It’s been an exciting week for poker in Argentina, as the Latin American Poker Tour stop in Rosario took place. The PokerStars sponsored event drew a solid number of hopeful entrants, and was eventually won by a very happy Martin Sansour.
The Latin American Poker Tour is sponsored by PokerStars and is arguably the largest series of poker tournaments in Latin America. As with the European, Asia-Pacific and North-American Poker Tours, the stops are held in different locations around the region and the tournaments are televised, with this current season being the third to have aired.
The stop in Rosario, Argentina was the Grand Final of this season, and ran from September 23nd through to September 26th. 254 hopeful competitors made their way to the felt to battle it out over four days, having each paid $5,000 a piece. The total prize pool was $1,176,220, giving a very respectable first place prize of $322,280.
Martin Sansour is a relatively unknown player, but has proven this week that he’s a force to be reckoned with on the poker table. Originally from Peru, the young player knows his way around a deck of cards and earlier this year placed 13th in the LAPT Punta del Este stop in Uruguay. Due to the nature of poker tournaments and their top-heavy prize structure he only received $10,420 for his efforts in that tournament, which was his largest single win before this week. With LAPT Rosario under his belt, Sansour increases his total career cashes to four, and his total winnings to just over $340,000.
Sansour kicked off the final table at this in chips, which is a respectable position. It was quickly apparent that he wasn’t going to try and cruise his way to victory, however, as he went on a remarkable run with his chips seeming to spend more time in the middle of the table than in front of him. He eliminated not one, two, three or four but five players in a row, accumulating a massive pile of chips as play became three-handed. Would-be runner-up Bolivar Palacios put an end to the impressive streak as he knocked out third-place getter Daniel Ades, leaving just two men standing in the tournament.
Coming into Heads-Up play, Sansour unsurprisingly held more than a 2:1 chip advantage after his rampage of eliminations. Heads-up poker can sometimes last for hours even with very short stacks as the chips seem to bounce back and forth between players with no end in sight. This was not to be the case at LAPT Rosario, however, as two hands into play Sansour shoved with AK and was promptly called by his opponent’s AQ. A King fell on the flop and nothing on the turn or river managed to flip the odds, and so Martin Sansour eliminated Palacious, picking up the tournament title, trophy and his biggest ever cash prize of $322,280.