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Day 2 of the 2013 PokerStars.net Latin American Poker Tour Colombia National Poker Championship was a weird, weird day. To give you a sense of how weird it was, I can’t remember the last time that the field played down to the final 24 players on Day 2 at an LAPT Main Event. Usually Day 2 is a full 10 levels on the LAPT, with about 30 players returning for Day 3. Yet today, the field collapsed to 24 three minutes into the 9th level of the day. At that point, Colombian German Arias had the biggest stack in the room. By far.

Arias was featured earlier in the day on the PokerStarsBlog. While all of the well-known players found themselves congregated under the bright lights of the feature table, squaring off against one another, Arias used several sets of kings to go from 115,000 to 400,000 to 700,000. I believe his high-water mark was around 1.3 million before he settled back to his chip leading stack of 1.1 million.

Also unusual: four Team PokerStars Pros started Day 2, and three remained in contention at the end of the day. In that sense it’s almost a repeat of LAPT6 Brazil, when Andre Akkari, Angel Guillen, Jose Barbero and Leo Fernandez all made Day 3. Guillen finished 23rd; Barbero busted 11th. Akkari and Fernandez advanced to the final table, though neither won the event.

Here in Medellin, Cristian de Leon started the day as the chip leader and finished with 440,000. That’s well off the lead, but it’s above the 367,000-chip average and gives “El Grillo” some maneuverability at the start of the day tomorrow. He shared the spotlight on the feature table today with fellow Team Pros Guillen and Fernandez until Fernandez was broken to an outer table. Guillen (451,000) and Fernandez (338,000) will have a similar amount of breathing room as El Grillo at the start of the day tomorrow.

Even more unusual: we had no photos in the blog today. Some technical issues prevented us from being able to bring any of Carlos Monti’s wonderful photos of this event to brighten up the blog. Hopefully we’ll have that resolved tomorrow, but please indulge us while we work out the problem.

All of these unusual developments happened on day that required intense concentration of the type displayed by Rafa Nadal in his French Open seminfinal this morning. The biggest distraction of the day was undoubtedly the Colombia-Argentina World Cup qualifier.

A scan of the starter list revealed just five players from outside the Americas. One of them, LAPT5 Colombia champion Robbie Renehan, worked his way to a 49th-place finish and some prize money. Another was Main Event Passport winner James Demhall, who went even deeper than Renehan. Unfortunately for Demhall, he will not return for Day 3.

Renehan and Demhall both busted after the money bubble burst. The unfortunate bubble boy distinction this time around went to Gustavo Jimenez, who had to wait and wait before being knocked out by Mayu Roca.

Stack sizes started changing in the middle of the day, and quite a bit at that. It was enough to wonder who might be winning, even though every tournament veteran knows that nobody wins a four-day poker tournament on Day 2. We sprinkled in some bite-sized updates after that, just long enough to decide that actually German Arias was winning. Arias built a huge stack going into the dinner break, although he suffered a few setbacks in the two-plus hours of post-dinner play.

That’s where things stand right now. When players return at noon tomorrow, they will be 24 strong. There will be 57 minutes remaining in Level 19, 5000-10000, and the average stack will be 367,000. Given how quickly the field collapsed from 143 to 24 today, I’d expect that tomorrow will be roughly a six-hour day.

Once again we’re back with another super Sunday, that’s right our PartyPoker Blog $ 50 Freeroll tournament! There’s a little bit of cash, some glory for winning this tournament and a LOT of fun all up for grabs. What more could you ask for?

Happening this Sunday at 14:00 EDT / 19:00 GMT / 20:00CEST you’ll find the registration open right NOW! So skip all the lines and go sign right up! Of course and you’ll need the password which you can find right here:

The Details

Name: $ 50 PartyPoker Blog Freeroll

Found Under: Freerolls

Date and Time: 9th June 2013 – 14:00 EDT / 19:00 GMT / 20:00 CEST

Game Type: No Limit Holdem

Starting Chips: 3000

Blinds: 3 Mins

Password: Superstardjs

Cost: $ 0

Players are on a 15-minute break, which offers one of those rare chances for us to take stock. There’s not really any other way to phrase this, but things have taken on the proceedings of a crapshoot here, with blinds now up to 300,000-600,000 (70,000 ante) and almost no one with sufficient chips to play with much subtlety.

On the outer table, still in the main card room, the approximate stacks are as follows:

1 – Igor Kurganov – 9,000,000

2 – Tony Gregg – 6,300,000

3 – Anson Tsang – 12,500,000

4 – Isaac Haxton – 17,000,000

5 – Niklas Heinecker – 19,100,000

6 – Sorel Mizzi – 6,600,000

And on the PokerStars.tv table, they line up like this:

1 – Nick Wong – 4,000,000

2 – Tang Zheng – 13,480,000

3 – Jeff Rossiter – 10,000,000

4 – Pratyush Buddiga – 17,000,000

5 – Rono Lo – 12,000,000

Pratyush Buddiga: feature table big stack 

We need to lose two more players until they will consolidate to a single table, from which one player will walk away with nothing. Remember, only eight players are paid, with the breakdown as follows:

1 – $ 34,600,000 HKD ($ 4,464,516 USD)

2 – $ 24,500,000 ($ 3,161,290)

3 – $ 16,100,000 ($ 2,077,419)

4 – $ 12,525,000 ($ 1,616,129)

5 – $ 10,200,000 ($ 1,316,129)

6 – $ 8,300,000 ($ 1,070,968)

7 – $ 7,150,000 ($ 922,581)

8 – $ 6,000,000 ($ 774,194)

There’s no two ways about it: no one is a lock for this final. The biggest stack in the room, that of Niklas Heinecker, is still only 31 big blinds deep. Let’s see how this one develops. Anyone got a few coins to flip?

