Players have returned from the dinner break on this Day 1A, meaning the re-entry period for the day is over, although those busting from this point forward can still come back for tomorrow’s second Day 1 flight.

Such a description indicates the course to be pursued by LAPT8 Panama champion Sakeeb Kazemipur. We’d mentioned his earlier bust during the afternoon, after which he did indeed return.

Alas for the Canadian, shortly after dinner he’d become crippled in a big hand with his neighbor, then soon after that was all-in with ten-four versus ace-queen. Five cards later Kazemipur was wishing his tablemates good luck, saying “I’ll see you tomorrow” as he went over to check on his friend and fellow countryman Francois Lincourt.

Lincourt is on a stack of 35,000 or so, roughly the same as that of Team PokerStars Pro Andre Akkari who happens to be sitting two to Lincourt’s right in the seat Kazemipur vacated following his first bustout.

Team PokerStars Pro Andre Akkari“PokerStars has a $50,000 buy-in?” Lincourt was asking of Akkari as we passed, and Akkari nodded in response.

If you haven’t heard — and the news is fresh — the tournament to which Lincourt referred in fact sports a $51,000 buy-in, a new Super High Roller event appearing as part of the World Championship of Online Poker this November.

Akkari was among the late registrants, as was another player familiar to most even though not such a frequent face here on the Latin American Poker Tour. The German Dominik Nitsche — a three-time WSOP bracelet winner, WPT champion, and one of the earliest winners on the LAPT way back in Season 2 — took a seat a short while before the dinner break.

Dominik NitscheThe collective memory here on media row can’t recall Nitsche making another LAPT appearance since his historic win in Mar del Plata, Argentina back in 2009 (not counting LAPT Bahamas, that is) — a victory for which Nitsche picked up a $381,030 first prize that still stands as the largest in the tour’s history.

Not unlike David Vamplew, Nitsche is also following a busy summer in Las Vegas with a Peruvian postscript. Nitsche picked up six WSOP cashes this year, including a third-place showing in a $5K NLHE event good for better than $220K.

Nitsche is nursing a stack of less than 10,000 at present, among the shortest among the 85 or so remaining from the 134 Day 1A entries.

Meanwhile Brazil’s Regis Kogler has steadily built his stack up all day, having pushed up around the 70,000-chip mark to boast one of the bigger stacks in the room as they begin to move into the latter stages of today’s initial Day 1 flight.

Regis KoglerPhotography from LAPT8 Peru by Carlos Monti. You can also follow the action in Spanish here and in Portuguese here.

Martin Harris is Freelance Contributor to the PokerStars Blog.

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