PokerStars will relaunch the long-dormant Latin American Poker Tour in early 2023, with a March event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, according to promotional signage appearing at the ongoing BSOP Millions in Sao Paolo. The reveal declares that the LAPT will return March 2-6, 2023, with the venue yet to be disclosed.
Details, including a schedule of events, have yet to be announced. BSOP series organizer PokerStars is likely to offer more information on the LAPT's revival in the coming weeks via the PokerStars Blog, its traditional outlet for event news and updates.
The original Latin American Poker Tour enjoyed a nine-year run, from 2008 to 2016, and it was among the most successful regional tours offered by the global online-poker giant. The first-ever LAPT stop was held in Rio de Janeiro in May 2008, while the last LAPT series to date was also held in Brazil, in Sao Paolo in November and December of 2016, in the form of a live BSOP Millions stop.
Along the way, the LAPT also visited Costa Rica, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Panama, and the Bahamas. Two scheduled LAPT events never ran to completion as planned. A 2008 stop in Mexico ran into unexpected regulatory confusion and was cancelled mid-series, and a 2010 visit to Chile was called off in the wake of a major regional earthquake.
Forty-four other LAPT stops successfully ran to completion over the series' original nine-year run. Jose Ignacio "Nacho" Barbero holds the record with three LAPT main-event wins, including at back-to-back stops in 2010. Other LAPT main-event winners have included Valdemar Kwaysser, Ryan Fee, Dominik Nitsche, two-time winners Fabian Ortiz and Mario Javier López, Yuri Martins Dzivielevski, Carter Gill, and Georgios Sotiropoulos. Argentinian players have won 11 of the 44 LAPT main events to date.
The LAPT's 2023 return also won't be the first attempted relaunch of the series. An LAPT revival was previously scheduled in March of 2018 in Chile, but just weeks before that stop, PokerStars committed to a change in regional event strategy that continued the offering of live events such as the BSOP, but didn't, at the time, assemble them into a larger "tour" collective. The LAPT's rebirth may also have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps helping to extend the tour's hiatus past what will be six years by the time it returns in March.
Featured image source: YouTube / LAPT