This weekend I attended the wedding of some friends of mine in the South of Italy. It was my first Italian wedding and wow, what an occasion! It was happy and loud and full of smiles, hugging, singing and food. It felt like I was in an old Italian film!

Also, I have to say it again: So. Much. Food.

Talk quickly turned to the WSOP

The groom is an Italian poker pro so you can imagine that there were lots of players at the festivities and talk turned quickly to Vegas and the upcoming WSOP. The amount of enthusiasm and excitement that the WSOP brings every year is incredible. There’s just something so special about that event. The possibility of a huge payday and a prestigious bracelet, the fact that poker friends from all over the world congregate in that one place for a month or two, the Vegas sunshine and the ‘carnival’ feeling of the whole thing – it’s intoxicating!

Hope To See You There!

I’ll be heading there myself in just over a week and I can’t wait. PartyPoker will of course be running some day excursions and having get togethers for qualifiers. If you’ve managed to get a seat at the WSOP through Party Poker, CONGRATULATIONS and I’ll see you there!

Have you voted in the hunt for The Greatest Ever Poker Hand in the History PokerStars?

As part of our the upcoming 100 billion hand party we’re taking a look at some of the best, funniest, memorable and strategically sound clips of PokerStars history. Not only is it a great way to while away a few minutes during your lunch break (or minutes 55 to 59 of each hour if you’re an online tournament grinder), but will also dictate the hand that plays out in a ZOOM and BOOM promotion that can pocket you extra dollars!

Check out the the ZOOM and BOOM page for more details. It runs 24-30 June. If you don’t know about the $ 5,000,000 100 Billion Hand celebration then you should find out how you can win here.

We’re picking out a couple more today, including the absolute beasting talent of Benny Spindler at EPT8 London. He went on to win the event, which you can read about here.

Spindler wins big in London

Watch all the videos here at the Greatest Hand site.

CarbonSports is very excited to let you know that your players can now bet on their favorite sports with their mobile phone. The great news is that our affiliates will still earn commissions through mobile players.

Ensure you present the m.carbonsports.ag on your sites and use it as player awareness to convert more sports bettors.

This is a big step forward and will help in acquiring players. Keep an eye out for our mobile poker platform slated to release later this summer. Ensure you present the m.carbonsports.ag URL on your sites and use it as player awareness to convert more sports bettors.

What a week it’s been for you poker fans! Up next it’s Episode 3 of the PartyPoker.com Premier League. And here you’ll see the First Heat of Group B with stars like Tobias Reinkemeier, Tony G, Igor Kurganov, Phil Laak, Dan Shak, Jason Mercier, Jennifer Tilly, Talal Shakerchi. If you missed it Episode 1 is here and Episode 2 is right here as well.

We’ll of course be hosting all of the Premier League VI episodes in a “work-safe” and served up in “bite-size” portions for you to enjoy. Now it’s time for Episode 3 in 4 delicious parts:

Episode 3 – Part 1

Group B get ready for action!

Episode 3 – Part 2

What’s Tobias thinking here?

Episode 3 – Part 3

Uh oh Laak doesn’t look happy or?

Episode 3 – Part 4

Down to seven players now, so who’s next?

All The PartyPoker News – All The Time

There has been some heated debate this evening about when to take a dinner break, if indeed at all. It seems that tournament officials were pretty confident that this tournament would continue to roll along at breakneck speeds so that a dinner break wouldn’t be required. Unfortunately things have tightened up and everyone is starting to get a little hungry.

At the last break (at around 7pm local time) the players wanted to know what was happening. With 23 players left, it seemed a good spot to take a dinner break but staff suggested that it would be reviewed at the next break in two hours, hoping things might be close to finished by then.

Nobu anyone?“This could take another five hours!” defended Tony Kondevski. Most people scoffed at that thought, but after the slow grind of the last level, Kondevski’s statement might prove to be close to the truth.

We’ve just ticked into Level 21 and the past hour has seen us lose just two players. With another dozen to fall before we reach our final table, at this rate, we’ll be here until 2am! That’s pretty late for dinner!

It’s funny that as soon as the notion of the end of the day was put into the player’s minds that play ground to a halt. They were told that we might be finished before the next break, so that has equated to them applying the brakes to try and survive to reach the final table. Poker is full of psychology and this is an example of how a simple directive from tournament staff can greatly affect play.

Perhaps a quick 30-minute break to allow players to satisfy hunger and refresh their mindset might have actually encouraged more active play? Especially if they have time for a sugar-charged dessert. Instead we’re another hour away from another tough decision as we’re still a long way from that elusive final table.

PokerStars.tv hostess Nicki Pickering recently spoke with Michael Kanaan to check in on his progress: