button in SafariJose Barbero leads the field going into the final table
After an arduous 12-hour slog yesterday a total of twenty-four players came back ready to battle their way through to the final table. LAPT Playa Conchal winner Amer Sulaiman had built up a large 800,000 stack yesterday but that's never going to guarantee you a final table finsih. In fact if yesterday was a gruelling mountainous marathon then today was an 800-metre sprint on a track populated with rabid wolves and landmines. With such brutal conditions and many players relatively short the field sprinted off at breakneck speed with - are you ready for this? - eight players being pulled down or blown up in that first hour.
After those first few hectic hundred metres we saw several players attempt to break away from the field. Ben Barrows, Erick Cabrera, Danny Manriques and Chris Conrad all gave solid attempts to build a dominating lead before the bell for the second lap had been rung. It was the latter, Conrad, that came the closest and if it hadn’t been for a single brutal river card the young American would have likely have finshed the day with double whatever his closest rival could muster. What he hadn’t counted on was the burning hot streak of Jose ‘Nacho’ Barbero. The Argentine made a huge four-bet shove with 
at the 12,000/24,000 level into Conrad’s 
and duly spiked the 
on the river. Twenty minutes later the Team PokerStars Pro won the flip that knocked Conrad out. That's just how the LAPT rolls.
That left ten but it wasn’t long before Danny Manriques and Nicasio Toranzo fell as well. Manriques with 
to Barrows’ 
and Toranzo, somewhat brutally given the action was four-handed, with 
to Ismael Cadiz’s 
. That left us with eight all of which are now guaranteed an $18,600 payout but one, and only one, player will be bagging $250,000 for crossing the finishing line with all the chips. Jose Barbero leads with 1,817,000 and could be the first player to win two LAPT titles, back-to-back no less.
Join us tomorrow to see which get picked off from the back of the pack and who is left for the hectic Latin spring finish at the end of the day. Play begins at 12 noon.
| Final table seat draw |
| 1. Erick Cabrera 1,426,000 |
| 2. Ismael Cádiz 1,123,000 |
| 3. Ben Barrows 1,154,000 |
| 4. Silvio Martins 594,000 |
| 5. Valerio Valera 236,000 |
| 6. Rene Aguilar 699,000 |
| 7. Jose Barbero 1,817,000 |
| 8. Carlos Augusta 434,000 |