Dutch youngster Julien Nuijten yesterday won the inaugural $2,500 buy-in PokerStars.net Latin American Poker Tour event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, collecting $222,940 for topping the 314-strong field.
Nuijten, a former Magic: The Gathering world champion, made the move to high-stakes online cash games just last year. He beat Russian construction company manager Vitaly Kovyazin heads up. He said of his victory, “I was playing pretty aggressively heads up, and I knew I could break him. I’m feeling pretty good about it. I had two horrible bad beats, but in the end, I got him on tilt.”
The Russian lives in the U.S. and won his seat on PokerStars — one of 137 players who did — and has some form, having won come fourth in a World Series of Poker Circuit event in 2006. Team PokerStars Pro Humberto Brenes’ brother, Alex, came fourth.
The final table payouts were:
- Julien Nuijten (Holland) — $222,940
- Vitaly Kovyazin (USA) — $117,750
- Nikolai Senninger (Germany) — $86,350
- Alex Brenes (Costa Rica) — $62,800
- Eduardo Henriques (Brazil) — $47,100
- Oliver Kugler (Germany) — $31,400
- Rafael Pardo (Columbia) — $23,550
- Juan Carlos Burguillos (Venezuela) — $15,700
- Severin Walser (Switzerland) — $11,775
Tour President Glenn Cademartori was delighted with the success of the first event. “This first Latin American Poker Tour event in Rio has been a phenomenal success,” he said. “I have already seen how passionate Latin Americans are about poker, but even I was surprised by the jubilant atmosphere here at the Rio tournament and the tremendous enthusiasm of both the players and their supporters. Latin America is one of the fastest-growing poker regions in the world, and, thanks to the PokerStars.net LAPT, the region now has a high-stakes championship poker tour of its own.”
The tour rolls into San Jose, Costa Rica, on May 22-24 before taking a break until it hits Punta del Este in Uruguay from August 7-9. Qualify for all of these events on PokerStars.com.
