long Yardage Down to Punta

Hastily sharing a message here from the Miami airport, having flown down this evening on my way to Punta del Este where I’ll be helping cover the Latin American Poker Tour Uruguay stop that runs from Friday through next Tuesday.

This’ll be my third trip to Punta del Este, if I’m counting correctly, although it’s been a while since I’ve made the lengthy voyage all of the way down to the southeast coast of South America. I’ll fly to Montevideo, then it’ll be another couple of hours or so via shuttle to get to my ultimate destination.

Ultimately I’ll be traveling something like 5,200 miles from the farm to get where I’m going. That’s more than nine million yards.

I’m looking forward to this one, thinking a little about how it will technically mark the last LAPT festival, at least in terms of the full-fledged, dozen or so tournaments they usually run at each stop. There will still be one more event with the LAPT name attached to it -- the Grand Final in São Paulo -- which won’t be an entire series but just one cross-listed event (the BSOP Millions High Roller, I believe).

That said, this really isn’t the “last” anything as far as these PokerStars tournaments in Central and South America are concerned, as they’ll continue going to just about all the stops they are currently, making each of them into a “PokerStars Festival” and at least one -- Panama -- a larger “PokerStars Championship,” starting next year.

Won’t have a lot of time during the upcoming tournament to run around that much (or write here, I’m guessing, although I’ll try nonetheless to keep checking in). I do have a day at the end where I don’t fly back until the evening, though, and so anticipate getting to sightsee a bit on that day for sure. It’s a pretty place with especially good eats, as I recall, and fun to explore even during the offseason (which is where we are at present).

More soon. Talk again from the other hemisphere.

Image: “Port of Punta del Este,” Daniel Stonek. CC BY 3.0.