Robbie Renehan, professional poker player from Ireland, has emerged as the champion of PokerStars Latin America Poker Tour (LAPT) Colombia. He beat a huge field comprising 337 talented poker players to win the championship and collect a large cash prize of Col$284.7 million, which comes up to US$147,877.
Last year, the LAPT Main Event had attracted a field of 681 players. This year’s LAPT had a much smaller player field, but PokerStars wanted to keep the player field as small as possible as the larger player field of last year had created a lot of inconvenience and wrecked the gaming experience for many players.
Although the number of entries for the event was reduced, the buy-in was raised to $2,500 from $1,100. The top prize won this year is much more than the $64,710 top prize won by Argentinean poker player Julian Menendez, who had emerged as the last man standing last year.
The LAPT Columbia Main Event was held in Allegre Casino, Medellin, and among those who competed for the championship were Humberto Brenes, a professional poker player from Costa Rica, who finished 22nd and won $5,028 and Mexican player Angel Guillen, a member of Team PokerStars Pro, who finished 47th and won a prize of $3,614.
The final table had five Columbian players, a Brazilian player, a Spanish player, and the Irish player Robbie Renehan, who had so far won $6000 playing live poker tournaments. By the time Renehan reached the final table, he was already guaranteed a minimum prize of $17,441.
Renehan (29) adopted a patient style of play and in the later stages of the tournament, he knocked off a player and increased his chip size enough to make the other players feel uncomfortable. The final table ended as a heads-up match between Jayr Fregona Jr. of Brazil and Renehan, with Fregona ending up as the runner up of the event.
According to the final results, Robbie Renehan was the last man standing and Jayr Fregona Jr was the runner up. The players who finished third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth were Raul Paez, Weider Gutierrez, Cristian David Velasqez, Hernan Dario Villa, Ruben Ospina, Luis Felipe Perez Herrera, and Liam McMillan, respectively. Among the players who finished third to ninth, Liam McMillan is from Canada, Raul Paez is from Spain, and the other players are Columbians.
The fifth season of Pokerstars LAPT will start on September 26, 2011 in Panama.
