Bodog Beat

After Day 1 of the LAPT San Jose, many poker players will have extra time to enjoy the Ramada Plaza Herradura, site of the event. (Bodog Beat Image)

Based on personal experience, we can tell you that Costa Rica is a beautiful country, and it looks like it'll be crawling with poker players with plenty of time on their hands to enjoy that natural beauty after the attrition from Day 1 of the Latin American Poker Tour event in San Jose at the Ramada Plaza Herradura. Of the 398 players that showed up and put up their $2,500 to play in this event, only 86 remain, and leading the way is German poker player Andre Wagner.

Wagner, who has a WSOP Main Event finish under his belt as his only major career poker tournament cash so far, heads up a field that shed pretty much all of its star power during the rollercoaster action yesterday as poker pros Daniel Negreanu, Humberto Brenes, Victor Ramdin and Isabelle Mercier, TV personality Montel Williams and baseball greats David Wells and Orel Hershiser all hit the rail. If you follow Brazilian poker closely, then you may recognize the name of poker pro and former ESPN Brazil commentator Andre Akkari, but he's pretty much if for "well-known" players.

Just in case you know more than we do, which is entirely possible on a Friday afternoon, here are the top ten chip counts heading into Day 2:

1. André Wagner – 129,400
2. Andrés Ojeda – 115,175
3. Peter Busch – 110,675
4. Abraham Rosenkrantz – 99,125
5. Joe Ebanks – 93,025
6. Victor Lemos – 89,225
7. Steven Thompson – 79,375
8. Jay Hynds – 79,325
9. Maria Stern – 79,000
10. Raphael Cerpedes – 78,375

Players will resume their march to the final table and the $274,103 first-place prize in about an hour, so make sure to head over to PokerListings.com to get your live reporting fix, or just come back to the Beat later to get a recap.

2008 WSOP online poker satellites