No-Namer from the Netherlands Wins LAPT Rio

Julien Nuijten, a 19-year-old total relative unknown from Amsterdam, Holland, has won the first event of the Latin American Poker Tour, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Nuijten, who reportedly played the $2,500 buy-in poker tournament on a whim, started final table play as the chip leader and commanded his way to the title and $222,940 payday, which should be enough to buy him some sweet clogs, a field of tulips and loads of hash back home. And maybe a windmill or two. According to the PokerStars folks, Nuijten is a high-stakes poker player online and is a former Magic: The Gathering world champion, thus joining the ranks of fantasy wizard geeks turned cardtossers like David Williams, Noah Boeken, Dario Minieri, Eric "Efro" Froelich and Adam Levy.

Finishing in second for $117,750 was Russian-American Vitaly Kovyazin, who isn't a cab driver like we had assumed earlier but we were right that he is from Brooklyn where he is a "construction manager." So we probably got the Red Mafia part correct too. Which means we'll shut up now.

Alex Brenes, the brother of the insufferably annoying Humberto Brenes, finished fourth, earning $62,800.

The results from the final nine below:

1st -- Julien Nuijten (Holland) -- $223,000
2nd -- Vitaly Kovyazin (United States) -- $117,750
3rd -- Nikolai Senniger (Germany) -- $86,350
4th -- Alex Brenes (Costa Rica) -- $62,800
5th -- Oliver Kugler (Germany) -- $47,100
6th -- Eduardo Henriques (Brazil) -- $31,400
7th -- Rafael Pardo (Colombia)  -- $23,500
8th -- Juan Carlos Burguillos (Venezuela) -- $15,700
9th -- Severin Walser (Switzerland) -- $11,775

The next LAPT event is in San Jose, Costa Rica, scheduled for May 22-24.

Gratuitous Brazilian supermodel above is Raica Oliveira, who famously dated soccer star Ronaldo before he was into the whole transvestite hookers thing See lots more of Raica here.

LAPT Rio Final Table Not So Hot, Very Much Unlike Brazilian Model Fabiana Tambosi

The Latin American Poker Tour's debut event in Rio de Janiero, Brazil has reached its final table after two full days of play at Intercontinental Hotel, located just off the beach where the hiked-up-the-culo bikini bottom was born and where it's apparently cool for pervs with video cameras to film young girls wearing next to nothing while making creepy humming noises.

The $2,500 buy-in event has a not-so-impressive $785,000 prize pool and drew 314 players, almost half of who came from the home country of Brazil, with US Americans making up the second largest contingent and Argentinians third.

Despite the decent turnout of Brazilians, disappointingly only one has made the final table, Eduardo Henrique, and we're gonna go out on a limb and say Eduardo is really annoying, like probably on the same level as Humberto Brenes annoying, who's brother Alex by the way is also at the final table. Perhaps we're wrong about him (likely not) but it's just that every photo we've seen of this cacafuego he's got that Mattias Andersson thing going on acting like he just scored the winning goal in a World Cup final. Painful. Hey Maridu, please smack him the next time he does that.

Leading the final table today is Holland's Julien Nuijten with 970,000 in chips. That's pretty much all we got on him. Second in chips is the sole "US American" Vitaly Kovyazin (380,000), who we haven't read any bio info on but can confidently say he's a Russian cab driver who lives in Brooklyn and has some ties to the Red mafia, fought against the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 80s and bought his wife in Kiev for about 4000 rubles, some denims and a couple of cartons of Marlboros. We're also gonna guess he knows Glum Girl Gromenkova.

Rounding out the final table and gunning for the first place prize of $222,940 are two Germans (somehow), a Swiss player, a Colombian and a Venezuelan.

Follow the action today in Portuguese here.

Photos above and below of stereotypically stunning Brazilian model Fabiana Tambosi, who like pretty much everyone at the LAPT final table we had no idea existed until today.

Latin American Poker Tour Rio Starts Mañana

The country that has given us super-smoking hot supermodels like Adriana Lima and paved the way for girls everywhere to painfully have hot wax poured all over their fagina area and pretty much every square inch nearby except for a tiny strip up front then ripped away, solely for our benefit, is set to host the first stop of the Latin American Poker Tour.

The $2,500 buy-in No-Limit Hold'em poker tournament is being held May 3-5 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and on hand are an expected 300 runners including a host of South of the Border and US American poker pros including Brazilian Andre Akkari, 2004 WSOP champ Greg Raymer, 2003 WSOP Champ Chris Moneymaker, Victor Ramdin, Isabelle Mercier, a woman, Vanessa Rousso, a woman who went to Duke where she studied at Duke, Chad Brown, Gavin Griffin and the insufferably annoying Humberto Brenes.

We assume Federal, our favorite assassin-looking Brazilian friend, will be there as well.

We were going to post a promotional video for the LAPT Rio we found over at the blog FOWCP Maridu writes but the embed didn't quite work, so in lieu click here for another video we found from Brazil. Tad NSFW but it's the weekend so click away.

Latin America Poker Tour Announced

The land of insanely hot girls (like Ana Beatriz Barros, at right), leftist leaders and a really nasty strain of gonorrhea that is tough to beat but if you take some penicillin early on it should dissipate after a 15 to 23 days and if that doesn't work try ceftriaxone or spectinomycin. Usually one of those will nip it in the bud.

What were we talking about again?

Oh yeh, Latin America is finally getting a big league poker tour of its own with PokerStars launching its three-event Latin American Poker Tour this summer in Brazil, Costa Rica and Uruguay.

Featuring $2,500 buy-ins, the LAPT kicks off on May 3-5, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and then heads to Costa Rica for the LAPT San José from May 22-24. The short tour wraps in Uruguay with the LAPT Punta del Este from August 7-9.

Our pick of the three stops would be Brazil (for why, see Ana above, she's Brazilian), and we're considering the trip because we have some good poker buddies there including our bestest Brazilian friend Maria Eduarda Mayrinck (aka Maridu) who said something about kicking us in the nuts in Vegas this summer if we don't make it, or maybe she didn't, hard to understand foreign chicks sometimes. If we don't make it, then maybe Costa Rica and if not, well, anyone know where Uruguay is?

Speaking of Maria, below is a cool video she did with her hot in a really cute way Brazilian friend Julia in New York City during a snow storm last year. It's to the song "Young Folks" by Peter, Bjorn and John. As Maria explained, "we had too much creativity and time in our hands." Ridiculously, Julia is married. She's also a photographer and occasional poker player. Maria on the other hand is single and a damn fine poker player. She is also a writer and director for Brazil's largest TV network and a consultant and blogger for PokerStars Brazil.

Check out Maria's old blog here and her PokerStars one here.

Watch the video at YouTube here.

LAPT press release and real video to "Young Folks" after the jump . . .