LAPT Season 9 Schedule Announced, Main Event Buy-Ins Slashed
This week, the schedule for Season 9 of the Latin American Poker Tour, or LAPT, was announced. The series gets underway in January with several major changes, the most major of which is cutting the Main Event buy-ins for LAPT Panama, Uruguay, and Brazil to $1,500. The buy-ins for Season 8 events ranged between $2,500 and $3,300.
The LAPT stop in the Bahamas will have a buy-in of $2,200 during Season 9, down from $3,000 during Season 8. According to PokerStars, which sponsors the tour, reducing the Main Event buy-ins was done in order to “improve the player experience and attract a greater number of competitors to the tour.”
Other changes include a new $400 No Limit Hold’em Cup event, which PokerStars claims will be “a moderately-priced championship event with an excellent structure.” A wider array of games will also be held at every stop, including Mixed Games and Pot Limit Omaha. Preliminary events will have buy-ins starting as low as $50 to appeal to players with a variety of bankrolls.
Edgar Stuchly, Director of Live Events at PokerStars, commented in a press release, “The poker industry is booming in Latin America and by providing the best live poker experience in the region, we will contribute to this growth for many years. Every poker player will want to compete in the LAPT next year.”
Brazilian Team PokerStars Pro and longtime PocketFiver Andre aakkari Akkari said in the same release, “Over the past 10 years, I’ve been playing poker tournaments all around the world and it’s great to see games that are popular in North America and Europe make their way to Latin America. Other games besides Texas Hold’em, such as Pot Limit Omaha, will only become more popular if they are made available to play. With more variety available, the LAPT will appeal to more online grinders, recreational players, and mixed game players, which will mean more players, larger tournament fields, and bigger prizes.”
Here is the schedule for LAPT Season 9:
Season 8 of the LAPT ran between January and September and included stops in the Bahamas, Chile, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay. The Bahamas event was the largest LAPT event held during Season 8, attracting a field of 736 entrants and awarding a first place prize of $367,000 to Josh Kay.
The very first LAPT event was held in August 2008 in Punta del Este, Uruguay. Since then, more than three-dozen events have been held.
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