Jose Miguel Espinar has become the final winner of the PokerStars.net Latin America Poker Tour Punte del Este championship, adding an LAPT win to his PokerStars Caribbean Adventure cash, a good start to a career that began only in Decemeber 2007. His victory of 350 other players in the Uruguay event brought him USD 241,735, and a wealth of credibility in the live poker arena. Espinar started Day 3 in the middle of the pack.

Three rapid-fire eliminations marked the beginning of the final table, with Paulo Cesar Ribeiro the first to fall. In one of the first hands of the final, Jose Miguel Espinar raised preflop from early position. Ribeiro re-raised, and Espinar called. The flop came down, and Espinar checked. Ribeiro led out, and Espinar check-raised all in. Ribeiro called with pocket jacks, only to see Espinar table. The  on the turn left Ribeiro drawing dead, and Espinar rivered the case king for quads as Ribeiro headed to the rail in eighth place (USD 17,025).

Jose Miguel Espinar took a slight chip lead into heads-up play, with the chip stacks looking like this:

Jose Miguel Espinar: 1,993,000

Alex Brenes: 1,528,000

The heads-up match lasted for several hours as the two remaining players jockeyed for position and avoided making big mistakes. Finally, after the tournament ran longer than the initial schedule had levels, Brenes came in on the wrong end of an A-10 vs. A-9 confrontation, and found himself crippled. The last of his chips went in the middle on the very next hand, as he woke up with A♥T♣ . Espinar called with K♣3♣ , and Espinar hit the flop hard as it came down K♦7♣9♣ . Brenes found no help on the 4♠ turn, and the 9♠  on the river ended his tournament one spot earlier than he wanted, in second place for USD 126,625.

Jose Miguel Espinar, who picked up poker less than a year ago, claimed his first major tournament victory and the USD 241,735 first prize.