Alberto Artiaga Leads Latin Series of Poker Millions After Day 1C

Many players tried, but only 131 remain and one of them will soon be the recipient of a six-figure pay day from the Latin Series of Poker Millions.

Cheers once again erupted across the Majestic Poker room at the Hard Rock Hotel in Panama City, Panama when the elimination of Sebastian Ruiz ended play for the night and guaranteed the remaining players a seat on Day 2.

A total of 328 players put up the $850 buy-in on Day 1C for one last chance at the money, but play concluded for the night when only 32 remained. Those players will join the 27 players from Day 1A, 22 players from Day 1B and 48 players from previous Day 1s held throughout Latin American in previous weeks on Day 2.

Before Day 1C concluded PokerStars team pro Jose “Nacho” Barbero held the chiplead at 336,000, but it was Alberto Artiaga who overtook the lead and bagged up a stack of 371,500.

The blinds will be rolled back to 500-1000 when play begins in order to make sure all players come back to appropriate blind level from where they left off. The initial tournaments held at other venues had smaller fields, and as such reached the 10 percent mark during earlier levels. With that blinds that low, Artiaga will begin with about 371 big blinds while Barbero will begin with nearly 340.

“Obviously I’ve got a lot of chips,” Barbero said. “But I’ll start Day 2 with like 340 big blinds. I mean that has never happened in my life.”

“Day 1A is a little more turbo than I’d like it to be, I’d love to do a slower structure and everything, but it just doesn’t work with all the smaller tournaments and this tournament has to be exactly the same structure as all the other ones,” said Phil Nagy, CEO of Winning Poker Network which includes Ya Poker, America’s Card Room, Black Chip Poker and BetCRIS, all sponsors of the LSOP.

“So we tried to make up for it on Day 2 by moving the blinds back to 500-1000 and a lot of these people are going to be playing with 200 and 300 big blinds. When we did the test runs in Costa Rica, seriously nobody busted out for about four or five hours. It’s a lot of play. But it’s good because you are already in the money and you want it to be a good structure toward the end.”

All players who made Day 2 were automatically in the money, meaning there will be no money bubble to sweat through as the tournament continues on. Each min-cash is worth $2,200.

Other names that made Day 2 include Nagy, Bolivar Palacios, Felipe Montenegro and Americans Carter Gill and Roman Valerstein.

A few notable bustouts included the final member of team BetCRIS, Alex Manzano, who will not join fellow pros Engelberth Varela, Gerardo Godinez, Montenegro and Palacios on Day 2. After being eliminated on Day 1A, Manzano got off to a much better start on Day 1C and chipped up early on, but he was unable to hang on until the end of the night. Antoine Lafosse, the number one ranked player out of Peru who recently final-tabled the World Poker Tour Five Diamond in Las Vegas, was eliminated just two away from the bubble. Earlier in the day John Hewitt, who bubbled the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event final table, make his exit.

Day 2 will begin Tuesday, March 11 at 2 pm EST.

For live updates on the LSOP Millions visit www.cardplayerla.com. For more information on the LSOP, click here.

Day 2 Chip Counts

*The official prize pool will be released when play begins on Tuesday.

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