The name Bolivar Palacios may sound familiar if you’ve been following the Latin American Poker Tour. Palacios has made three LAPT final tables to date, with his best finish coming at LAPT Rosario in Brazil. He came in second at that event for $188,280. Palacios is now guaranteed to beat this figure at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.
Palacios, known as "Ramux" online, was an industrial engineer for five months until he received a check for $300 and deposited it online. Since that deposit, he has cashed for $350,000 in lifetime winnings on the virtual felt. In the live realm, Palacios holds nearly $280,000 in tournament earnings.
Palacios will be the only Latin American at the table and is a member of the “Rat Pack of Panama” -- a group which includes Jose Severino, Victor Lemos and Jose Miguel de la Guardia. Palacios’ reported ambition is, “to become a millionaire". That's a goal he will definitely achieve with a fourth-or-better finish here at the this final table.
Palacios is 27 and hails from Santiago de Veraguas, Panama. He is a PokerStarsPokerStars[/url] player and will enter the final table with 2,445,000 in chips.
Sam Stein, 23, is a professional poker player who came up through the online ranks and began trying his luck in the brick-and-mortar world as soon as he turned 21. Since then, he’s managed to collect more than $1.1 million in career tournament earnings.
His biggest cash was when he finished runner-up to Tom Marchese at the first North American Poker Tour event at the Venetian last February for $522,306. This followed another big cash at last year’s PCA where he was runner-up in a $5,000 buy-in side event for $168,390. At last summer’s World Series of Poker, he bubbled the final table in the $10,000 Pot-Limit Hold'em Championship, coming in tenth for $44,010. He also placed fifth at the World Poker Tour Legends of Poker event for $116,225 in August 2009.
Stein grew up in Los Angeles, but currently resides in Henderson, Nevada -- just outside Las Vegas. He won his seat to the PCA on Boxing Day in a $2,100 qualifier and will enter the final table with 5,855,000 in chips. That's good enough for third on the leader board.
Anton Ionel is a businessman from Bucharest, Romania. The 43-year-old has been playing poker for ten years, having started to play live in casinos in his home country. Ionel has played several European Poker Tour events before, including the Grand Final in Monte Carlo, as well as cashing at EPT Budapest in 2008 for €6,384.
This, however, is his first PCA for Ionel. Not surprisingly, he has described his trip as an “amazing experience”. It will also be his biggest career win, topping his previous best result in Timisoara, Romania. Ionel took fifth in the Senator Poker Masters for €9,600. His progress in the Main Event is being watched by his 16-year-old-daughter who is following the action online from back home.
Ionel is a PokerStars qualifier and will enter the final table with 3,530,000 in chips.
Philippe Plouffe, who runs a café in Lachenaie, Quebec, has been playing poker for ten years now. He's been playing at a serious level for the last seven years having started playing with friends. He now plays around 60 hours a week.
Plouffe is engaged to be married and has a three-year-old son. He prefers to play live rather than online and, although he plays cash games regularly, prefers tournaments. If he thrives at the final table, Plouffe intends to play more. His favorite players are Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonius. He may need to perform a bit like them today at this final table as he'll enter as the shortest stack left.
Plouffe is 31 years old and hails from Quebec, Canada. He is a PokerStars qualifier and brings 1,555,000 chips to the final table.
Galen Hall has been a professional poker player for over a year, but he started playing poker in high school about ten years ago. Initially, he played limit hold'em, but switched to heads-up sit-n-gos early on. Nowadays, he is an all around player and also plays pot-limit Omaha and pot-limit Omaha-8 and, of course, no-limit hold'em.
Hall is ranked in the top 50 on Pocket Fives and last year he cashed for about $1 million total, with around $200,000 of that being profit. Even so, the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure payout is huge for Hall and this is by far his best result. Hall has two small cashes in World Series of Poker events. One came in 2009 and one in 2010, both in $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em events.
He said he hadn’t even looked at the payouts yet because, “the most important thing is to just win it.” If he wins the PCA Main Event, Hall plans to put the money towards going to Stanford University in 2012. In his spare time, Hall is involved in the start-up venture Identify.com and his ultimate goal is to start a business of his own.
Hall is 24 years old from San Francisco and will enter the final table with 6,435,000 in chips.
