Poker Leaderboard: Argentina’s All-Time Money List

Argentinian poker players have found a lot of success on the live tournament circuit in recent years, including current Card Player Player of the Year points leader Jose ‘Nacho’ Barbero. Since our most recent look at the Argentinian money list in January of 2021, Barbero has added more than $4.5 million to his career earnings totals to overtake the top spot on this leaderboard with $8,341,817.

While Barbero’s hot start to 2023 (eight final tables, two titles) has contributed nearly $3.3 million to that tally, he also won a World Series of Poker bracelet back in a $10,000 turbo bounty no-limit hold’em event in 2022 for a huge $585,520 payday. He now has more than a $1.7 million lead on second-ranked Ivan Luca.

Damian Salas has banked over $960,000 since he won the one-off hybrid online and live version of the WSOP main event held during the pandemic shutdown of 2020. Most notably, he made it down to the final three tables in the 2022 main event, coming tantalizingly close to having made the main event final table three times in a six-year span. (He also finished seventh for $1,425,000 in 2017). His run in 2022 ended in 27th place, good for another $262,300.

A new name appearing on this leaderboard is rising tournament star and rapper Alejandro Lococo, known to his fans as Papo MC. Lococo has cashed for more than $2.2 million since the start of 2021, including a seventh-place finish in the 2021 WSOP main event for $1,225,000 and a win in the 2022 EPT Prague Eureka €1,100 main event for $455,424.

Rounding out the top 10 is another newcomer in Ezequiel ‘EZ’ Waigel, whose two largest scores came in the final few months of 2021. He finished as the runner-up in a $2,200 buy-in mystery bounty event at Wynn Las Vegas for what was then a career-best payday of $263,627. Just a month later, he bested a field of 975 entries in the $2,500 buy-in Card Player Poker Tour Venetian main event for a new top score of $417,004. ♠