Thursday, 28th March 2024 13:11
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This year’s Americas Cup winners’ photo won’t feature Team Peru. A Mexican clean sweep in the semi-finals, followed by a loss to Colombia in a subsequent play-off, quickly put paid to such ideas. Instead, the Peruvian quintet will take ‘just’ $2,500 each back to their home country. Will we see them when the next Americas Cup-style tournament rolls into paradise? It’s impossible to say. That is, unless of course we’re talking about Luis Felipe Villaran Bedoya.

Or as I like to call him, “Mr Peru”.

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Mr Peru and Mr Costa Rica at this year’s Americas Cup of Poker

This weekend Mr Peru represented his country at the poker tables for a third straight year. In 2012 he was part of a World Cup of Poker winning side and personally collected more than $22,500. A year later he added $2,500 after his team finished fourth in a preceding Americas Cup of Poker in Panama.

Yet now, stood in the brightly lit, marble-floored hallway that leads from the Imperial Ballroom back to the Atlantis Resort’s thousands of hotel rooms, Mr Peru looks a little deflated about today’s $2,500 prize.

“It’s a disappointment, but it’s poker,” he says of Team Peru’s fourth place finish. “We carry the hopes of the poker community and it feels very, very good (to represent Peru). I feel a lot of proud.”

Dressed in his team’s red and white colours, Mr Peru’s “proud” is clearly on display here in Atlantis. When he’s not living his other life as stock broker in Lima, he plays tournaments on PokerStars on a semi-professional basis, and over the past few years his presence at events like these have turned him into a poker somebody in Peru. It’s a fame that is thoroughly deserved.

Thousands of people tried to qualify for this year’s Americas Cup. But Mr Peru beat them. Thousands likely tried to qualify for the World Cup of Poker. But, again, Mr Peru beat them. Such consistency in poker isn’t common place. So as the Mexican and Chilean teams butt-heads next door in the Americas Cup final, what does he believe the key to consistency is?

“A lot of discipline and hard work,” says Villaran. “To qualify for the Americas Cup I played between two and three tournaments for almost 28 days in a row. It was constant. I wasn’t trying to win the tournaments but just earn points, points, points. A lot of players don’t understand that, they just want to win.”

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Luis Felipe Villaran Bedoya: once, twice, three times a Peruvian player

Apparently if you want to follow in such successful footsteps and take a shot at Americas Cup glory, you’ll need to be “a rock at the beginning” of each qualifying tournament, and make good use of the time clock.

“If the button passes you and you have one blind and one point locked up, I prefer not to push. By the time the blinds comes you could have a lot more points. I like to keep my blinds.”

Judging by Villaran’s record in such matters and the calm way he delivers each word, it’s a strategy I wouldn’t argue with. But can such consistency realistically continue?

“Yeah, sure,” he says. “This is my third time so I want to come again.”

Until next year then I guess, Mr Peru. All the best.

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