Friday, 29th March 2024 06:56
Home / Uncategorized / LAPT8 Chile: Chasing Fierro on Day 1B

Newcomers to the coastal city of Viña del Mar are greeted with a variety of agreeable sights and sounds, with the seafood-centered cuisine adding still more considerable pleasures to the palate. Spending time outdoors is highly recommended, especially when the temperatures are mild as they have been thus far this week. A leisurely journey up and down the city’s sidewalks yields many rewarding views, including of the ocean lapping nearby.

Those new to the city are likely to fix their attention on one other detail of the streets of la Ciudad Jardín (the “Garden City”) — the dogs.

As is the case in other cities of Chile, it isn’t at all uncommon to encounter stray dogs here. Indeed, no less than a dozen of them were there to accompany the quarter-mile walk from hotel to casino this morning.

Most keep to themselves, causing little trouble and mingling unremarkably with the human traffic moving about them. (That said, for obvious reasons yielding to the temptation to stop and pet them isn’t recommended.) Once in a while, though, a jogger passing by will attract interest among the four-legged friends, and a yelping group might follow along a short stretch until their interest wanes.

Speaking of chase packs, the one following Day 1A chip leader Nicolas Fierro is quite some distance behind. Fierro ended yesterday having spun a 20,000-chip starting stack all of the way up to 197,500. A few others achieved six figures as well, though none is near enough to nip at Fierro’s heels at the moment.

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Fierro in first

Uncannily, Fierro’s stack of 197,500 exactly matches the one Jefferson Melo built to end Day 1A as chip leader a year ago. Melo would subsequently end each day in front all of the way to the final table before finishing third.

Juan Cordoba was the closest to Fierro at night’s end with 147,900, followed by LAPT7 Peru Grand Final winner Oscar Alache (122,900), Wesley Wiemes (119,900), Marcio Zacconi (117,700), Diego Munoz (104,600), and Fernando Brunco (103,100). Click here for the complete end-of-Day-1A chip counts.

There were 155 entries all told yesterday, with about a third of that total advancing to tomorrow’s Day 1B. A larger turnout is expected today, and we’ll see together if any among them might be able to challenge Fierro’s top dog status.

Play starts at 12 noon local time (two hours in front of ET, three hours behind GMT). They’ll play 10 one-hour levels again today, with reentry option available through the end of the dinner break and start of Level 7, and play should end around the howl-at-the-moon hour of midnight.

We’ll again be handing out inviting treats of updates all day here on the PokerStars Blog, and the LAPT Live stream will present Main Event action all day as well. Stick close, so as not to fall behind.

Photography from LAPT8 Chile by Carlos Monti. Watch the stream at LAPT Live. You can also follow the action in Spanish on the PokerStars blog and on Facebook, and in Portuguese on the blog and on Facebook.

Martin Harris is Freelance Contributor to the PokerStars Blog.

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