Friday, 29th March 2024 10:15
Home / Uncategorized / LAPT6 Colombia: Concentration required

I should have been writing this morning. But at 9:32am Medellin time, PokerStars Head of Lime Tossing Brad Willis tweeted, “I don’t play tennis and my knowledge of the game comes from DFW & a few months of watching. But this French Open semifinal is art.”

Oh right! The Nadal-Djokovic semfinal. Rafa is our man here at PokerStars, after all. It seemed only proper to turn the TV on and watch.

By the time I tuned in, the two men had already alternated the first four sets. Rafa was down an early break in the 5th set. He broke back in the 8th game.

The match lasted close to five hours. Each man was clearly flagging, and Nadal seemed to be having trouble handling Djokovic’s serve. Then it was as if he tapped into some hidden reserve of power. He broke Djokovic’s serve and blasted his way to the win by holding serve the next game.

The Day 2 players in the 2013 PokerStars.net Latin American Poker Tour Colombia National Poker Championship don’t have to do anything nearly as physically taxing as Nadal. But their mental fortitude will have to remain strong if they hope to last through today’s money bubble and to bag up chips at the end of another ten levels tonight.

143 of them will start play today, headed up by another PokerStars man: Team PokerStars Pro Cristian “El Grillo” de Leon. Grillo will start today with 244,000 in chips, about 150 big blinds. Almost every one else at Grillo’s starting table is below par, with the exception of Colombia’s Andre Carmona, seated two seats to Grillo’s right. It could be a very good start to the day for the Team Pro.

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Chasing Grillo at the top of the counts are, in order, Luis Hernan Esquivel, Johann David Ibanez Diaz, Giuseppe Ferro, and Pablo Gonzalez, the LAPT4 Player of the Year. Team Pros Angel Guillen, Leo Fernandez and Jose “Nacho” Barbero are still in the hunt, as is Team Online player Freddy Torres.

Everyone will have plenty of distractions along the way, as well. If tennis fever gripped a few of us this morning, football fever will grip the entire country today. Several World Cup qualifying matches will be played. The one that interests me – U.S. versus Jamiaca – will play a very weak second fiddle to the Colombia-Argentina match scheduled for 5pm local time.

I’m not kidding about football fever, either. The Premium Plaza mall, where the Allegre Casino is located, has been festooned with yellow, red and blue balloon archways and the tri-partite Colombian flag, hung from every railing and above every passageway.

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We’re professionals, though. We’ll multi-task through it all, with our attention fixed first and foremost on the artful plays happening on the tournament floor. Because when you get right down to it, high-level poker can be just as artful as high-level tennis or the “beautiful game” of high-level football.

Dave Behr is a freelance contributor to the PokerStars Blog. He hopes the U.S. midfield takes some of the pressure off the U.S. back line.

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